Mahakhitan: A Chinese Buddhist Civilization in India
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You guys are working quite fine with Images, my images always crash regardless of website.
Don’t worry,I gave them a good thrashing.They had to beg to marry my old character’s daughter.The current Caliph is my nephew.The only reason I haven’t gone further yet was because I’m roleplaying as an administrative centered emperor.
Chapter7: Celestial Rain Of Mandârava: or Stories about the Mahakhitan Central Capital (Part 2)
Chapter7: Celestial Rain Of Mandârava: or Stories about the Mahakhitan Central Capital (Part 2)
That incident which changed the Central Capital was the return of a Liao delegate from the Orient.
The Mongols, after the Battle of Balasagun in 1246, stationed their troops in the Zhetysu prairies. Their harassment to the Transoxiana continued, without the slightest intention to withdraw. Starting from 1257 (12th of Deyou reign) , ninety thousand Mongol invaded the Ferghana Valley under the leadership of Temur, son of Ogadai, and kept on striking west. The Liao’s remaining twenty thousand troops, with the help of city defense, fought tactfully for years against the Mongols in the Pamir-Alay mountains. They were still defeated, and finally lost the last large city they held in central Asia: the Hezhong Fu, or Samarkand, capital of Transoxiana.
The trend of Liao defeat lasted till February 1261, Year One of Qianhe Reign, when frontline Liao officers suddenly sent an emergency report to the court, that the bulk of the Mongol army, after leaving behind a small force defending Samarkand, returned east.
Back then, nobody in Mahakhitan knew what happened. It was only after a few months when merchants from Mongol-held Khotan passed a message, that the Temür Khan has passed away suddenly, and two princes of Tolui’s descent, Khublai and Ariq Buka, two of the Mongol Royalty who held military power, fought a civil war for the Khan’s throne.
It was this Mongol civil war that gave the Liao State a chance, little more than ten years, to have some respite and to reform its internal politics, but this isn’t our focus this time.
By the spring of 1265, 5th of Qianhe Reign, or second year of Zhiyuan Reign for the Yuan Mongols, a fast messengers from Khotan relayed the big news that Khublai Khan won the Civil War, and declared himself the Emperor of the Great Mongol Khanate in Xanadu.
Emperor Yingzong of Liao felt quite displeased that River Luan homeland that the Khitan nation remembered and passed on in their legends has now become the Mongol capital, and was also deeply bothered by the new Mongol “Emperor” and his attitudes towards the Liao. He sent an embassy with Yelü Guanyinnu (耶律觀音奴), a member of the royal family, as the head of mission, and Altan Kara (阿勒坦伽羅) as the deputy chief of this mission, across the steppe to Xanadu. Both men were told by the Emperor that, firstly, they should try their best to strike a peace deal; secondly, to they should keep a record of the geography and mileages on the way, and to investigate the Mongols’ armament; and thirdly, to search for remnant Liao people in their homeland, sweep and make offering to the Mausoleums of past Liao emperors, and to collect books of the Han Chinese lands.
Yingzong had been waiting for the embassy to return, until it finally did, in the 9th year of Qianhe, or 1269, the 6th of Zhiyuan Reign for the Mongol Yuan.
It was obvious that the Mongol Emperor treated the embassy by his Liao counterpart as a mere tributary mission, and snubbed them. The peace talks went on for years, and ended without any actual reward. The two ambassadors handed in some thick notes for the mission, which the Liao Emperor had no mood to read. New books which the diplomats purchased a great number of from China Sthana, like the Collected Commentaries of the Four Books by Zhu Xi, were handed over straight away by the Emperor to the Han Chinese Academicians (林牙), for them to interpret and study. The diplomats brought up the second-handed information about the Mongol invading the Song Empire, on which the Liao Emperor spoke not a word. The embassy also failed to sweep and make offering to the Mausoleums of past Liao monarchs, as the Mongol Emperor did not grant him any permission, and the embassy was under “protection” of the Mongol Kheshig Guards. The Liao Ambassador could only prostrate to the directions of each of the mausoleums, on an altar they set up in their courtyard.
Then, the deputy chief of the mission mentioned the new capital which the Mongol were carrying on their grand construction in the Princedom of Yan. The Emperor asked casually about the whereabouts of this new capital, to which the Head of the Mission answered:
(The original script in Khitan.)
(Special thanks to @Battlestar_Cydonia for his Early Modern English translation.)
These messages, together with a simple piece of sketched plan, was acquired by the Ambassador from an ethnic Khitan named Yelü Jun. Niece of the former Mongol Chancellor for their Central Secretariat Yelü Chucai, and now their chief of works. Having lived long in Han lands, Yelü only occasionally visit Xanadu to get an audience with the Emperor. Having seen a clan member in his homeland, Yelü Guanyinnu asked to “join ancestors” (連宗)* with Yelü Jun, calculated their succession by generation, and recognized Yelü Jun as his uncle in clan. The duo then talked happily with one another in their greatly varied Khitan tongue, and drank together all night.
* (To join ancestor in a Sinicized culture is to recognize another person with the same surname, but from different lines, as your relative, and try to find a sometimes fictive shared ancestor. Seniority is determined not by age but by distance from that ancestor.)
The diplomats also spoke of the magnificence of already-built Xanadu, which they’ve seen with their own eyes, and everyone in the Princedom of Yan says, that the new Khanbalik would only be ten times in grandeur.
Emperor Yingzong moved on his agate-inlaid antler chair, and frowned.
This Khublai, it seems, is really trying to be firmly seated on the Imperial throne of the Middle Kingdom. Yingzong stared at the plan of Khanbalik, and though of the Liao capital under construction. He reminded himself that he was the legitimate Emperor of the Northern Dynasty, and that he was at the same time the Holy Raja of Tianzhu (Sindh), that the new capital he so painstakingly prepared for his Empire could never be so easily beaten by this horde of Tartars. Otherwise, with this small city, with its 20 Chinese miles in circumference, little larger than a prefecture in China Sthana, how could the whole of Mahakhitan be awed? And how could the hearts of the diplomats of all nations, who have seen the Mongol capital, be won? How then, could Mahakhitan have the audacity to keep on calling itself “maha” to foreigners?
In the next few months, the Ministry of Works exploded with busy works.
A decree, coming straightaway from His Majesty asked the Ministry to immediately cease the works on the Tangshi Prefecture, and that the ministry shall, in coordination with all other ministries and departments, abolish all pre-existing designs, and to design a new, unparalleled Imperial Capital, which must supress the illegitimate Mongol Khanbalik in scale.
Chancellor of the Central Secretariat Xiao Tianyou (蕭天佑), previously mentioned as the Straw-house Chancellor, this time gathered almost every man available to the Ministry of Works. With a team headed by Vice-Minister for Works Shi Cheng (史誠), and Assistant manager for Construction department in the Ministry of works Xiao Guzhi (蕭古只), together with officials from Ministry of Rites, and Tianzhu/Sindh’s Venerable Monks from the Wude Fu’s Imperial temples, all sat in a circle in the Department of State Affairs’ mud-brick courtyards, drawing in the landscape made of broken tiles and chalk. The talks continued for several days, and a plan was presented to the Emperor.
News came from the court: the Emperor was obviously dissatisfied with the plan.
(Kara’s Note: Do you think in any age, whether modern or ancient, it is that easy for us wretched architects to get a pass?)
The Emperor’s would send one decree after another, each contradicting the previous one. Indian monks would keep true to ancient canons, and refuse to compromise. In addition, the abbots’ incessant arguments and squabbles with each of Ministry of Rite departments over rituals and symbolisms, as well as scores of regulations set up by the Military Council on city defence, the penny-pinching Ministry of Treasury who always complain about cash shortage, considerations and changes by the Water Department on the city’s water supply, bizarre demands by different yamens that may just suddenly arrive, and all sorts of information on the Mongol/Yuan Khanbalik collected and summarised by the Board of Four Directions, all forces compounded to give the two gentlemen in charge of the design in the Ministry of Works a non-stop headache. This lasted for nearly three months, until Xiao and Shi finally, for the seventh time, presented their drawn plan of the Central Capital to the Emperor’s audience, Xiao Guzhi’s hairs and beards had already all white, and Shi Cheng developed an unhealable hunchback.
Most of the yamens are satisfied this time, most importantly, their picky emperor also approved this.
Mahakhitan has never seen a project so grand in scale and so comprehensively prepared for. Just as the plans are being argued over in the courtyards, the twenty thousand Punjabi labourers the Imperial House drafted during their slack season had already started levelling an area scores of Chinese miles in circumference. Stone masons, both local and those from Central India, carpenters from Nipoluo (泥婆羅, or Nepal) at the Himalaya’s foot, Immigrant carpenters from Quanzhou who knew “Song Style” architecture, metalsmiths and masons from Hanshan Circuit (Afghanistan), as well as weavers from Liao’s Southern Capital are now gathered around the new capital city. Once the picture pattern by the Ministry of Works arrived from Wude Fu, labourers under military organization immediately start lofting on the ground, and the craftsmen would begin processing the construction materials already prepared for them.
A sketch of the New Central Capital’s base.
Workers, under the direction of Ministry of Rite officials, first laid down a piece of yellow marble ten Chinese feet (3.0 metres) in circumference, with eight directions engraved on it, marking the centre point of this huge city. And the Imperial Throne in the Central Hall happen to be located right above its central point. This will be the centre of All Under Heaven in Jambudvīpa, the place for the Lord of the World. Underneath this Heaven Centre Stone, Five Coloured Soil brought back from Khitan homelands by the Liao embassy was placed.
With the Heaven Centre Stone as the point zero, the ethnic Persian Observatory Chief (靈臺郎) of the Directorate of Astronomy (司天監) personally marked the directions, under his supervision, the craftsmen drew out extension lines eight Chinese miles in length toward the four cardinal directions. Based on this, the craftsmen, using lime and iron poles, created huge squares sixteen Chinese miles (8480 meters) in circumference, and this served as the baseline of an outer city wall sixty-four Chinese miles long.
In the following days, Ministry of Work officials, with their expertise on Mathematics, divided each sides by three, and the whole city evenly into nine square districts, constituting the outermost part of the Nine Assemblies of the Diamond-realm Mandala (九會曼陀羅). Each district is about five Chinese miles and forty paces in circumference (2720 meters).
The intersection lines served as the positions of the four canals for water from rivers coming down from the Margalla Hills to be channelled into the city. The terrain is higher in the Southeast and lower in the Northwest, the river water flows through a reservoir, and then enter the city from the southeast, and to the Haro River after exit the city. The eighty-foot long river could be used for transportations and defence. Digging of the four canals consumed the most time and manpower in the initial stage of the project.
Following this, nine three-hundred-foot wide avenues are built to run through all districts, and this was in accordance with the Rites of Zhou’s required “nine north-south and nine east-west roads”. Thus, each district is divided into four quarters, and the Mandala into thirty-six equal parts, each the size of a future quarter.
The intersection of the avenues and the city wall are the positions of the twelves gates. The gate at the centre of each side would be extraordinarily grandiose, with a brick Buddha Pavilion built by Imperial decree serving as the gatehouse, four Buddhas in total, which is in compliance with Five Great Buddhas designated for the Mandala. (Quiz: who is the fifth Buddha? Hint: the answer is quite obvious.)
The palace complex occupies the central district, and it’s been further divided. The offices are placed on the two sides of the imperial avenue south of the palace complex, residences of the imperial clan and the imperial vassals in the Capital are in the two quarter east of the palace complex, the garrison headquarters in the two quarters in the west. The two quarters in the north are used for the Imperial Garden.
Outside of the palace and the offices, the city can be further divided into twenty-eight quarters. In reference to its sparse population, and in an attempt to encourage commerce, those quarters aren’t surrounded with tall walls, though the word “fang”(坊) or “walled quarter” is still used for the city blocks (translator’s note: as per Sui and Tang traditions, like they were in Chang’an, in Liao Southern Capital, or TTL in Balasagun.). Each quarter was named after their corresponding position to the twenty-seven/twenty-eight Indian constellations. (When the Ministry of Rites found out that the ancient Chinese translations for the Sanskrit Nakshatras and the Chinese Star Mansions could not exactly correspond to each other, the Emperor sanctioned that “select and use the fine ones”.
A full map for the Tangshi Prefecture, Central Capital of Mahakhitan. Sixth year of Liao’s Baoying Reign, 1298
Each quarter is two Chinese miles and hundred-and-twenty paces in circumference (1270 meters), a crossroad of two streets in each quarter, there are the east-west roads subjected to the streets, from the North First Road to the North Sixth Road, and from the South First Road to South Sixth Road. Subjected to the roads, there are the north-south alleys dividing the buildings.
Using Jyeshtha Quarter (or 尊長坊) in the west city as an example, a diagram of quarters in Central Capital.
Two grand markets has been designed along the avenues in between the four quarters in the Southwest and the four quarters in the southeast corner of the city, thus completing the city’s layout. The main official buildings in the city are all covered with glazed tiles in azure or blue. The massive demand for cobalt in baking millions of glazed tiles, has exhausted the supply of Sumali Qing (蘇麻離青) or smaltum from the state of Yilake (亦剌克國, or Iraq) in the western seas, cutting its supply to East Asia.
The entire outer wall of the Central Capital, was made with rammed earth wrapped in a stone outer layer. The city wall is thirty Chinese-feet tall, and twenty feet wide on top. From the cross section, the city wall forms a slight curve to the outside, which is a feature of local city wall building in Punjab and Gandhara.
By the time of the 6th Year of Kangle Reign, Emperor Weizong, the entire southern half of the Central Capital, including five gates, the Imperial avenues, offices and the most important Outer Palace of the Imperial Palace has been completed. It’s the winter solstice, the Emperor held his General Conference in the Zhaode Hall (昭德殿), flowed by a night banquet in Yuanqing Hall (元慶殿).
As a coincidence, the Dadu or Khanbalik of the Yuan Empire completed its main part in the same year. Based on a copied plan the Liao acquire later on, the Central Capital triumphs over her Mongol sister in both scale and orderliness. But that’s a fight risen out of personal feeling of Emperor Yingzong, a light belonging to him alone, and would quickly be forgotten by his subjects.
Yuan Dadu and Liao Zhongdu, both capitals of Great Empires, located on the foot of Mount Yanshan and Mount Margalla respectively, started their lives in the winter of the same year, and each face their own praises, glory, smoke and blood for the next seven hundred years.
Although the city was designed according to the purest cosmic order, when people started to move in, this glazed mandala started to be invigorated with a scent of everyday life. The city gradually departed from its ideal states, and transformed into a being full of life and dynamism.
In the next chapter, after finishing our narrative on the House of Yelü palaces on the clouds, I, Kara, might as well talk about colours painted by the mortals onto the of perfection.
Palaces of the Central Capital, each square is about 170 meters in span. You can imagine the magnitude of each palace
The texts about the palaces are done, but as Halls such as the Zhaode requires quite a lot of work to draw, to spread out the works (because of my back pain), they will be left to the next chapter. This chapter will only have the floor plans for your imagination.
Gratitude, cheese.
That incident which changed the Central Capital was the return of a Liao delegate from the Orient.
The Mongols, after the Battle of Balasagun in 1246, stationed their troops in the Zhetysu prairies. Their harassment to the Transoxiana continued, without the slightest intention to withdraw. Starting from 1257 (12th of Deyou reign) , ninety thousand Mongol invaded the Ferghana Valley under the leadership of Temur, son of Ogadai, and kept on striking west. The Liao’s remaining twenty thousand troops, with the help of city defense, fought tactfully for years against the Mongols in the Pamir-Alay mountains. They were still defeated, and finally lost the last large city they held in central Asia: the Hezhong Fu, or Samarkand, capital of Transoxiana.
The trend of Liao defeat lasted till February 1261, Year One of Qianhe Reign, when frontline Liao officers suddenly sent an emergency report to the court, that the bulk of the Mongol army, after leaving behind a small force defending Samarkand, returned east.
Back then, nobody in Mahakhitan knew what happened. It was only after a few months when merchants from Mongol-held Khotan passed a message, that the Temür Khan has passed away suddenly, and two princes of Tolui’s descent, Khublai and Ariq Buka, two of the Mongol Royalty who held military power, fought a civil war for the Khan’s throne.
It was this Mongol civil war that gave the Liao State a chance, little more than ten years, to have some respite and to reform its internal politics, but this isn’t our focus this time.
By the spring of 1265, 5th of Qianhe Reign, or second year of Zhiyuan Reign for the Yuan Mongols, a fast messengers from Khotan relayed the big news that Khublai Khan won the Civil War, and declared himself the Emperor of the Great Mongol Khanate in Xanadu.
Emperor Yingzong of Liao felt quite displeased that River Luan homeland that the Khitan nation remembered and passed on in their legends has now become the Mongol capital, and was also deeply bothered by the new Mongol “Emperor” and his attitudes towards the Liao. He sent an embassy with Yelü Guanyinnu (耶律觀音奴), a member of the royal family, as the head of mission, and Altan Kara (阿勒坦伽羅) as the deputy chief of this mission, across the steppe to Xanadu. Both men were told by the Emperor that, firstly, they should try their best to strike a peace deal; secondly, to they should keep a record of the geography and mileages on the way, and to investigate the Mongols’ armament; and thirdly, to search for remnant Liao people in their homeland, sweep and make offering to the Mausoleums of past Liao emperors, and to collect books of the Han Chinese lands.
Yingzong had been waiting for the embassy to return, until it finally did, in the 9th year of Qianhe, or 1269, the 6th of Zhiyuan Reign for the Mongol Yuan.
It was obvious that the Mongol Emperor treated the embassy by his Liao counterpart as a mere tributary mission, and snubbed them. The peace talks went on for years, and ended without any actual reward. The two ambassadors handed in some thick notes for the mission, which the Liao Emperor had no mood to read. New books which the diplomats purchased a great number of from China Sthana, like the Collected Commentaries of the Four Books by Zhu Xi, were handed over straight away by the Emperor to the Han Chinese Academicians (林牙), for them to interpret and study. The diplomats brought up the second-handed information about the Mongol invading the Song Empire, on which the Liao Emperor spoke not a word. The embassy also failed to sweep and make offering to the Mausoleums of past Liao monarchs, as the Mongol Emperor did not grant him any permission, and the embassy was under “protection” of the Mongol Kheshig Guards. The Liao Ambassador could only prostrate to the directions of each of the mausoleums, on an altar they set up in their courtyard.
Then, the deputy chief of the mission mentioned the new capital which the Mongol were carrying on their grand construction in the Princedom of Yan. The Emperor asked casually about the whereabouts of this new capital, to which the Head of the Mission answered:
(The original script in Khitan.)
(Special thanks to @Battlestar_Cydonia for his Early Modern English translation.)
These messages, together with a simple piece of sketched plan, was acquired by the Ambassador from an ethnic Khitan named Yelü Jun. Niece of the former Mongol Chancellor for their Central Secretariat Yelü Chucai, and now their chief of works. Having lived long in Han lands, Yelü only occasionally visit Xanadu to get an audience with the Emperor. Having seen a clan member in his homeland, Yelü Guanyinnu asked to “join ancestors” (連宗)* with Yelü Jun, calculated their succession by generation, and recognized Yelü Jun as his uncle in clan. The duo then talked happily with one another in their greatly varied Khitan tongue, and drank together all night.
* (To join ancestor in a Sinicized culture is to recognize another person with the same surname, but from different lines, as your relative, and try to find a sometimes fictive shared ancestor. Seniority is determined not by age but by distance from that ancestor.)
The diplomats also spoke of the magnificence of already-built Xanadu, which they’ve seen with their own eyes, and everyone in the Princedom of Yan says, that the new Khanbalik would only be ten times in grandeur.
Emperor Yingzong moved on his agate-inlaid antler chair, and frowned.
This Khublai, it seems, is really trying to be firmly seated on the Imperial throne of the Middle Kingdom. Yingzong stared at the plan of Khanbalik, and though of the Liao capital under construction. He reminded himself that he was the legitimate Emperor of the Northern Dynasty, and that he was at the same time the Holy Raja of Tianzhu (Sindh), that the new capital he so painstakingly prepared for his Empire could never be so easily beaten by this horde of Tartars. Otherwise, with this small city, with its 20 Chinese miles in circumference, little larger than a prefecture in China Sthana, how could the whole of Mahakhitan be awed? And how could the hearts of the diplomats of all nations, who have seen the Mongol capital, be won? How then, could Mahakhitan have the audacity to keep on calling itself “maha” to foreigners?
In the next few months, the Ministry of Works exploded with busy works.
A decree, coming straightaway from His Majesty asked the Ministry to immediately cease the works on the Tangshi Prefecture, and that the ministry shall, in coordination with all other ministries and departments, abolish all pre-existing designs, and to design a new, unparalleled Imperial Capital, which must supress the illegitimate Mongol Khanbalik in scale.
Chancellor of the Central Secretariat Xiao Tianyou (蕭天佑), previously mentioned as the Straw-house Chancellor, this time gathered almost every man available to the Ministry of Works. With a team headed by Vice-Minister for Works Shi Cheng (史誠), and Assistant manager for Construction department in the Ministry of works Xiao Guzhi (蕭古只), together with officials from Ministry of Rites, and Tianzhu/Sindh’s Venerable Monks from the Wude Fu’s Imperial temples, all sat in a circle in the Department of State Affairs’ mud-brick courtyards, drawing in the landscape made of broken tiles and chalk. The talks continued for several days, and a plan was presented to the Emperor.
News came from the court: the Emperor was obviously dissatisfied with the plan.
(Kara’s Note: Do you think in any age, whether modern or ancient, it is that easy for us wretched architects to get a pass?)
The Emperor’s would send one decree after another, each contradicting the previous one. Indian monks would keep true to ancient canons, and refuse to compromise. In addition, the abbots’ incessant arguments and squabbles with each of Ministry of Rite departments over rituals and symbolisms, as well as scores of regulations set up by the Military Council on city defence, the penny-pinching Ministry of Treasury who always complain about cash shortage, considerations and changes by the Water Department on the city’s water supply, bizarre demands by different yamens that may just suddenly arrive, and all sorts of information on the Mongol/Yuan Khanbalik collected and summarised by the Board of Four Directions, all forces compounded to give the two gentlemen in charge of the design in the Ministry of Works a non-stop headache. This lasted for nearly three months, until Xiao and Shi finally, for the seventh time, presented their drawn plan of the Central Capital to the Emperor’s audience, Xiao Guzhi’s hairs and beards had already all white, and Shi Cheng developed an unhealable hunchback.
Most of the yamens are satisfied this time, most importantly, their picky emperor also approved this.
Mahakhitan has never seen a project so grand in scale and so comprehensively prepared for. Just as the plans are being argued over in the courtyards, the twenty thousand Punjabi labourers the Imperial House drafted during their slack season had already started levelling an area scores of Chinese miles in circumference. Stone masons, both local and those from Central India, carpenters from Nipoluo (泥婆羅, or Nepal) at the Himalaya’s foot, Immigrant carpenters from Quanzhou who knew “Song Style” architecture, metalsmiths and masons from Hanshan Circuit (Afghanistan), as well as weavers from Liao’s Southern Capital are now gathered around the new capital city. Once the picture pattern by the Ministry of Works arrived from Wude Fu, labourers under military organization immediately start lofting on the ground, and the craftsmen would begin processing the construction materials already prepared for them.
A sketch of the New Central Capital’s base.
Workers, under the direction of Ministry of Rite officials, first laid down a piece of yellow marble ten Chinese feet (3.0 metres) in circumference, with eight directions engraved on it, marking the centre point of this huge city. And the Imperial Throne in the Central Hall happen to be located right above its central point. This will be the centre of All Under Heaven in Jambudvīpa, the place for the Lord of the World. Underneath this Heaven Centre Stone, Five Coloured Soil brought back from Khitan homelands by the Liao embassy was placed.
With the Heaven Centre Stone as the point zero, the ethnic Persian Observatory Chief (靈臺郎) of the Directorate of Astronomy (司天監) personally marked the directions, under his supervision, the craftsmen drew out extension lines eight Chinese miles in length toward the four cardinal directions. Based on this, the craftsmen, using lime and iron poles, created huge squares sixteen Chinese miles (8480 meters) in circumference, and this served as the baseline of an outer city wall sixty-four Chinese miles long.
Following this, nine three-hundred-foot wide avenues are built to run through all districts, and this was in accordance with the Rites of Zhou’s required “nine north-south and nine east-west roads”. Thus, each district is divided into four quarters, and the Mandala into thirty-six equal parts, each the size of a future quarter.
The intersection of the avenues and the city wall are the positions of the twelves gates. The gate at the centre of each side would be extraordinarily grandiose, with a brick Buddha Pavilion built by Imperial decree serving as the gatehouse, four Buddhas in total, which is in compliance with Five Great Buddhas designated for the Mandala. (Quiz: who is the fifth Buddha? Hint: the answer is quite obvious.)
The palace complex occupies the central district, and it’s been further divided. The offices are placed on the two sides of the imperial avenue south of the palace complex, residences of the imperial clan and the imperial vassals in the Capital are in the two quarter east of the palace complex, the garrison headquarters in the two quarters in the west. The two quarters in the north are used for the Imperial Garden.
Outside of the palace and the offices, the city can be further divided into twenty-eight quarters. In reference to its sparse population, and in an attempt to encourage commerce, those quarters aren’t surrounded with tall walls, though the word “fang”(坊) or “walled quarter” is still used for the city blocks (translator’s note: as per Sui and Tang traditions, like they were in Chang’an, in Liao Southern Capital, or TTL in Balasagun.). Each quarter was named after their corresponding position to the twenty-seven/twenty-eight Indian constellations. (When the Ministry of Rites found out that the ancient Chinese translations for the Sanskrit Nakshatras and the Chinese Star Mansions could not exactly correspond to each other, the Emperor sanctioned that “select and use the fine ones”.
A full map for the Tangshi Prefecture, Central Capital of Mahakhitan. Sixth year of Liao’s Baoying Reign, 1298
Each quarter is two Chinese miles and hundred-and-twenty paces in circumference (1270 meters), a crossroad of two streets in each quarter, there are the east-west roads subjected to the streets, from the North First Road to the North Sixth Road, and from the South First Road to South Sixth Road. Subjected to the roads, there are the north-south alleys dividing the buildings.
Using Jyeshtha Quarter (or 尊長坊) in the west city as an example, a diagram of quarters in Central Capital.
Two grand markets has been designed along the avenues in between the four quarters in the Southwest and the four quarters in the southeast corner of the city, thus completing the city’s layout. The main official buildings in the city are all covered with glazed tiles in azure or blue. The massive demand for cobalt in baking millions of glazed tiles, has exhausted the supply of Sumali Qing (蘇麻離青) or smaltum from the state of Yilake (亦剌克國, or Iraq) in the western seas, cutting its supply to East Asia.
The entire outer wall of the Central Capital, was made with rammed earth wrapped in a stone outer layer. The city wall is thirty Chinese-feet tall, and twenty feet wide on top. From the cross section, the city wall forms a slight curve to the outside, which is a feature of local city wall building in Punjab and Gandhara.
By the time of the 6th Year of Kangle Reign, Emperor Weizong, the entire southern half of the Central Capital, including five gates, the Imperial avenues, offices and the most important Outer Palace of the Imperial Palace has been completed. It’s the winter solstice, the Emperor held his General Conference in the Zhaode Hall (昭德殿), flowed by a night banquet in Yuanqing Hall (元慶殿).
As a coincidence, the Dadu or Khanbalik of the Yuan Empire completed its main part in the same year. Based on a copied plan the Liao acquire later on, the Central Capital triumphs over her Mongol sister in both scale and orderliness. But that’s a fight risen out of personal feeling of Emperor Yingzong, a light belonging to him alone, and would quickly be forgotten by his subjects.
Yuan Dadu and Liao Zhongdu, both capitals of Great Empires, located on the foot of Mount Yanshan and Mount Margalla respectively, started their lives in the winter of the same year, and each face their own praises, glory, smoke and blood for the next seven hundred years.
Although the city was designed according to the purest cosmic order, when people started to move in, this glazed mandala started to be invigorated with a scent of everyday life. The city gradually departed from its ideal states, and transformed into a being full of life and dynamism.
In the next chapter, after finishing our narrative on the House of Yelü palaces on the clouds, I, Kara, might as well talk about colours painted by the mortals onto the of perfection.
Palaces of the Central Capital, each square is about 170 meters in span. You can imagine the magnitude of each palace
The texts about the palaces are done, but as Halls such as the Zhaode requires quite a lot of work to draw, to spread out the works (because of my back pain), they will be left to the next chapter. This chapter will only have the floor plans for your imagination.
Gratitude, cheese.
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The Chinese way of building capital cities in a square/rectangle always looked neat and impressive,but in terms of defense,a complete catastrophe.You have to defend all four sides of the city basically.They never bothered to take advantage of natural geography like rivers to eliminate a side they have to defend,with the exception of coastal cities like Hangzhou.
As I understand, both Yelu and Xiao are more like name of a tribe before they took over, they don't work like surnames. Having the same surname Yelu don't really hint about a bloodline relation.
Is there much a difference before the gun power age?
Mahakhitan’s Record of the Western Regions~ Three:
Antler chair, made of a male deer antler, loved by 15th century Mongol Jasagh Princes, the one below came from Palace Museum.
The point: Don’t sit or lean on the wrong places.
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Yuan Upper Capital, or Xanadu, is in today’s Xulun Hoh Banner, Xilingol League, Inner Mongolia. During OTL Liao Dynasty it was the Empire’s central region. No wonder the Liao monarch was displeased.
It’s a small city, now very well preserved, with massive amount of bricks and tiles unearthed. It was magnificent at that time.
An recreation of the Da’an Pavillion, may not be reliable.
Sense of desolation in a sea of grass, worth experiencing
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Yuan’s Dadu, also famously known as Khanbalik. It’s had city walls 7400m by 6650m (EW by NS). The Liao emperor managed to beat it in all perimeters, but alas, Dadu was real. Boom~
To be more serious, Yuan Dadu’s design broke off the Song Dynasty’s urban design, and restarted from Rites of Zhou and Book of Change, a masterpiece in Chinese Urban Design history.
Yuan’s visual arts are outstanding as a whole (I like it better over the succeeding Ming and Qing)
The Ming abandoned the northern Dadu, and moved southern Dadu southward, and then reinforced the southern outer city, to form today’s Beijing City. It’s further and further away from its initial perfect structure.
You can visit Yuan Dadu heritage park for memorial.
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Jaipur (17th century) was an Indian take on the Mandala City. Because of terrain, the designer was forced to move a large block to the southeast, breaking its Mandala shape.
But it’s its imperfection that motivated my design of Zhongdu this time. I picked up on Jaipur’s plan, and fused it with demands of Chinese rituals, that’s my Zhongdu.
This city of pinks, well preserved after centuries, is quite worthy of your visit.
Smulten, or Sumali Qing is a cobalt-containing colour origins in Samarra, Iraq. Commonly used on Yuan and Ming blue and white porcelains.
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The final:
Our great Zhongdu itself.
ITTL, the city of Zhongdu’s location is occupied by
Pakistan’s Taxila Heavy Mechanical Complex
Does it sound familiar?
It’s where the Khaled Main Battle Tanks are produced, with tech aids from the PRC.
It’s about the Zhongdu’s Pushya and Ashlesha quarters.
And the west city’s Mula and Jyeshtha quarters, are ITTL Pakistan’s most important ammo factories.
All good, nothing out of the picture.
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All done, I gonna sleep.
Wait for me to bring you on a tour of the Imperial palaces and the markets. See ya~
His headstone expressly wrote that he was a descendant of Yelu Abaoji--his ninth generation descendant through his eldest son to be precise.
The answer is yes.The reason why Constantinople is such a tough nut to crack is that you can only attack it from one side if you have no navy.In the west,cities were generally built along rivers in order to both take advantage of river trade and so that the city can only be attacked from three sides.
Ancient Chinese cities like Chang'an however,were not built directly along rivers despite being just next to one.
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Been reading the names of places again.棠石府 and 珠川府 seemed like pretty dull names for the primary and secondary capitals of the empire.Chinese dynasties have a habit of giving really fancy and auspicious names to a place once it becomes their capital.
Tangshi came from Gantang, Shaonan, Classics of Poetry. (诗经•召南•甘棠）, and was a metaphor for the good virtues of a monarch.
Quite auspicious isn’t it?
Did Yelu Dashi change his name to something else?If not,Tangshi will probably violate naming taboo.
Khitans are nomads, they don’t need to adhere to naming taboo.
Plus, they don’t need to stick to 大石. It’s from khitans language anyway