Hanpu

Hanpu (函普), later Wanyan Hanpu, was a Jurchen leader of the early tenth century. According to the ancestral story of the Wanyan clan, Hanpu came from Goryeo when he was sixty-years old, reformed Jurchen customary law, and then married a sixty-year-old local woman who bore him three children. His descendants eventually united Jurchen tribes into a federation and established the Jin Dynasty in 1115. In 1136 or 1137, Hanpu was retrospectively given the temple name Jin Shizu (金始祖), or "first ancestor of Jin." Historians usually call the story of Hanpu's founding of the Wanyan clan a "legend," but agree that it indicates the existence of contacts between some Jurchen clans and the states of Goryeo and Balhae in the tenth century.

Ancestor of the Wanyan clan

Because Hanpu was supposedly the sixth-generation ancestor of Wanyan Wugunai (1021-1074), historians postulate that Hanpu lived in the early tenth century, when the Jurchens still consisted of independent tribes. Because the Jurchens had no written records at the time, the story of Hanpu was first transmitted orally. According to the History of Jin (Jinshi 金史; compiled in the 1340s), Hanpu arrived from Goryeo at the age of sixty and settled among the Wanyan clan. To resolve an endless cycle of vendettas between two families, he managed to make both parties accept a new rule: from then on, the family of a killer would compensate the victim's family with a gift of horses, cattle, and money. Historian Herbert Franke has compared this law to the old Germanic practice of Wergeld. In recompense for putting an end to the feud, Hanpu was married to a sixty-year-old woman who then bore him one daughter and two sons. Hanpu and his descendants were then formally received into the Wanyan clan. The same story recounts that when Hanpu left Goryeo, his two brothers remained behind, one in Goryeo and one in the Balhae area.

Herbert Franke explains that this Jurchen "ancestral legend" probably indicates that the Wanyan clan absorbed immigrants from Goryeo and Balhae sometime in the tenth century. Frederick W. Mote, who called this account of the founding of the Wanyan clan a "tribal legend," claimed that Hanpu's two brothers (one who stayed in Goryeo and one in Bohai) might have represented "the tribe's memory of their ancestral links to these two peoples."

Legacy

The Wanyan clan rose to prominence among the Jurchens after 1000 CE. It was Hanpu's sixth-generation descendant Wanyan Wugunai (1021-1074) who started to consolidate the dispersed Jurchen tribes into a federation. Wugunai's grand-son Aguda (1068-1123) defeated the Liao Dynasty and founded the Jin dynasty in 1115. In 1136 or 1137, soon after Emperor Xizong of Jin had been crowned, Hanpu was given the posthumous name "Jingyuan Emperor" (景元皇帝) and the temple name "Shizu" (始祖), or "first ancestor." In 1144 or 1145, Hanpu's burial site was named "Guangling" (光陵).

Family members

Wife and children

• Empress Mingyi 明懿
  • Wanyan Wulu 烏魯 (eldest son and successor)
  • Wanyan Wolu 斡魯 (son)
  • Wanyan Zhusiban 注思板 (daughter)

Siblings

• Agunai 阿古廼 (elder brother)
• Baohuoli 保活里 (younger brother)

Bibliography

• Franke, Herbert (1981), "Jurchen Customary Law and the Chinese Law of the Chin Dynasty", in Dieter Eikemeier and Herbert Franke (eds.), State and Law in East Asia: Festschrift Karl Bünger, Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, pp. 215–233, ISBN 3-447-02164-0 .
• Franke, Herbert (1990), "The forest peoples of Manchuria: Kitans and Jurchens", in Denis Sinor (ed.), Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 400–423, ISBN 0 521 24304 1 .
• Franke, Herbert (1994), "The Chin Dynasty", in Herbert Franke and Denis Twitchett (eds.), Cambridge History of China, Volume 6, Alien regimes and border states, 907-1368, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 215–320, ISBN 978-0-521-24331-5 .
• Mote, Frederick W. (1999), Imperial China (900-1800), Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, ISBN 0-674-44515-5 .