Northern Song Dynasty And Xixia Border Areas Of Economic And Cultural Exchange

The Northern Song Dynasty and the Western Xia Dynasty existed at the same time from the middle period of the10th century to the beginning of the12th century. The two countries had much economical and cultural communication because of the influences of the physiographic condition, the development type (cultivation or animal husbandry), the policies of the two sides etc., which developed the economy, culture and national reunification. There have been only a few academic results so far that systematically study the communication of economy and culture from the aspect of border. This paper intends to show the facts, characters and history influences of the economical and cultural communication between the border of the Northern Song Dynasty and the Western Xia from960to1126and expects it will be kind of a promotion to the study of the history of the Northern Song and the Western Xia. First of all, it sketched the changes of the border between Northern Song and Western Xia that provides a scope to the study. The border of the two countries was always in a state of change with the change of the relationship between them, but it could be basically described as that, the upper line was the region of Mountain Heng, Hanhai and the Yellow River, while the lower line was the region of Yanchuan and Zhenrongjun. The border consists of the present northern Shaanxi, southern Inner Mongolia, central and eastern Gansu, southern Ningxia and eastern Qinghai in the aspect of the scope of the boundary change. It is worth noting that these regions above are mainly loess plateau, where lots of rivers are distributed and it is not only suitable to agriculture and animal husbandry, but also is the typical area where various nations exist and whose traffic is convenient. Such a physiographic condition is suitable to the economical and cultural communication between Song and Xia.Secondly, based on the research into the boundary of the two countries, the paper revealed the economical and cultural communication in the border. In the aspect of the economical communication, according to the analysis of market, quantity and quality of the goods in these trades like the Quechang, the Gongshi, the Heshi, the smuggling and Bzuhai baozhai,the study found that many agricultural, husbandry and manual products spread into the border of Song and Xia, and lots of advanced tools of production and technologies of cultivation were brought into this area as well. Furthermore, the paper thought that an economical mode including both agriculture and nomadism formed and even the prosperity of the trade in the border made those markets gradually become some cities where commercial was the main economy. In the aspect of cultural communication, the study took the circulation of books and the communication of the Buddhism as examples. About the former, many books like Mencius, Taisho Tripitaka, Book of Filial Piety, Si-yan Za-zi, the History of the Tang Dynasty, Ts’e-fu Yuan-kui and so on delivered into the Western Xia in the different ways and the cultural communication between Fan and Han was prosperous according to books in the border, although the Song government forbade those books on military and politics to spread out. About the latter, the Western Xia government begged the Northern Song for Buddhist scriptures for seven times and then translated them into Tangut language, and also printed Buddhist scriptures extensively, held Buddhist activities and built Buddhist temples. It is worth noting that the Buddhist activities between the two governments included the political and military purposes. Buddhist temples were the important places for folk communication to the Fan and Han people.Finally, based on the analysis above, the paper thinks there were such characters as "geography and traffic","time and space" and "exchange" etc. in the communication in the border of the Northern Song and the Western Xia. The extensive communication between the two countries hastened the developing the land, promoted the national reunification, and our present government can also use it as a reference when we make policies of nations.