Power And Shaping: Historical Writing Of The Image Of Eunuchs In The Middle And Late Tang Dynast

The records of Tang eunuchs we see today mainly come from the official history of the Five Dynasties and the Song Dynasty,which generally defamed the eunuchs(宦官).However,every narration has a certain purpose,especially the historical records reflecting the national will and social cognition.The eunuch image of the Tang Dynasty constructed in the official history has actually been carefully tailored and designed.The eunuchs’ dictatorship had a direct connection with the downfall of the Tang Dynasty in the eyes of historians.Therefore,historians of the Five Dynasties and the Northern Song Dynasty tended to have a tendency in their historical writing on eunuchs.They listed the eunuchs since the middle and late Tang Dynasty and judged their acts of dictatorship and disorder,so as to achieve the purpose of warning the monarchs.In recent years,the newly discovered images and the epitaphs with personal resumes as the core of eunuchs in the Tang Dynasty provide us with a new research perspective.By analyzing these murals and epitaphs,we can find that there is a deviation between them and the official records.The eunuch image in the conception of people in the Tang Dynasty was changing with the change of the power of the eunuch faction.In general,when the power of the eunuch faction was relatively small,the eunuchs would be defined by social cognition as obscene and dirty and their diligence and loyalty would be demonstrated in their epitaphs.After the An-Shi Rebellion(安史之乱),the emperor continuously promoted the eunuchs,intending to reconstruct a new power operation mechanism to re-establish the authority represented by the emperor’s system to the central officials and local forces.In this case,the power of the eunuch faction had been expanding.Therefore,the eunuch mural style of short and ugly images in the early Tang Dynasty had been changed and their epitaphs were no longer limited to telling the quality of loyalty but began to record achievements to show their talent.In short,the expanding power of eunuchs had gotten the social cognition on them and their self-cognition more close to common people.This paper takes the image of eunuchs in official history,images and epitaphs as the research object,and explores the deviation of the image of eunuchs between official revision history and reality.Under the traditional political order,the emperor and the civil service group had the majority of power;while under the special historical background of the Middle and Late Tang Dynasty,things got a little bit different.On the one hand,the emperor and the eunuchs were in the same interest group,and the emperor could not lose the support of the eunuchs.At some times the eunuchs would even get out of the control of the emperor.So the emperor would choose to further maintain the alliance with the eunuch group by bestowal official position(赠官).On the other hand,due to the rationality of the eunuch system and the reality in which the eunuch faction was in power,the civil officials,even as the controllers of public opinion and the historiographers,would cooperate with eunuchs for the purpose of self-protection and promotion,although they did not have friendly attitudes and views on the eunuchs.The epitaph writing was one of their cooperation.Throughout the evolution of eunuch image,power distribution had played a key role.