Taiyang language | Incorporating linguistic influences (mostly loanwords) from the other Proto-Taiyangic peoples of the Beizhongyuan, the tongue of the Zhonghe eventually evolved into what we now recognize as the Taiyang language. The name 'Taiyang' itself means 'Great Light', which was also their word for the Sun and a sign of what the Taiyang thought of themselves in a region dominated by those they considered barbaric and beneath their growing civilization.
Modern speech | Taiyang | Man, men | Rān, Danrān | Woman, women | Sei, Fùsei | Light | Yáng | Virtue | Baidé | Millet | Xibi | |
Taiyang society | Taiyangic society was extremely hierarchical, centralized and rigid, more comparable to the westerly 'Awali and Azem than to the neighboring Tùy Fùng. At its apex sat the Huangdi or Emperor, in theory the absolute ruler of the land. Like other Bronze and Iron Age monarchs, he was supposed to be a supreme military, political and religious leader, commanding over armies in the field and religious processions dedicated to the spirits of the Sun, the stars and the Taiyang people's ancestors at home: even underage Emperors were expected to at least be present in the rear of their forces, for to not appear on the battlefield at all was to look like a coward and demoralize the men. In this age before a written law, the Emperor's word was law instead, and his judgments in all legal question from the intrigues of nobles to 'which farmer does this chicken belong to' were absolute and unquestionable (except, of course, by the sword). The Sun Throne of Taiyang Huangdi was passed through the system of 'jìchéng rènmìng', or 'inherited appointment': an Emperor could designate any of his legitimate children as his successor, though the children of his wife had to be considered ahead of those of his concubines.
What Taiyang Huangdi himself would have probably looked like, c. 10,220 AA | |
Tradition dictated that the Emperor live in the Fāguāng Digōng or 'Luminous Palace', a luxurious palace complex built in Shendu's heart on the shore of the great lake Dahu. No man save the Emperor and his sons, brothers and nephews (even uncles and cousins were sent away) was allowed to live within its walls. Naturally, this meant the Palace was mostly inhabited by female concubines and servants...and eunuchs.
The Luminous Palace in Taiyang Huangdi's day, c. 10,220 AA | |
For that reason, in the early days of the Taiyang, a cabal of eunuchs formed the Emperors' closest and most immediate supporting bloc. Once these men would've been boys, a mix of slaves and children whose noble families had volunteered them who were then castrated at the earliest age possible (for it was believed that without their reproductive 'goods' and thus the ability to father children, they would not be tempted to depose the Dabei dynasty) and educated in letters, mathematics, astrology and politics by the older eunuchs already in the imperial service.
Early Imperial eunuch and low-ranked concubine, c. 10,250 AA | |
These eunuchs attended to the imperial family's every whim, but the role they're best known for is dispensing advice to the Emperor whenever it was requested of them, as well as controlling access to the Emperor. Indeed, the chief of the eunuch corps was titled 'Guòjiā' or 'High Steward', and was effectively the Dabei dynasty's chamberlain: nobody could see the Emperor without a personal invitation from the latter without first going through him. The tallest and strongest eunuchs, usually boys and young men who'd been castrated in puberty and thus had some time to undergo hormone-driven changes to their body, were trained in arms rather than the civil service and formed the 'Hēibiǎo' or 'Black Watch', the elite guard of the Luminous Palace whose eponymous blackened armor made them stand out against the white and golden walls of the building.
Beyond the Luminous Palace, power broadly resided in the hands of the noble clans, or shūfān ('feudatories'). These were families descended from either cadet branches of the Dabei dynasty, or pre-Dabei-conquest local leaders who wisely submitted to imperial authority. While they were affirmed in their status as the dominant landowners of their region, being graciously granted the right to lord over their ancestral lands and the peasants within by their new master in exchange for swearing oaths of fealty, their primary roles boiled down to: one, organizing and leading local military forces at the Emperor's command; and two, levying a tax on their subjects, the proceeds of which were then to be sent to Shendu for redistribution to the capital's residents and then to the shūfān in general, the latter then being responsible for redistributing whatever he didn't keep for himself back to his people. The most favored of their subjects would serve as the tax-collectors and policemen of their estates, the so-called gùnrān or 'club-men', whose moniker obviously came from the copper-studded cudgels they'd beat lazy or disliked peasants with.
A nobleman and his wife from the Six Feudatories Period, c. 10,425 AA | |
This palace economy was more advanced and rigorous than its distant Allawauric contemporary to the far west, for imperial overseers were dispatched to every feudatory's court to ensure that not only was each lord paying his fair share to the central government, but that the villages and farmsteads under his control were appropriately specialized. As an example of how this worked, a town built at the mouth of a copper mine would naturally be tasked with extracting that copper and working it into tools, weapons and armor, while one lying next to a river would be charged with growing wheat; then, once their proceeds have been returned to the local shūfā, he would be expected to give wheat to the mining town and new tools to the farming village, and so on.
Following the gradual recession of imperial authority and the fragmentation of the Dabei Dynasty's holdings into several independent kingdoms, this economic and political system continued to be practiced by the ascendant Six Feudatories (just with their respective Kings taking the Emperor's place as the ultimate re-distributor of resources) save Yang, which further delegated the process of resource redistribution to its shūfān in return for them paying enough taxes to support a standing army - the first real one of an appreciable size in Taiyangic lands - with which the Kings of Yang could defend their lands from the incursions of Fùng barbarians to their south.
Beneath the nobility were, well, everyone else: the peasants, craftsmen and traders of Taiyang society. While it is obvious that there were people from all walks of life in every village - there was no single Taiyang town where everyone was a farmer and nobody was a smith, for example, because that'd mean the villagers would have to go to the next village over to get any broken tools fixed - it is equally obvious that nearly everyone in every village would've had to work in the field that the empire's overseers dictated they should specialize in. This meant that in a place designated as a farming village, for example, all but one to three families would've had to grow wheat and millet in the fields & tend to herds of cattle and pigs; one family might've been designated as the hereditary village blacksmiths, another would be the herbalists, and a third would be the fishermen. All were unable to leave their home village unless granted permission to do so by their ruling local noble. Merchants were a unique exception to that rule, as their job required them to constantly travel between villages, bartering the goods from one settlement for goods from another and getting to keep a slice for themselves.
A humble Taiyang village, c. 10,500 AA | |
In this time period, none of these 'Three Lowly Professions', as smithing, farming and trading were known, were considered above one another. They were all equally lowly, and sat near the very bottom of society with only the slaves below them. Slaves were considered the personal property of their owners and could be killed, sold or bought at a whim with no legal repercussions for the owner at all. Most would've been owned by the shūfān, who were in the habit of renting them out to their subjects; a farming family could borrow a slave or five from their overlord to help work their fields in exchange for handing over one of their fattest cows for slaughter or agreeing to a higher quota of crops to turn over at the end of harvesting season, for example.
Finally, there are those previously-mentioned imperial overseers to consider. Termed kanchá ('inspector', pl. kanchuán), each of these men was a sorcerer, and beyond being tasked with enforcing the Emperor's will, they were also trained to be as literate as the eunuchs and so doubled as the realm's philosophers and scholars. Their counsel was sought out by the Emperors on matters of great importance, though beyond that, their existence was universally a highly solitary and heavily guarded one. They will be further discussed in their own section below. |
Early Dabei period warfare | At the core of the Dabei dynasty's armies sat the 'Hēibiǎo' or 'Black Watch', the elite palace guard composed of eunuchs castrated during or near puberty to ensure that (thanks to having undergone at least some hormonal changes) they'd be taller and stronger than their bureaucrat peers. Their name came from their armor, bronze helmets and vests of bronze plates stitched onto a leather or rawhide backing weather-proofed with black lacquer, and carried three weapons; a bronze-headed spear or glaive, a bronze sword, and a hickory flatbow with bronze arrows, all of which they had been trained to extreme proficiency in wielding.
The Black Watchmen were the only true standing professional unit in the early Taiyang army, initially numbering only 200 who were further divided into the 'Xīnglong' ('Scarlet Dragon') and 'Tiānlong' ('Azure Dragon') regiments, so named after the color of the feathers in their helmets: each regiment consisted of ten three-man (including one unarmed driver), two-wheeled chariots and seventy footsoldiers. While both regiments guarded the Luminous Palace in peacetime, the Scarlet Dragons traditionally enjoyed the honor of accompanying the Emperor to the battlefield during wartime while the Azure Dragons were left behind to protect the women and children of the Dabei dynasty.
WIP |
|