SUNG DYNASTY

Pinyin Song (9601279), Chinese dynasty that ruled the country (only in the south after 1127) during one of its most brilliant cultural epochs. The Sung dynasty was founded when Chao K'uang-yin, the military inspector general of the Chou dynasty, last of the Five Dynasties, usurped control of the empire in a coup. Thereafter, he used his mastery of diplomatic maneuvering to persuade powerful potential rivals to exchange their power for honours and sinecures, and he proceeded to become an admirable emperor. He set the nation on a course of sound administration by instituting a competent and pragmatic civil service; he followed Confucian principles, lived modestly, and took the country's finest military units under his personal command. Before his death he had begun an expansion into the southern Ten Kingdoms. Chao's successors maintained an uneasy peace with the menacing Liao kingdom of the Khitan to the north. Over time, the quality of the bureaucracy deteriorated, and when the Juchen (Mongolian tribes from the North who overthrew the Liao) burst into the northern Sung state, it was easy prey. The Juchen took over the North and established a dynasty with a Chinese name, the Chin. But they were unable to take those regions of the Sung territory south of the Yangtze River. In the South, the climate and the beautiful surroundings were the setting for the Southern Sung dynasty established (1127) by Kao-tsung. He chose a capital he called Lin-an (present Hang-chou) and set about maintaining defenses against the hostile North and restoring imperial authority in the hinterland. Kao-tsung was a conscious admirer and emulator of the highly successful approach of the Han dynasty to the management of civil service, and the empire's bureaucrats long functioned well. In due course, however, the dynasty began to decline. But the eventual fall of the Sung dynasty was neither sudden nor a collapse upon itself such as had ended several of its predecessors. The Mongols, under Genghis Khan, began their move on China with an assault on the Chin state in the North in 1211. After their eventual success in the North and several decades of uneasy coexistence with the Sung, the Mongolsunder Genghis Khan's grandsonsadvanced on the Sung forces in 1250. The Sung forces fought on until 1276, when their capital fell. The dynasty finally ended in 1279 with the destruction of the Sung fleet near Canton. During the Sung dynasty, commerce developed to an unprecedented extent; trade guilds were organized, paper currency came into increasing use, and several cities with populations of more than 1,000,000 flourished along the principal waterways and the southeast coast. Widespread printing of the Confucian Classics and the use of movable type, beginning in the 11th century, brought literature and learning to the people. Flourishing private academies and state schools graduated increasing numbers of competitors for the civil service examinations. The administration developed a comprehensive welfare policy that made this one of the most humane periods in Chinese history. In the works of the 12th-century philosophers Chu Hsi and Lu Chiu-yan, Neo-Confucianism was systematized into a coherent doctrine. The Sung dynasty is particularly noted for the great artistic achievements that it encouraged and, in part, subsidized. The Northern Sung dynasty at Pien-ching had begun a renewal of Buddhism and of literature and the arts. The greatest poets and painters in the empire were in attendance at court. The last of the Northern Sung emperors was himself perhaps the most noteworthy art collector in the country. His capital at Pien-ching was a city of beauty, abounding in palaces, temples, and tall pagodas when, in 1126, the Juchen burned it. The architecture of the Sung era was noted for its tall structures; the highest pagoda at Pien-ching was 360 feet (110 m). Sung architects curved the eave line of roofs upward at the corners. Pagodas, six- or eight-sided and built of brick or wood, still survive from the period. The sculpture of the Sung period continued to emphasize representations of the Buddha, and in that genre there were no substantive improvements over the work of Sung sculptors in succeeding dynasties. Landscape painting was one of the outstanding arts of the Northern Sung, and its most noted figures were Fan K'uan and Li Ch'eng. In the Southern Sung many great painters served at the Hanlin Academy, becoming noted for brush effects, miniatures, and, under Zen influence, paintings of Buddhist deities, animals, and birds. In the decorative arts the Sung dynasty marked a high point in Chinese pottery. Sung wares are noted for their simplicity of shape and the purity of colour and tone of their glazes. From the Northern dynasty came Ting, Ju, Chun, Tz'u-chou, northern celadon, and brown and black glazed wares; from the Southern came Ching-te-chen whiteware, Chi-chou wares, celadons, and the black pottery of Fukien. Kuan produced near the Southern capital was the finest of an enormous number of celadons of the dynasty. The tendency of Sung jade carvers to adopt old lines and techniques makes difficult the accurate dating of jades that may be from the Sung, and it has been similarly difficult to place Sung lacquerware. In music the Northern Sung adopted a two-stringed fiddle from the Mongols, and the court revived musical events and entertainments. Music attracted considerable attention in the dynasty's enormous works of literature: the official history of the dynasty devoted 17 of its 496 chapters to musical events, and an encyclopaedia of 1267 has 10 of 200 chapters on the subject of music. Music drama flourished throughout the Sung, and distinctly different styles evolved in the North and the South. The literature of the Sung dynasty emphasized a return to old-time simplicity of expression in prose, and short tales called ku-wen were written in great volume. A school of oral storytelling in the vernacular arose, and conventional poetry enjoyed wide cultivation. Sung poets achieved their greatest distinction, however, in the new genre of the tz'u, sung poems of joy and despair. These poems became the literary hallmark of the dynasty. For the diversity and richness of its cultural achievements, the Sung dynasty is remembered as one of China's greatest.