Tang China in Multi-Polar Asia (The World of East Asia) by Wang Zhenping

Author:Wang, Zhenping [Wang, Zhenping]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
Published: 2013-10-30T16:00:00+00:00

The Treaty of 821

A Tibetan envoy proposed an alliance in 821. Emperor Muzong immediately granted his permission. To solemnize the alliance, three enthusiastic Tang ministers suggested a ceremony at the imperial ancestral temple to inform the Tang founding fathers of the event, but the emperor turned them down. He wanted to deflate the pompous Tibetan envoy and ordered the ceremony to be held at a Buddhist temple in the western suburbs of the capital. On the tenth day of the tenth month, 821, seventeen ranking Tang officials took an oath with the Tibetan envoy and signed a treaty prepared by Tibetan ministers. 272 This treaty had three major clauses. 273 First, both parties should guard the border areas that they currently controlled. Second, there should be no expedition or animosity against one another and no encroachment on the other party’s territory. 274 And third, in the case that suspicious events occurred and people from the other side were arrested for interrogation, they should be repatriated with clothes and food provided for them. 275

The treaty of 821 was, in essence, an agreement on mutual nonaggression. As a preliminary step toward peace, this treaty had not solved all the issues concerning the disputed territories. A ceremony in Tibet was also needed for the Tibetan ruler and his major subjects officially to ratify the treaty. Liu Yuanding, Chief Minister of Judicial Review, soon left for Tibet for further negotiations that lasted well into the next year. 276 A Tibetan mission of fifteen members also came to Chang’an with a “request for demarcation” in the second month of 822. 277 The two countries eventually agreed on a final version of the treaty in the fifth month with a ceremony to be held in the same month at the Tibetan capital, Lhasa. 278

The treaty of 821 recognized Tibet’s occupation of the Longyou, Hexi, Anxi, and Beiting regions. It thus addressed Tibet’s territorial claims and laid the foundation for lasting peace between the two countries. The rulers of Tang and Tibet declared that they now “regarded their countries as one entity [sheji ruyi ].” 279 To ensure that militant Tibetan frontier commanders would not violate the treaty, a Tibetan marshal traveled with Liu Yuanding to Daxiachuan (present-day Kangle, Gansu province), where they gathered more than one hundred Tibetan generals and announced the treaty’s establishment to them. 280 Back in Chang’an, the Tang court received a Tibetan envoy in the ninth month of 822 to celebrate conclusion of the treaty. 281 A Tang vice-minister of the Court of the Imperial Stud also attended a similar event in the Tibetan capital in the tenth month. 282 Bilateral relations entered into a period of frequent exchanges of envoys that lasted until Chizu Dezan’s mysterious death in 836. 283 During these fifteen years of peace with China, Tibet focused on defeating the Uighurs. It waged war on them in 823, merely one year after signing the treaty with the Tang. The war lasted for a decade until 832 and exhausted Tibet.

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