Following the disintegration of the briefly unified Western Jin dynasty in the early fourth century, the subsequent Sixteen Kingdoms era in north China became one of the most complicated periods in all of Chinese history. One hundred and thirty-six years elapsed between the establishment of the first “Sixteen Kingdoms” regime in 304 and the next reunification of the North in 439 by the Northern Wei dynasty (386–534). During that period, there were actually as many as twenty-two significant states in northern China (rather than literally sixteen), ranging from true empires (that is, relatively large multiethnic military-conquest polities ruled by monarchs bearing the Chinese title huangdi or “emperor”) to territories administered independently by so-called “governors” who maintained a pretense of loyalty to the still theoretically legitimate Jin dynasty.

Qingtan and xuanxue are two terms unique to the intellectual history of the Six Dynasties period. The former is usually translated as “pure talk,” “pure conversation,” or “pure discourse” while the latter, previously translated as neo-Taoism, is now rendered as “Dark Learning.” Many intellectual historians consider them synonymous terms that characterize the dominant trend of philosophical thinking of the era. This, however, is problematic because, as far as extant sources show, the first appearances of the two terms were separated by nearly 250 years, and their fluid meanings evolved over time. Essentializing qingtan and xuanxue is not useful in helping us understand the intellectual landscape of early medieval China.

Almost everything we know about agriculture during the Six Dynasties comes from one landmark work, the Qimin yaoshu (Essential Techniques [or Arts] for the Common People), completed sometime between 533 and 544. The author, Jia Sixie, was an estate owner and practicing farmer who had served the Northern Wei government as a middle-level official.

It may seem an exaggeration to claim that an agricultural treatise should be classed among the written masterpieces of the Six Dynasties. The author of the Qimin yaoshu does not dazzle his readers with poetic ingenuity, nor does he expound subtle aesthetic or philosophical theories, nor offer esoteric instruction in the arts of transcendence.

During the Eastern Han (25–220), Confucianism had become the guiding philosophy of both governance and social life. But as political infighting, peasant rebellions, and warlordism tore apart the Han Empire, many intellectuals lost confidence in Confucianism and looked to other systems of meaning for guidance and solace. To make sense of their chaotic, dangerous, and evanescent world, some turned to xuanxue (Dark Learning), or to Buddhism, or to organized Daoism. Based on these changes, Western scholars have concluded that, at the end of the Eastern Han, Confucianism was passé and its influence was in steep decline. If the fall of the Han state truly discredited Confucianism and educated men looked for meaning elsewhere, how, then, did Confucianism survive? Why did early medieval literati continue to view Confucianism as valuable? Admittedly, Confucianism was not important in the philosophical salons; it offered little in terms of the current understanding of ontology or metaphysics, nor did it help secure one’s postmortem welfare.

Historical works traditionally argue that the Western Jin dynasty was founded in 265 (or, making calendrical allowances, in 266) by Emperor Wu (Sima Yan), and ended in 316 when Liu Yao seized the capital at Chang’an and Emperor Min was dethroned. Reality is a great deal more complicated. The foundation of the Jin dynasty was much more the result of a long process that had begun by 249, when Emperor Wu’s grandfather, Sima Yi (179–251), brutally seized power in the Wei court. The prehistory of the Jin, or the period between 249 and 265, is particularly notable politically, because it explains certain decisions taken by Emperor Wu, such as the distribution of principalities to members of his own clan.

The Eastern Wei–Northern Qi was the dominant state in its time, rich in resources, its capital larger than any of its rivals, its cities the centers of thriving commercial activity, and its powerful army composed largely of veteran Xianbei tribesmen who had united the North and who still posed a serious threat to its neighbors. Its conquest by the Northern Zhou armies in 577 has attracted much scholarly attention in an attempt to explain the reasons for its sudden collapse. Such studies have provided detailed analyses of the political and social elements that made up the state, and the internal tensions and conflicts that help explain its ignominious fall. The story of the Northern Qi state makes it one of the more interesting of the Six Dynasties period.

Among the many social, political, and ideological changes that took place during the period covered by this volume, none matches in impact or endurance those brought about in the realm of religion. We need recall here only a few of the changes: with increasing acceptance of Buddhism from roughly the third through the seventh centuries, Chinese gained new notions of the self, of time and cosmos, and of postmortem existence, and new possibilities for voluntary social organization. With the birth and growth of the Daoist religion, which began as an attempt to establish a kingdom, but ended as something we would recognize as a religious organization, China gained its first native translocal religion. This religion, too, introduced novel conceptions of the human body, of time, of cosmos, and of celestial hierarchies, both independently and in response to Buddhist innovations. Through these developments, Chinese culture was changed profoundly. To name but one indicator of this, in the second century ce, religious organizations were local and community-based.

Early medieval authors set in place enduring elements of the poetic tradition. The most fundamental was to make a regular practice of composing lyric poetry (shi). During the Han dynasty (206 bce–220 ce), the centerpiece of literary culture had been recitations of rhyme-prose (fu) whose dazzling rhetoric could extend for hundreds of lines. Relative to the lesser technical challenge of the brief lyric, rather few shi were written. Some were preserved as codas to the fu and underscored their praise for the government. The most impassioned poems, special to the Han, were songs (ge) of despair by the royal household and its associates when their lives or the state were endangered.

Any attempt to describe “popular religion” in early medieval China must first come to grips with what the term means. The category has long been contested. Broadly speaking, over the past fifty years popular religion (in China and elsewhere) has been seen in one of five ways. For some, it has comprised the religious practices and understandings of the lower social classes as opposed to those of the elite. For others, it has designated types of phenomena that are widely shared across most levels of society rather than those of narrower scope. (These scholars often prefer the term “common religion.”) For yet others, to study popular religion has meant focusing on religion as carried out in particular places, as opposed to studying translocal ideas or institutions in abstraction from local contexts. For still other writers, to study popular religion is to study religion as it was actually practiced, as opposed to religion as prescribed or religion as official doctrine.

Sogdians (Suteren) were an ancient Central Asian Iranian people; their language was an Eastern Iranian dialect within the Indo-European language family. Their basic homeland was along the Zarafshan river, between the Central Asian Amu Darya (Oxus) and Syr Darya (Jaxartes) rivers, an area known anciently as Sogdiana, located primarily in modern Uzbekistan, with parts also falling within modern Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. There were a number of city-states of varying sizes in the large and small oases of this region. The largest was Samarkand (Kangguo), which often served in a leadership role for the various Sogdian city-states. In addition, there was Bukhārā (Anguo), which was also relatively large; Sutrūshana or Ustrūshana (East Caoguo); Kabudhan or Kapūtānā (Caoguo); Ishitīkhan (West Caoguo); Māymurgh (Miguo); Kushāṇika (Heguo); Kish or Shahr-i-Sabz (Shi3guo); and Čač (Shi2guo).