Historical Studies (Chinese Edition)

No.1, 2019

 

On the Origin of Khagan Temples (Abstract)

 

Zhang Qingjie

 

There are many khagan (Chinese: kehan) temples or remains of temples in the cities and counties of Jiexiu, Lingshi, Shilou, Zhongyang and Fuyang in Shanxi province. The word khagan is in relation to the Xianbei people in the Wei and Jin dynasties. In the Tang, a memorial “statue hall” in Jiangzhou (today’s Xinjiang County, Yuncheng City) which commemorated Hulü Guang was later expanded into a temple. Research indicates that given that khagan temples originated in the Tang, the objects of veneration would have been figures from the Tang or the Northern Dynasties. Among the nomad leaders of this time and place, Hulü Guang, a Chìlè man attached to the Xianbei, was the only one to fulfill the requirement that the person worshipped should have given his life for his work, striven to stabilize the nation, and been able to handle major disasters. He thus left an eternally honorable reputation and was sincerely venerated by the different ethnic groups. He would have been the khagan worshiped in the khagan temples in this region. Such temples were a natural combination of the worship of nomadic heroes and the rituals and customs of Han temple worship. Lasting through the centuries, this is a vivid testimony to the substantial integration and intermingling of different ethnicities in ancient times.