The Tones of Stones: Public Inscriptions and the Rise of Regional Powers in Tang China (755-907)

This dissertation studies the role of public inscriptions in the mid-late Tang (755-907) political context. The Chinese Tang Empire suffered a continuing crisis after the An Lushan Rebellion (755-763). On the one hand, control from the central government based in the capitals over the whole empire weakened. On the other hand, the powers of provincial governors increased in reaction. The tension between the central and local governments was one of the most significant problems that beset the empire throughout the latter half of the dynasty. Under this background, public inscriptions as remarkable landmarks in local areas were used by the court, local governments, and literati involved to fulfill propaganda purposes. The first two chapters focus on a specific genre of public inscriptions: steles of virtuous governance. One chapter studies the steles of virtuous governance in a semi-autonomous province, demonstrating that the provincial governors used the steles to gain legitimacy in ruling the province and maintain their rulership during crises. The other chapter studies the steles in a province whose governors were appointed by the court and loyal to the emperor. This chapter shows that the inscriptions were structured based on the dynamic political situation to achieve good propaganda results. The following two chapters focus on another genre of public inscriptions: records on walls of office halls. I argue that the authors of the records on the walls of local government offices attempted to emphasize the authority of the central court and neglect provincial governors’ rising powers in their texts. In this way, the literati were trying to define the relationship between the central court and provincial governments. In the last chapter, I analyze the spatiotemporal distribution of the public inscriptions throughout the Tang Dynasty (618-907). I conclude that the Tang capitals gradually lost their dominant position in the cultural field and the cultural importance of Southern China increased.