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stockpiled in a pastoral version of an ever-normal granary to provide such
emergency aid. Instead, the main source of relief livestock was purchased
from private innerjasagherds, which could either be equally distressed if
conveniently close by, or too distant to be quickly or safely transferred.
Inadequate grasslands between the source of relief and the site of disaster
often obstructed such transfers as well. Many such problems hindered the
1749 relief efforts when replacement horses brought in from Daling He, in
southwestern Fengtian, were likewise devastated in succession by snow-
storms en route. In 1752 , administrators were still trying to work out the
finances and logistics of replacement livestock purchases from inner
jasag.^54 There is also evidence from relief operations in Mongolia proper
that even the dispatch of silver for local livestock repurchase simply raised
prices of what few head were available. This problem was apparently
serious enough to terminate this form of relief in some locales.^55
It becomes easy to see why Qing regulations limited aid in practice to
grain and silver transfers. Details of state pasture relief operations reveal
that, despite obvious and critical differences, both Qing agrarian and
pastoral management had great difficulty adapting to natural disasters
in a consecutive two-to-three-year period.^56 In this respect, imperial food
security north and south of the passes remained materially subject to
weather. This fact may explain instances of dynastic preference for silver
in general, which did not require the specialized handling of organic
substances such as livestock or grain.
The problems created by silver and grain relief, however, were ultim-
ately more complex. State grain aid to herders bereft of herds andflocks
raises the question of the extent to which such assistance, albeit inadvert-
ently, eroded Mongol pastoral identity.^57 It would have been difficult for
the Qing throne to make good such losses in a timely fashion even if it had
been willing to do so at any cost to its existing strategic reserve of
livestock, in part because the state herds andflocks were not immune to
similar catastrophes. In 1762 – 63 , for example, an epidemic killed nearly
50 percent of the 184 , 490 sheep in Shangdu/Dabsun Nuur pastures.
Banner herders, as per regulations, were expected to make good these
tremendous losses of nearly 91 , 203 sheep.^58
These regulations reflect the Qing administrative habit of holding
humans ultimately responsible for allmortalities among state herds.
Aside from limited provisions to account for natural wastage, livestock
mortality was never really written off to natural causes.^59 The most
onerous of these regulations was the requirement that state herders
restore the lost animals. This was another statutory dynamic that
134 Across Forest, Steppe, and Mountain
