ann
(Ann)
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it, strictly speaking, conceived even as a space where“center and periph-
ery were as one family”(zhongwai yi jia), in the idiomatic expression of
Qing multiculturalism.
Muran itself was primarily intended as a space for Inner Asian
venery, its undeniably important, and somewhat paradoxical, Buddhist
dimension notwithstanding. Of course, Buddhism was an integral part
of stable imperial relations with Mongols that produced“transethnic
Buddhist” manifestations of a nineteenth-century “Pan-Qing iden-
tity.”^89 The Qianlong emperor, nevertheless, made his preference for
more mundane identities clear on another Yongyou stele when he
stated the continuity of militarypractice was the essential significance
of his grandfather the Kangxi emperor’s“imperial tours”(xunshou,
literally“patrolling and hunting”). This, rather than the propagation of
Buddhism, was the state’s most pressing duty to be passed on to future
generations.^90 The practices constitutingMuran here appear as Inner
Asian manifestations of a militant“patrimonial-bureaucratic empire”
much more explicit than their high Qing China proper counterpart, the
southern tours.^91
Integral to these practices, from a particularly Han point of view, was
Mongol“pacification” effected mainly through the reserve’s hunting,
rather than its religious, rituals. This was the view of the prominent
historian Wei Yuan, who considered the Muran hunt the“grandest of
all the ceremonies used to pacify the Mongols.”Zhao Yi went so far as to
assert that the emperor’s annual hunting activities were not to train
banner troops, but“actually to keep a yoke on the Mongols,”in an
elaborate display of culturally appropriate prowess and pomp.^92 Such
views should be qualified, especially prior to the nineteenth century, in
light of more nuanced assertions from the throne.^93
Manchus and Mongols shared a form of environmental relations
expressed in venery spaces beyond the passes through mounted bow
hunting in banner formations. As a 1726 Lifanyuanentry acknowledged,
both the Chakhar banners and the“banner people of China proper went
battue hunting in one body...dutifully exerting themselves through-
out.”^94 In many respects, there was little straightforward“pacification”
involved as opposed to a common identity formation of Inner Asian
hunter-soldiers critically dependent on interaction with wild steppe fauna.
“Mu-lan’s Battue System,”as described in the essays of Zhao-lian, cer-
tainly portrays the elaborately ritualized multiethnic military coordin-
ation between Manchu and Mongol that characterized formal Qing
battue hunting. However, the many hierarchical distinctions noted are
Qing Fields in Theory and Practice 51
