liao 607to special circumstances is difficult to say.
All mutual congratulations on New Year’s Days and birthdays
ceased after 1101. That gives a time span of 97 years from 1005 to
- The following table shows the years for which the ceremonies
are not recorded:
New Year congratulations of Sung to Liao -51
New Year congratulations of Liao to Sung -11
Sung congratulations on the birthdays of Liao emperors -56
Liao congratulations on the birthdays of Sung emperors -18For the 55 years when Liao Empresses Dowager/Grand Empress
Dowager were alive, no birthday congratulations by Sung are recorded
for 35 years.
For the 38 years when Sung Empresses Dowager/Grand Empresses
Dowager were alive, no birthday congratulations by Liao are recorded
for 22 years.^207
Clearly, as far as the sources reveal, Liao was more eager than Sung
to send congratulatory missions. It is possible that the committee under
T’o T’o, which compiled both the Sung shih and Liao shih, ignored
relevant data, but it is also possible that the chronological gaps are
real. The Liao court coveted luxury goods and their envoys profited
economically. Greed can therefore not be excluded as a motive for
the frequency of the Liao missions.
It was under these circumstances in the interest of the Sung gov-
ernment to limit the stay of the Liao missions. It is not known when
these set out. When the sources state that an emperor sent a mission,
this refers to the time when the envoys received their orders, not to
their departure.^208 Fortunately, the sources frequently give the day of
the arrival of a mission. If it was for New Year’s Days, their dates are
known, and if it was for imperial birthdays, the dates can usually be
calculated. This makes it possible to determine how many days before
an event a mission arrived.
For the New Year’s Day reception of Sung emperors, the arrival
(^207) In spite of the decisions of 1022 and 1026, congratulations to empresses on
their birthdays and Empresses Dowagers on the New Year’s Day were sporadic.
(^208) In 16 cases, the sources record when the Sung envoys received their orders,
and in 10 cases give the correponding information for Liao. This corpus is too small
for meaningful statistics. The information for Southern Sung and Chin is much richer
and will be discussed below.