Mao-tun was the son of T’ou-man, Shan-yü of the Hsiung-nu, who faced off against the Ch’in dynasty in
Mao-tun soon attracted a band of loyal followers whom he trained to obey his every command without question. Mao’tun’s method included the use of stern tests. On the signal of his whistling arrow each follower was to fire at whatever Mao-tun pointed. After practicing in hunting Mao-tun took aim at one of n his favorite horses. Those who failed to fire were put to death. Next he took aim at olne of his consorts; and again those who had failed to fire were put to death. Finally he took aim at one of his father’s valuable horses and saw hhis command had been obeyed by all. Now satisfied with the loyalty of his men, Mao-ptun seized the next opportunity to aim his whistling arrow at his father, T’ou-man, who met his death in a hail of arrows.
—Thomas Barfield, The Perilous Frontier 33 (1989)
Mao-tun had himself declared Shan-yü. Not surprisingly, his step-mother and step-brother did not long survive the succession.
2 comments:
"...Yüeh-chih, intending to attack the Yüeh-chih and expecting that his hostage son would be killed in retaliation..."
History repeats itself in Asia. Sort of.
During WWII, General Tojo hated one of his under-officers, General Yamashita. Yamashita was not a military man, but since he was a member of a certain noble family, tradition demanded he become a senior military officer when his nation went to war.
Hoping to get rid of Yamashita, Tojo ordered him out of Japan to capture Singapore, which was considered an impossible task. The expectation was that Yamashita would either be killed or humiliated (probably into seppuku) by his failure.
Instead, Yamashita, the amateur general, pulled off the impossible. He was feted as a hero in Tokyo, to Yamashita's great frustration and anger. Furiously, Tojo ordered Yamashita not to come home again until the war was over.
What goes around comes around. Tojo was hanged as a war criminal.
But also, what comes around goes around. Yamashita was also hanged, on trumped up war crimes charges (Yamashita, it was conceded, had no knowledge of the crimes at the time they were committed) thus proving that there ain't no justice in this world, even when there is justice.
Which there ain't. (Viz. the "conviction" of Bin Laden's lowly driver of "war crimes" which seem to have consisted of driving a car.)
Crankily yours,
The New York Crank
Neither Romulus nor Theseus could could avoid the mischief of quarrel and contention with their friends, nor the reproach of staining themselves with the blood of their nearest kinsmen -- Plutarch
It's almost a universal that founders of states and empires kill off memmbers of theor own families.
Charlemagne had a brother Carloman with whom he initially shared the empire. When Carloman died his widow fled ro Venice; her apparent anger baffled Charlemagne's biographer.
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