The Chaoye qianzai is a collection of anecdotes compiled by the Tang official Zhang Zhuo (658-730).¹

The first passage below is a vivid description of Zoroastrian religious festivals among the Sogdian merchant communities of north China, which involve music, dance, and displays of illusionist magic that revolve around bodily self-mutilation.

The second passage reflects how intermarriage between Hu immigrants and Chinese families might lead to the loss of distinctively Hu facial features after a couple of generations. The protagonist Song Cha realizes, however, that some traits in animals and human beings can resurface generations later. In modern genetics, these are called recessive traits. This story is rather unusual among imperial Chinese sources in paying attention to how genetic mixing could lead to changes in physical appearance.

The third passage presents a theory on the origins of Ma Hu (literally “pockmarked Hu”), a bogeyman figure that Tang mothers used to silence their crying children. Zhang Zhuo argues that the inspiration for Ma Hu was a fearsome Later Zhao general named Ma Qiu. Another source (the late Tang work Zixialu) describes the popular image of Ma Hu as “a god with a bushy beard and a tattooed face,” but traces him to a notoriously cruel Sui dynasty general named Ma Hu 麻祜. It is unclear whether the stereotypical “Hu face” (deep eyes and high nose) was part of the Ma Hu legend, but the bushy beard suggests that it may have been.

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1. In Lide Ward of Henan fu (Luoyang) and in the wards to the west of the Southern Market, there are Hu Zoroastrian (Hu xian 胡祅) temples and shrines. Once a year, the Hu (Sogdian) merchants pray there for blessings and sacrifice pigs and sheep. They play lutes, drums, and flutes, and sing and dance while drunk. After sprinkling libations to the gods, they enlist one of the Hu as the Zoroastrian priest (xianzhu 祅主). Those watching all donate cash to him. The Zoroastrian priest then takes out a large sword, as sharp as frost and snow and capable of cutting a feather blown against its edge. He stabs his belly with the sword, so deep that the tip emerges from his back, and twists the blade around his intestines and stomach, bleeding profusely. Soon after, he fills his mouth with water and spits it out, chants a spell, and is fully recovered. This must be a magical art of the Western Regions.

At the Zoroastrian shrine in Liangzhou (Wuwei, Gansu), on the day of prayer the Zoroastrian priest hammers an iron nail through his forehead, and it pierces through his armpit. He then runs out through the door, his body as light as though he were flying, and crosses several hundred li in no time. He arrives at the Western Zoroastrian Temple, performs a dance, and then leaves. Upon returning to the original Zoroastrian shrine, he extracts the nail and there is no sign of injury. After lying down to rest for more than ten days, he recovers fully. Nobody knows how he is able to do this.

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2. Song Cha of Guangping married the daughter of You Chang, a man from his commandery. Cha’s ancestors were Hu but had been subjects of the Han (i.e., the Chinese empire) for three generations. His wife gave birth to a son with deep eyes and a high nose. Cha suspected the baby’s paternity and was on the verge of abandoning him. Before long, however, his reddish-brown horse gave birth to a white colt. Cha then realized the truth, saying, “Our family once had a white horse, but that trait has disappeared from its descendants for twenty-five years. Now it has reappeared. My great-grandfather had a Hu face, and now this boy has revived his ancestor’s traits.” He therefore raised the boy. That is why we have saying, “a white horse saved a Hu boy’s life,” based on this incident.

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3. Ma Qiu, a general under Shi Le of the Later Zhao, was a Hu person from Taiyuan.² His innate nature was ferocious and cruel. Whenever children cried, their mothers would frighten them by saying, “Ma Hu is coming!” This remains a customary practice to this day.

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1. For a detailed study with numerous translations, see N. Harry Rothschild, The World of Wu Zhao: Annotated Selections from Zhang Zhuo’s Court and Country (Anthem Press, 2023). ↩︎
2. Shi Le was the founder of the Later Zhao state (see source 4.4). The text seems to identify Ma Qiu as a Jie like Shi Le, but this may be inaccurate. The Jinshu indicates that Ma Qiu sided with Shi Min during the massacre of the Jie in 350, executing more than a thousand Hu (Jie) soldiers in his unit. This would be unlikely if Ma himself was a Hu. ↩︎