Session 2: Legacy Makers: Liao Empress Yingtian, Korean Choson Queen Sindok, and Tibetan Dagmoukusolah, Trinley Sangmo

Organizer: Elizabeth Benard, University of Puget Sound

Chair: Constance Orliski, California State University, Bakersfield

Discussants: Edwina Williams, City University of New York, Herbert Lehman College; Constance Orliski, California State University, Bakersfield

Keywords: female rulers, China, Korea, Tibet.

This border-crossing panel will examine the impact of politics and religion on three puissant women from diverse areas and historical periods. The three women are the great military commander, the first Liao empress, Empress Yingtian in the tenth century; the second wife of the founder of the Korean Choson Dynasty, Queen Sindok (d. 1396); and the Tibetan Dagmokusolah, Trinley Sangmo (1906–1975), wife to the Tibetan Buddhist Sakya "king." Though from diverse times and places, these three faced similar challenges of acceptance and membership by marrying into ruling families who were both politically and religiously powerful. Each presenter will highlight the struggles of acceptance, the ability to wield power and the legacy of their impact on their respective cultures. Although these three women left a legacy, scant information is available. Two presenters will draw upon historical documents and one paper is based on interviews.

The panel will begin with a discussant that will introduce the common themes of struggle with a new identity by marriage, expansion of their traditional roles in new directions and their enduring impact on future generations. By providing this framework, the initial discussant will draw from the distinctiveness of the three papers to illustrate these broad common themes. The three presenters will follow the introduction. The concluding discussant will suggest areas for future research and promote discussion from the audience.

The Political Role of the First Empress of the Qidan-Liao Dynasty (907–1125)

Gaju Cha, University of Arizona

It is generally agreed upon that one of the characteristics of the conquest dynasties, established in China but ruled by various peoples of non-Han origin, is the intense political participation of the imperial consorts. The Qidan-Liao was no exception for it produced a number of fiercely dominating empresses who acted as de facto rulers of the empire. Their unusual position at court is often seen as an extension of the high social status of the Qidan aristocratic women who are said to have enjoyed more freedom and independence than their contemporary Chinese counterparts did.

In my essay, I will examine the life and the career of the first Liao empress, Empress Yingtian, for she set a precedent for the other empresses to follow. She was not only a competent military strategist but also was a great commander who often accompanied her husband in the battlefields by leading her own personal army. The tradition of the Khitan empresses sustaining their standing army began here. She contributed greatly to the establishment and consolidation of the Liao dynasty. In many ways she acted as a co-ruler, while her husband was alive. After his death, she became even more powerful. She defied the tribal custom that demanded she follow her dead husband to death. She successfully engineered the imperial succession to her advantage. She left a deep and permanent impact on the Liao power structure in which many other empresses were allowed to play a central role.

Korea’s Queen Sindok: A Pawn of Successive Power Struggles, 1356–2003

Hildi Kang, University of California, Berkeley

Queen Sindok, wife of the founding king of the Choson dynasty (1392–1910), died in 1396. She is unique in that although she was the second wife of the founder, she was the dynasty’s first living queen. One would expect her to have been buried and honored appropriately, yet the hostile third king approved several negative acts that attempted to completely obliterate the memory of this queen. The organized forgetting, however, failed to take place. Between 1400 and 1900, ten subsequent monarchs reviewed the circumstances surrounding her death and intervened (or refused to intervene) on her behalf.

Little is written about Queen Sindok in either the Korean or English language, yet looking at factors that affected her life as well as her memory after death, it became apparent that her treatment in life and death was the result of three distinct power struggles that swirled around her. She rose to honor because of a dynastic struggle; she was dishonored because of a power struggle between royal families; and her name appeared and disappeared over the centuries coupled with the ongoing power struggles between scholar-officials and the monarchy due to their personal loyalties to differing Neo-Confucian beliefs. Here we find not one, but three separate understandings of Confucian ritualism that fueled first the appeals on her behalf, second the various king’s refusals of the appeals, and finally the complete about-face that caused her to become a model for proper protocol.

This presentation will examine Queen Sindok’s story from the perspective of the power struggles that defined Korean political life from the beginning of the Choson dynasty to the present day.

No Time to Sleep: Life as the Tibetan Sakya Dagmokusolah

Elizabeth Benard, University of Puget Sound

When Trinley Sangmo (1906–1975) married into the Tibetan Sakya family in 1928, her two worlds of being a member of a political noble family and of a Buddhist practitioner coalesced. Though the Sakya family was politically powerful, their raison d’être was to disseminate the ancient Sakya Tibetan Buddhist teachings through a line of succession. When after ten years of marriage Trinley Sangmo did not produce an heir to the Sakya throne, her younger sister, Sonam Dolkar, became the second wife and actual birth mother of the Sakya daughter, Jetsunkusholah, and the future heir to the Sakya throne, Sakya Trizin. With a frail Sonam Dolkar, one of Trinley’s many responsibilities was to raise her niece and nephew. As an infant, Jetsunkusholah cried at night and Trinley developed a habit of only taking catnaps. Later she transformed this habit of staying awake into practicing all night in her meditation box. She made certain that eminent lamas who conferred the major teachings and empowerments trained properly both Jetsunkusholah and Sakya Trizin. Being a dedicated practitioner, she attended the teachings and did many of the required retreats with her niece and nephew.

I will examine how Trinley Sangmo masterfully handled all the complexity of running a household of over eighty members, did her spiritual practices and raised the two children as great lamas who continue the Sakya tradition presently. Having no written accounts about Trinley Sangmo, most of my information is based on interviews from the Sakya family and their main attendants, who presently reside in India.