Publication details
White color in Inner Asia – attestations and wider cultural connections
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2024 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | The colors were important tool in the evolution of Inner Asian societies. They were used for various purposes of 1) ethnopolitical identification, 2) hierarchical and social stratification, 3) for technical purposes in the military, and 4) in various religious semantic connections. This paper was focused on a special role of white color with attestation and interpretation of all mentioned functions in Inner Asia. In the first function, the white color can be found widely in the Tarim Basin, North China and wide Central Asia. Already Pulleyblank mentions “Chinese directional color symbolism” appearing in the four divisions of Xiongnu army at the siege of Pingcheng in 201 B.C., with white horses on the west, dappled (bluish) horses on the east, black horses on the north and red horses on the south. This organization was later used by nomadic empires, in case of white color it was especially the White Horde (1225-1502) – the eastern constituent part of the Golden Horde. But formerly this is also related to particular ethnonyms like White vs. Blue Tatars and many other groups. Popularity of white color was in its positive symbolism as it was used by more ruling lineages in north China. They were for example “White Di” (differing from eastern “Red Di”) or White Horse Di in Gansu. The word and character bai “white” also appears as the name of Ji Hu leaders as ruling name of Kucha and among Xiongnu and Yuezhi. This color was thus well known in multilingual space of the Tarim Basin, when more ruling families were adopting white color, probably both on the basis of international or tributary marriages and also on the basis of positive role of the white color among Indo-European populations, in daily life of pastoral populations (implicit connotations of milk, milk products and other white commodities / objects) and in Buddhism. The Iranian contexts of the duality of sacred light vs. darkness strongly contributed to the positive connotations of the white color – in this sacred function there is not a big difference between white, yellow, or golden: these colors go back to religious background of Zoroastrian and Iranian religions like Manichaeism with sacred principle of light. While probably an Indo-European influence is behind the duality of negative black and positive white, it is in contradiction to older understanding of these colors in and around Inner Asia, when the black color is also more traditional color of esteem and it denotes the highest social status. Especially interesting is contrastive functional combination of black and white for the purpose of protective magic. During the most important royal ceremonies, the Joseon king was using the highest ritual robe with black color. And the strings of beads and jade around the head hanging from the black hat were ritually preventing the king from viewing wickedness, while small white cotton pieces suspended on the left and right side were meant to prevent the king from hearing inappropriate language. |
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