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The Royal Hunt in Eurasian History
From antiquity to the nineteenth century, the royal hunt was a vital component of the political cultures of the Middle East, India, Central Asia, and China. Besides marking elite status, royal hunts functioned as inspection tours and imperial progresses, a means of asserting kingly authority over the countryside. The hunt was, in fact, the court out-of-doors, an open-air theater for displays of majesty, the entertainment of guests, and the bestowal of favor on subjects.
In the conduct of interstate relations, great hunts were used to train armies, show the flag, and send diplomatic signals. Wars sometimes began as hunts and ended as celebratory chases. Often understood as a kind of covert military training, the royal hunt was subject to the same strict discipline as that applied in war and was also a source of innovation in military organization and tactics.
Just as human subjects were to recognize royal power, so was the natural kingdom brought within the power structure by means of the royal hunt. Hunting parks were centers of botanical exchange, military depots, early conservation reserves, and important links in local ecologies. The mastery of the king over nature served an important purpose in official renderings: as a manifestation of his possession of heavenly good fortune he could tame the natural world and keep his kingdom safe from marauding threats, human or animal. The exchanges of hunting partners--cheetahs, elephants, and even birds--became diplomatic tools as well as serving to create an elite hunting culture that transcended political allegiances and ecological frontiers.
This sweeping comparative work ranges from ancient Egypt to India under the Raj. With a magisterial command of contemporary sources, literature, material culture, and archaeology, Thomas T. Allsen chronicles the vast range of traditions surrounding this fabled royal occupation.
In the conduct of interstate relations, great hunts were used to train armies, show the flag, and send diplomatic signals. Wars sometimes began as hunts and ended as celebratory chases. Often understood as a kind of covert military training, the royal hunt was subject to the same strict discipline as that applied in war and was also a source of innovation in military organization and tactics.
Just as human subjects were to recognize royal power, so was the natural kingdom brought within the power structure by means of the royal hunt. Hunting parks were centers of botanical exchange, military depots, early conservation reserves, and important links in local ecologies. The mastery of the king over nature served an important purpose in official renderings: as a manifestation of his possession of heavenly good fortune he could tame the natural world and keep his kingdom safe from marauding threats, human or animal. The exchanges of hunting partners--cheetahs, elephants, and even birds--became diplomatic tools as well as serving to create an elite hunting culture that transcended political allegiances and ecological frontiers.
This sweeping comparative work ranges from ancient Egypt to India under the Raj. With a magisterial command of contemporary sources, literature, material culture, and archaeology, Thomas T. Allsen chronicles the vast range of traditions surrounding this fabled royal occupation.
- GenresHistory
Hardcover
First published March 1, 2006
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January 28, 2014
A fruitcake of information. You don’t even have to read consecutively if you don’t want to. This is a sample to give you the flavour – fairly random, and typical of any page:
“Malik Shah (r. 1072-92), under whom the Seljuq dynasty reached its apogee, publicized his kills by building towers from the hooves of gazelles and onagers throughout his realm. Shah Ismail (r.1501-24) built in Khui, Azerbaijan, a large palace called Dawlah Khanah which featured, according to an Italian traveler, three turrets eight yards in circumference and fifteen to sixteen feet in height composed of antlers of stags taken by the shah and his lords. On an even grander scale, his successor, Tahmasp, incorporated some thirty thousand deer and hart skulls into the summit of the highest tower in Isfahan, the future Safavid capital. And Akbar, his contemporary, placed hundreds of thousands of deer antlers on pillars positioned every couple of miles on the road from Agra to Ajmir. All these, according to eyewitness testimony, were taken in his majesty’s hunts, and were displayed at his order ‘as a memorial to the world’.”
It’s great context or background for any historical reading in his ‘core area’ where royals were crazy for the hunt – on a far vaster scale than hunt cults known to Europe: the hub of operations was Iran, North India and Turkestan, but he follows the royal hunt wherever it goes – North China when under certain cultural inflences, Korea, Ethiopia. In Europe there was no ‘heroic prey’, lions, leopards, tigers; as Aristotle said, ‘wild animals are at their wildest in Asia’. Although, wherever you are in this area, you meet much incidental reference to the hunt in histories, only a book like this pulls it together, gives you the big picture, and I am amazed anew at what a huge feature of life the hunt was, for courtly elites. I also now have the inside dope. Next time I read that Mas'ud of Ghazna slew eight lions in a day, or the Khitan emperor's mother killed a bear, I shall be far more suspicious about the stage-management that went in. He explores every aspect; his book is arranged by topic rather than period or society, so that a chapter, say on ‘conservation’ or ‘animal assistants’ ranges widely.
Warning: staggering numbers of animals were harmed.
“Malik Shah (r. 1072-92), under whom the Seljuq dynasty reached its apogee, publicized his kills by building towers from the hooves of gazelles and onagers throughout his realm. Shah Ismail (r.1501-24) built in Khui, Azerbaijan, a large palace called Dawlah Khanah which featured, according to an Italian traveler, three turrets eight yards in circumference and fifteen to sixteen feet in height composed of antlers of stags taken by the shah and his lords. On an even grander scale, his successor, Tahmasp, incorporated some thirty thousand deer and hart skulls into the summit of the highest tower in Isfahan, the future Safavid capital. And Akbar, his contemporary, placed hundreds of thousands of deer antlers on pillars positioned every couple of miles on the road from Agra to Ajmir. All these, according to eyewitness testimony, were taken in his majesty’s hunts, and were displayed at his order ‘as a memorial to the world’.”
It’s great context or background for any historical reading in his ‘core area’ where royals were crazy for the hunt – on a far vaster scale than hunt cults known to Europe: the hub of operations was Iran, North India and Turkestan, but he follows the royal hunt wherever it goes – North China when under certain cultural inflences, Korea, Ethiopia. In Europe there was no ‘heroic prey’, lions, leopards, tigers; as Aristotle said, ‘wild animals are at their wildest in Asia’. Although, wherever you are in this area, you meet much incidental reference to the hunt in histories, only a book like this pulls it together, gives you the big picture, and I am amazed anew at what a huge feature of life the hunt was, for courtly elites. I also now have the inside dope. Next time I read that Mas'ud of Ghazna slew eight lions in a day, or the Khitan emperor's mother killed a bear, I shall be far more suspicious about the stage-management that went in. He explores every aspect; his book is arranged by topic rather than period or society, so that a chapter, say on ‘conservation’ or ‘animal assistants’ ranges widely.
Warning: staggering numbers of animals were harmed.
March 1, 2023
又消滅一本閱讀器藏書啦
這本書的內容十分有趣
講述了舊大陸各地的貴族狩獵史
從史前時代的維生需求
進化到貴族的政治表演
羅列了各種獵物和狩獵方法，狩獵用動物
以及技術和物種交流的細節
並分析了舊大陸各地貴族狩獵驚人的一致性
翻譯也挺流暢好讀
可以獲得許多有趣的動物行為和狩獵技巧知識
不過在作者論證歐亞大陸上的貴族狩獵
有超越時空和地理限制的一致性時
雖然作者在結論有援引理論來說明
但還是覺得書中處處信手捻來
範例發生在距離相差萬里，時間橫跨上千年的不同地方
說這是一樣的狩獵概念
讓人感到先射箭再畫靶的可能
很值得懷疑其可信度
又如拿歐亞某地與中國比較時
常常引用漢唐元朝史料
次多是其他的征服王朝，如清朝遼朝
間或引用一些儒家經典和其他時期的史料
因中文史料自己可以覆核
加上上述的懷疑，不免覺得是否作者自作多情呢?
於是看到其中一條引用，覺得作者對史料似乎有微妙的理解誤差
引發學術興趣，找史料原文來看看
書中說：
汉朝的一位将军只要听说附近有老虎出现便会前去捕猎
这与印度早期统治者的行为相同
註寫引自史記，那應該是講李廣吧
註標出中華書局版史記的章節頁數資訊
手邊沒書，腦補認為是這段：
廣所居郡聞有虎，嘗自射之。
及居右北平射虎，虎騰傷廣，廣亦竟射殺之。
語意跟只要聽說有老虎便去捕獵有微妙的不同
本書引用中國各朝代史書，基本都是用中華書局版
看來似乎是直接讀原文
但作者引用孟子時，註又標明是引自譯本
不禁令人好奇，作者援引史書時
究竟是看原文，還是翻譯呢?
如果中文語意了解有誤差，那相同邏輯之下
其他語言的史料，應該也會有一樣的理解問題
那麼要說狩獵行為在歐亞大陸上有一致性，好像就沒那麼有說服力
但挑這毛病要細究，就屬於學術問題了
我只是當閒書看看，順便考據腦發作，姑且存疑一番
不想也無法繼續深入研究下去
畢竟這點小疑問，不減全書豐富資訊帶來的愉快體驗
還是很推薦這本書的
這本書的內容十分有趣
講述了舊大陸各地的貴族狩獵史
從史前時代的維生需求
進化到貴族的政治表演
羅列了各種獵物和狩獵方法，狩獵用動物
以及技術和物種交流的細節
並分析了舊大陸各地貴族狩獵驚人的一致性
翻譯也挺流暢好讀
可以獲得許多有趣的動物行為和狩獵技巧知識
不過在作者論證歐亞大陸上的貴族狩獵
有超越時空和地理限制的一致性時
雖然作者在結論有援引理論來說明
但還是覺得書中處處信手捻來
範例發生在距離相差萬里，時間橫跨上千年的不同地方
說這是一樣的狩獵概念
讓人感到先射箭再畫靶的可能
很值得懷疑其可信度
又如拿歐亞某地與中國比較時
常常引用漢唐元朝史料
次多是其他的征服王朝，如清朝遼朝
間或引用一些儒家經典和其他時期的史料
因中文史料自己可以覆核
加上上述的懷疑，不免覺得是否作者自作多情呢?
於是看到其中一條引用，覺得作者對史料似乎有微妙的理解誤差
引發學術興趣，找史料原文來看看
書中說：
汉朝的一位将军只要听说附近有老虎出现便会前去捕猎
这与印度早期统治者的行为相同
註寫引自史記，那應該是講李廣吧
註標出中華書局版史記的章節頁數資訊
手邊沒書，腦補認為是這段：
廣所居郡聞有虎，嘗自射之。
及居右北平射虎，虎騰傷廣，廣亦竟射殺之。
語意跟只要聽說有老虎便去捕獵有微妙的不同
本書引用中國各朝代史書，基本都是用中華書局版
看來似乎是直接讀原文
但作者引用孟子時，註又標明是引自譯本
不禁令人好奇，作者援引史書時
究竟是看原文，還是翻譯呢?
如果中文語意了解有誤差，那相同邏輯之下
其他語言的史料，應該也會有一樣的理解問題
那麼要說狩獵行為在歐亞大陸上有一致性，好像就沒那麼有說服力
但挑這毛病要細究，就屬於學術問題了
我只是當閒書看看，順便考據腦發作，姑且存疑一番
不想也無法繼續深入研究下去
畢竟這點小疑問，不減全書豐富資訊帶來的愉快體驗
還是很推薦這本書的
August 26, 2017
This book caught my eye (because of the painting on the cover from the Akbarnama, a 16C manuscript showing a tiger hunt) in a University bookstore about a year ago; I had no reason to purchase it then but it looked vaguely interesting, so I picked it up, bought it, took it home and put it on a shelf, and forgot about it.
A few months ago, while researching the subject of dogs in Chinese art, I spotted it and opened it in the hope it might have some useful information on hunting dogs. What a gold mine of information! This is one of the richest, most informative books I've ever read that appears to be on one subject but which opens up hundreds of other areas for you to become lost in. I knew from previous research that one of the forefathers of modern Chinese gardens were hunting grounds--it's all here with excerpts from court records, European travellers who recorded their visits to these grounds, examples from diaries and paintings. I watched a saluki hound in Turkmenistan a few years ago racing after its owner on horseback and marvelled at its elegance and speed--author Allsen tells us the history of the saluki and explains the breeding that enabled it to become one of the fastest dogs bred specifically for desert hunts (and how to distinguish it from greyhounds). Readers learn that cheetahs are the most tameable of cats, perfect as hunting companions, and their special prowess is due to their bone structure that enables them to lurch more than run (think of horses galloping), to large nostrils that give them extra oxygen, to their tire-like padded claws that enable them to grip better as they run, and on and on.
This is a book that one can read cover-to-cover, or dip in and out of, chapter by chapter, to learn not only about royal hunts, but also animal breeding, social behaviour, courtly etiquette, power politics, historical periods, and the peculiarities of rulers from King Frederick II to Jahangir. The references lead you to other materials I, for one, would never have found on my own, including an especially helpful article "Rising from Blood-Stained Fields: Royal Hunting and State Formation in Shang China". It included anecdotes that for one odd reason or another I know I will one day be sharing somewhere (the Emperor Kangxi had special strawberry patches planted in his hunting grounds for the enjoyment of his guests). It reminded me through its extensive bibliography of many references and sources for my research I had forgotten in my own library. The richness of the content and the extent of the research that went into this volume fully warrants the book jacket's words: "This sweeping comparative work ranges from ancient Egypt to India under the Raj...with a magisterial command of contemporary sources literature, material culture, and archaeology."
A few months ago, while researching the subject of dogs in Chinese art, I spotted it and opened it in the hope it might have some useful information on hunting dogs. What a gold mine of information! This is one of the richest, most informative books I've ever read that appears to be on one subject but which opens up hundreds of other areas for you to become lost in. I knew from previous research that one of the forefathers of modern Chinese gardens were hunting grounds--it's all here with excerpts from court records, European travellers who recorded their visits to these grounds, examples from diaries and paintings. I watched a saluki hound in Turkmenistan a few years ago racing after its owner on horseback and marvelled at its elegance and speed--author Allsen tells us the history of the saluki and explains the breeding that enabled it to become one of the fastest dogs bred specifically for desert hunts (and how to distinguish it from greyhounds). Readers learn that cheetahs are the most tameable of cats, perfect as hunting companions, and their special prowess is due to their bone structure that enables them to lurch more than run (think of horses galloping), to large nostrils that give them extra oxygen, to their tire-like padded claws that enable them to grip better as they run, and on and on.
This is a book that one can read cover-to-cover, or dip in and out of, chapter by chapter, to learn not only about royal hunts, but also animal breeding, social behaviour, courtly etiquette, power politics, historical periods, and the peculiarities of rulers from King Frederick II to Jahangir. The references lead you to other materials I, for one, would never have found on my own, including an especially helpful article "Rising from Blood-Stained Fields: Royal Hunting and State Formation in Shang China". It included anecdotes that for one odd reason or another I know I will one day be sharing somewhere (the Emperor Kangxi had special strawberry patches planted in his hunting grounds for the enjoyment of his guests). It reminded me through its extensive bibliography of many references and sources for my research I had forgotten in my own library. The richness of the content and the extent of the research that went into this volume fully warrants the book jacket's words: "This sweeping comparative work ranges from ancient Egypt to India under the Raj...with a magisterial command of contemporary sources literature, material culture, and archaeology."
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews