Signs of Authority in the Mongol Empire

Tablets of authority, such as the one pictured here, served as one of the central institutions of the Mongol Empire, giving the bearer power to requisition resources. Together with the “exemption decree,” or darqan jarliq,1 which rendered the holder immune from requisitions by others, they were fundamental manifestations of governance under the Mongol Empire. These tablets were known most commonly in the Mongol Empire as paizas, a Persian reading of the Chinese paizi, “tablet.” The Mongolian name, gerege, meaning “that which bears witness,” is found only in Mongolian-language texts.2 

Paizas in the Mongol Empire

The primary right granted by such paizas was the ability to requisition resources. The more basic type of paiza was issued to messengers (elchin) and was supposed to be used only on the Mongol Empire’s famous post-road (or jam) system.3 Such a paiza, as pictured here, gave the holder the right to receive room, board, fresh horses, and an escort while traveling from station to station on the jam. 

The post-road system linked the entire empire together, enabling the famous level of cultural exchange achieved under the Mongol Empire. Despite the empire’s decentralization under regional princes, or khans, its maintenance was one of the key functions that princes owed the central government. In the late thirteenth century, the area directly ruled by Qubilai Khan had more than 1,400 stations and bridges, serviced by 44,293 horses, 8,889 oxen, 6,007 asses, 4,037 carts, 378 sedan chairs, 5,921 boats, 1,150 pack sheep, and even 3,000 sled dogs in northern Manchuria. These statistics do not include Tibet; twenty-one major jam stations were established there from 1269 on.4 Although expensive for the regime and burdensome for the peasants and herders who staffed it in rotation, the ulagha, or post-road duty, was preserved in Tibet and Mongolia into the mid-twentieth century.

Another, more prestigious, type of paiza was issued to military commanders (noyat) at various levels, non-Mongol tributary rulers and local civil administrators, and overseers (darughas, darughachin) appointed by the Mongols to supervise non-Mongol officials. “Partner” (ortaq) merchants trading with funds from imperial or princely funds and clergy of the empire’s recognized religions—Buddhism, Christianity, Daoism, and Islam—also often received paizas as members of the imperial elite. These paizas granted the right to requisition goods and services not just from the jam but from the general civilian population as well. Such paizas were issued together with jarliq, or decrees,5 stamped with a red seal (al tamgha), that gave the reasons why the holder was privileged with a paiza and the specific degree of power that it conferred. 

The issuing authority for either type of paiza included the great khan, as well as princes, empresses, princesses, and imperial sons-in-law entrusted with jurisdiction over a given territory. In theory, issuing paizas was supervised by the great khan, and all were recalled on the death of one great khan and the enthronement of another. In practice, however, these rules were often not followed.6 

The paiza system in the Mongol Empire developed out of the badges used by those on assignment in the Khitan Liao (907–1125) and Jurchen Jin dynasty of North China (1115–1234) and in previous Chinese dynasties. Paizas for commanders were ranked by materials and design, ranging from the highest, in gold with a tiger head (bars terigütü) inscribed on it, to the lower-ranked ones, in plain gold or silver. The tiger’s head is depicted frontally, at the top end of the paiza, as can be seen in the molding on the object presented here, or else as incised decoration, as seen in the paiza for a commander issued by Abdulla, the khan of the Mongol Golden Horde (r. 1362–1370) (fig. 2). In many cases, as in the example shown, they were actually composed of base metals, with at most silver or gold inlay.

During the reign of Chinggis Khan (1206–1227), the inscriptions on the paiza were in Chinese on the obverse and Kitan language on the reverse, reflecting their origin in the practices of the Jurchen Jin dynasty.7 Soon, however, they were switched to Mongolian. The extant Mongolian examples for officials always began with the famous phrase, “By the power of eternal heaven” (Möngke tngri-yin kücün-dür) (fig. 2). They conclude with the phrases, “The decree of the great khan [or whoever issued it]; any person whosoever who does not respect it shall be punished, shall die.” In between those two lines of texts, paizas for those of official or military rank carried an additional line of text: “By the protection of the imperial good fortune.” Those paizas only for use on the post roads, however, such as the one pictured here, did not include that phrase.

Reforms under Qubilai Khan

The paiza system was reshaped by the reforming zeal of the fifth Mongol khan, Qubilai (r. 1260–1294) (fig. 3), as were virtually all other features of the Mongolian government. The first reform, initiated in 1261, established a new level of urgent post-road paizas, marked not by a tiger’s head but by a gyrfalcon. Other reforms are visible in the paiza pictured. The inscription was simplified to no longer say “shall die.” The shape of paizas for messengers was changed from oblong to round; these new-style paizas were called in Chinese “round tallies” (yuanfu). Post roads elsewhere in the Mongol Empire, however, retained the traditional oblong form and inscription (fig. 2).

Pakpa Lama and the Square Script

Another major reform visible in this paiza was in the script used to write the inscription. Between 1269 and 1271, after defeating his rivals and securing the throne but before planning the conquest of the Song dynasty in South China, Qubilai Khan carried out a number of reforms that promoted a new multiethnic style of universal rule. These included claiming the Chinese-style dynastic title of Yuan and building and renaming a new capital at the site of present-day Beijing. Another of these universalizing measures was to commission his Imperial Preceptor, the Pakpa Lama, Lodro Gyeltsen (1235–1280),8 to create a script for the entire empire, suitable for writing Mongolian, Chinese, and Tibetan. 

Pakpa Lama had entered the Mongol empire as a boy hostage in 1244 when the famous Sakya Pandita, his uncle (1182–1251), was summoned to the court of the Mongol prince Köten9 in what is now Gansu Province. According to Mongol practice, every local ruler and official above a certain rank had to submit a son, younger brother, or nephew as hostage to serve in the bodyguard (keshikten) of the khan or of the local member of the imperial family in charge of the area. As a local ruler in Tibet, Sakya Pandita had to nominate Lodro Gyeltsen and his brother as his hostages, and they entered Köten’s entourage. After Köten died, his cousin Qubilai, then a prince supervising all of North China, took over his bodyguard. Lodro Gyeltsen soon graduated from the bodyguard and was ordained as a monk in 1255. Within a few years he was making his mark as a debater, Sanskritist, and tantric guru to Qubilai and his wife Chabui. One year after Qubilai became great khan in 1260, he appointed his young chaplain, now known as Pakpa Lama, or “Noble Guru,” as “State Preceptor” and head of all Buddhists in the empire. 

Pakpa Lama used his philological knowledge to create a script called the square script in Mongolian10 and the Pakpa script in the West. Up until this moment, the Mongols had been using the script of the Turkic-speaking Uyghurs, itself derived from the Sogdian and eventually the Aramaic script. Although well-adapted to Uyghur and Mongolian, the script was very poor at rendering Chinese or Tibetan. Pakpa Lama took the Tibetan letters, squared them off (hence the name), and reorganized them to be written vertically in columns left to right. With his training in traditional Indian philology, he added diacritical signs and special letters to handle the sounds of Mongolian and Chinese that were not available in the Tibetan script. The whole was proclaimed by Qubilai Khan in 1269 as the new script for the empire. 

Although Qubilai established schools throughout the East Asian region of the Mongol Empire to promote the new script, it could not replace the Uyghur-Mongolian script, let alone Chinese or Tibetan, as the writing system of choice for scholars. Surviving samples of Pakpa scriptare mostly official pieces, such as the paiza shown here, or stone inscriptions, such as that at the Juyong Gate. Only a few pieces of printed literature are known (fig. 4). With the expulsion of the Yuan emperors from China, the Pakpa script fell out of use, except for occasional ornamental use in Tibet.

The most commonly preserved genre in Pakpa script writing is that of exemption decrees, or darqan jarliq. These decrees declare that in return for clerics saying prayers for the long life of the khan, this or that Tibetan Buddhist monastery, Eastern Orthodox church, Muslim Sufi lodge, or Daoist temple was exempt from any requisitions, whether demanded by messengers or by itinerant officials and commanders. These decrees were commonly bilingual, and in China, Mongolia, and Tibet, the Mongolian version was usually in the Pakpa script.11 Such decrees are, along with the paizas, monuments to the privileges of the Mongol Empire’s ruling class, privileges to requisition from others and to be free of requisitions themselves. Religious leaders were key members of this ruling class, using their prayers to preserve the lives of the khans and their learning to train the khans’ heirs and improve the regime’s governance.