, was a leader of the Jurchen Wanyan clan in the early tenth century. According to the ancestral story of the Wanyan clan, Hanpu came from
when he was sixty years old, reformed Jurchen customary law, and then married a sixty-year-old local woman who bore him three children. His descendants eventually united Jurchen tribes into a federation and established the
in 1115. Hanpu was retrospectively given the temple name
by the Jin dynasty.
Name
Hanpu is known under different transliterations in Chinese sources. He is called Kanfu in the Records of Things Heard in Songmo (; after 1155), the memoirs of a Song Chinese ambassador who was forced to stay in Jin territory for more than 10 years starting in 1131. The Shenlu Ji , a lost book cited in the Collected Documents on the Treaties with the North during Three Reigns (; 1196), refers to him as Kenpu, whereas Research on the Origin of the Manchus (; 1777) calls him Hafu.
Ancestor of the Wanyan clan
Because the early Jurchens had no written records, the story of Hanpu was first transmitted orally. According to the History of Jin (compiled in the 1340s), Hanpu arrived from Goryeo at the age of sixty and settled among the Jurchen Wanyan clan. Other sources claim that Hanpu was from Silla, the state that had ruled the Korean peninsula but was annexed by Goguryeoic kingdom of Goryeo in 935. The same story recounts that when Hanpu left Goryeo, his two brothers remained behind, one in Goryeo and one in the Balhae area. Because the Jurchens considered Hanpu to be the sixth-generation ancestor of Wanyan Wugunai (1021–1074), historians postulate that Hanpu lived in the early tenth century, when the Jurchens still consisted of independent tribes, or sometime between the founding of Goryeo in 918 and its destruction of Silla in 935.
The Wanyan clan then belonged to a group of Jurchen tribes that Chinese and Khitan documents called "wild", "raw", or "uncivilized" (shēng ). These "wild Jurchens" lived between the Changbai Mountains in the south (now at the border between North Korea and Northeast China) and the Sungari River in the north, outside the territory of the rising Liao dynasty (907–1125) and little influenced by Chinese culture.
To resolve an endless cycle of vendettas between two clans, Hanpu managed to make both parties accept a new rule: from then on, the family of a killer would compensate the victim's relatives with a gift of horses, cattle, and money. Historian Herbert Franke has compared this aspect of Jurchen customary law to the old Germanic practice of Wergeld. As a reward for putting an end to the feuds, Hanpu was married to a sixty-year-old woman who then bore him one daughter and two sons. A lost book called the Shenlu Ji states that Hanpu's wife was 40 years old. Hanpu and his descendants were then formally received into the Wanyan clan.
Hanpus ethnicity
Chinese scholars have debated the ethnicity of Hanpu. They usually agree that Hanpu's "coming from Goryeo" does not mean he was of Goryeo ethnicity, since the Chinese scholars speculate that Goryeo territory was populated by several ethnic groups back then. The people of the time did not always distinguish between state and ethnic group, so that in modern terms Hanpu may have been a Jurchen from the state of Silla, a man of Goryeo, or a Silla man. Historian Sun Jinji has claimed that Hanpu's surname was already Wanyan before he moved from Goryeo, and that he was therefore a Jurchen whose family had lived in Silla and then Goryeo before moving back to Jurchen land. Chinese historians Menggutuoli and Zhao Yongchun both argue that Hanpu's ancestors were Jurchens who had lived in Silla and had been absorbed into Goryeo after the latter defeated Silla. Furthermore, Zhao theorizes that Wanyan Yingge calling Goryeo his "parent country" may have been part of the Jurchens' diplomatic efforts to obtain Goryeo's help in fighting the Khitan Liao. However, such claims are attested as Jurchen presence in Silla was few to none along with the persisting fact that Goryeo and the united Jurchen tribes have been in a state of total war following Yejong's campaigns for conquest which ended in a stalemate following the Jurchen's proposals for peace and nonaggression.
Meanwhile, Korean scholars consent towards the idea that Hanpu was likely an ethnic Sillan from Goryeo that fled north towards Jurchen territories during the Later Three Kingdoms. Despite the previous influx of dispersed pro-Goguryeo Mohe refugees after the fall of Goguryeo, their numbers were relatively few and the Jurchens were kept at bay by the borders later on after the fall of Balhae while the Mohe within were assimilated into Silla polity during the reign of Sinmun of Silla. Korean historians also point out that historical descriptions written on the History of Jin and other Korean, Chinese records imply a Koreanic origin as advocated by the Jurchens and Koreans back then as well. Korean historians such as Kang Jun-young and Kim Wi-hyeon, as well as Chinese historians such as Jin Yufu also weigh on the hypothesis that Hanpu was likely a Sillan from the Goryeo dynasty following Silla's downfall by the Goguryeoic kingdom of Goryeo. Manchurian scholars during the Qing Dynasty believed that the founder of Jin was also a Korean from either Silla or Goryeo but denied national ancestry coming from Goguryeo but the Tungusic Sushen tribes.
Many historians have accepted the claim found in Records of Things Heard in Songmo and other sources like Ma Duanlin's Wenxian Tongkao (1317) that Hanpu was "a man of Silla". The annals of King Yejong (r. 1105–1122) in the History of Goryeo report that Wanyan Wugunai's son Yingge (盈歌; 1053-1103) considered Goryeo as his "parent country" because his clan's ancestor Hanpu had come from Goryeo.
Western scholars usually consider Hanpu's story legendary. Herbert Franke explains that this Jurchen "ancestral legend" probably indicates that the Wanyan clan absorbed immigrants from Goryeo and Balhae sometime in the tenth century. Frederick W. Mote, who calls this account of the founding of the Wanyan clan a "tribal legend", claims that Hanpu's two brothers (one who stayed in Goryeo and one in Balhae) might have represented "the tribe's memory of their ancestral links to these two peoples." One Western historian of Jurchens has even proposed that Hanpu was not even from the Korean peninsula, instead what really happened was that a power on the peninsula ruled the Jurchen tribe he came from, or that he was from the Eastern Jurchens (Changbai Mountain Jurchens) who did not live in the Korean peninsula.
Legacy
The Wanyan clan rose to prominence among the Jurchens after 1000 CE. Hanpu's sixth-generation descendant Wanyan Wugunai (1021–1074) started to consolidate the dispersed Jurchen tribes into a federation. Wugunai's grandson Aguda (1068–1123) defeated the Jurchens' Khitan overlords of the Liao dynasty and founded the Jin dynasty in 1115. By 1127, the Jin had conquered all of north China from the Song dynasty.
In 1136 or 1137, soon after Emperor Xizong of Jin (r. 1135–1150) had been crowned, Hanpu was given the posthumous name "Emperor Jingyuan" and the temple name "Shizu", meaning "first ancestor." In 1144 or 1145, Hanpu's burial site was named "Guangling". In December 1145 or January 1146, his posthumous title was augmented to that of "Emperor Yixian Jingyuan".
Family members
Hanpu's wife posthumously received the title of Empress Mingyi in 1136. The History of Jin, an official history that was compiled by Mongol scholar Toqto'a in the 1340s, lists Hanpu's family members as follows:
Children:
• Wulu (eldest son and successor)
• Wolu (second son)
• Zhusiban (daughter)
Siblings:
• Agunai (elder brother, who is said to have liked Buddhism and to have stayed in Goryeo when Hanpu left)
• Baohuoli (younger brother)
Hanpu (函普 Hánpǔ) or Hambo (함보), later Wanyan Hanpu, was a leader of the Jurchen Wanyan clan in the early tenth century. According to the ancestral story of the Wanyan clan, Hanpu came from Goryeo when he was sixty years old, reformed Jurchen customary law, and then married a sixty-year-old local woman who bore him three children. His descendants eventually united Jurchen tribes into a federation and established the Jin dynasty in 1115. Hanpu was retrospectively given the temple name Shizu and the posthumous name Emperor Yixian Jingyuan by the Jin dynasty.