The Pizhi Pagoda, an eleventh-century Chinese pagoda…
1069 CE
The Pizhi Pagoda, an eleventh-century Chinese pagoda located at Lingyan Temple, Changqing, near Jinan, Shandong province, China, had originally been built in 753 during the reign of Emperor Xuanzong of Tang.
The present pagoda is a Song Dynasty reconstruction built from 1056 until 1063, during the last reigning years of Emperor Renzong of Song.
This octagonal-based, nine-story tall, brick-and-stone pagoda stands at a height of fifty-four meters (one hundred and seventy-seven feet).
The Chinese word "pizhi" is a translation of the Sanskrit word pratyeka, a term for a type of buddha, a loner personality and one who has attained enlightenment after the death of the Sakyamuni Buddha.
This is achieved by self-study and self-cultivation without the aid of Buddhist teachers or guides.
Thus, the Pizhi Pagoda us built by the Song Chinese of the eleventh century in dedication of these pratyeka, which is a rarity among pagodas in China.
The basic structure of the pagoda is built of brick, although the exterior facade has carved stone elements.
At the base of the pagoda is a stone pedestal carved on four sides with scenes of the Buddhist afterlife and torture scenes in Hell.
The first, second, and third stories feature balconies supported by typical Chinese dougong brackets.
From the fourth story until the ninth, there were only pent roofs and no balconies.
The iron steeple crowning the top of the pagoda is composed of an inverted bowl, discs, a sun, a crescent, and a bead.
Iron chains are used to keep the steeple firmly into place on the rooftop.
Small iron statues of celestial guards are positioned on the corner ridges by each of the chains, which is believed to keep the chains firmly into place.
A large brick pillar and brick stairway lead all the way up to the fifth floor, but only the winding staircase outside the pagoda allows one to traverse all the way to the top where the steeple is located.
This arrangement is often seen in stone pagodas, but rarely in brick ones.
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Champa had begun to pay tribute to the Viet kings, including a white rhino sent in 1065.
The Chams, currently allied with the Khmers, see an opportunity to recapture their capital of Vijaya captured in 1044 by the Dai Viets, or Annamese, in the recent Vietnamese-Cham War.
When the Chams invade their neighbor’s three southern border provinces in 1068, Dai Viet ruler Ly Thanh-Tong immediately retaliates by attacking Champa.
These events are repeated in 1069, when the Viet general Ly Thuong Kiet takes a fleet to Champa and occupies Vijaya.
Rudravarman and fifty thousand others are taken into captivity, eventually purchasing his freedom in exchange for three northern districts of his realm.
This extends the Viet borders to the seventeenth parallel.
A leader in southern Champa, taking advantage of the debacle, rebels and establishes an independent kingdom.
The unprecedented development under the Song Dynasty of large estates, whose owners manage to evade paying their share of taxes, has resulted in an increasingly heavy burden of taxation on the peasantry.
The drop in state revenues, a succession of budget deficits, and widespread inflation prompts the Emperor Shenzong of Song to seek advice from Wang Anshi.
Though Wang is from southern China, he comes from a family of imperial scholars (Jìnshì) and had placed fourth in the imperial exam of 1042.
He had passed the first twenty years of his career in the regional government of the lower Yangtze region, gaining practical experience in local governance., which guides his analysis in formulating solutions to revitalize the ailing Song society.
Wang believes that the state has the responsibility to provide for its people the essentials for a decent living standard: "The state should take the entire management of commerce, industry, and agriculture into its own hands, with a view to succoring the working classes and preventing them from being ground into the dust by the rich."
(Nourse, Mary A.
1944.
A Short History of the Chinese, 3rd edition.
P.136) Wang had come to power as second privy councilor in 1069.
It is here that he has introduced and promulgated his reform policy (xin fa).
There are three main components to this policy: 1) state finance and trade, 2) defense and social order, and 3) education and improving of governance.
Some of the finance reforms includes paying cash for labor in place of corvée labor, increase the supply of copper coins, improve management of trade, direct government loan to farmers during planting seasons and to be repaid at harvest.
He believes that foundation of the state rests on the well being of the common people.
To limit speculation and eliminate private monopolies, he initiates price control and regulates wages and sets up pensions for the aged and unemployed.
The state also begins to institute public orphanages, hospitals, dispensaries, hospices, cemeteries, and reserve granaries.
The military reform centers on a new institution of the baojia system or organized households.
This is done to ensure collective responsibility in society and will later be used to strengthen local defense.
He also proposes the creation of systems to breed military horses, the more efficient manufacture of weapons and training of the militia.
To improve education and government, he seeks to break down the barrier between clerical and official careers as well as improving their supervision to prevent connections being used for personal gain.
The Fujiwara control the Japanese throne until the reign of Emperor Go-Sanjō, the first emperor not born of a Fujiwara mother since the ninth century.
Go-Sanjo, determined to restore imperial control through strong personal rule, begins to implement reforms aimed at curbing Fujiwara influence.
He also establishes an office to compile and validate estate records with the aim of reasserting central control.
Many shōen are not properly certified, and large landholders, like the Fujiwara, feel threatened with the loss of their lands.
Boleslaw has provided Iziaslav with military support, with which he returns to Kiev on May 1069 and takes back the throne.
Magnus, having reigned for less than three years, becomes ill and dies in Nidaros (Trondheim) on April 28, 1069.
The sagas posit that Magnus died of ringworm, but modern scholars have proposed that he instead may have died of ergotism (poisoning by the Claviceps purpurea fungus).
Snorri Sturluson writes briefly in the Saga of Harald Hardrade that Magnus was "an amiable king and bewailed by the people."
Magnus's kingship has been downplayed in later history partly due to his short tenure, and because most of it was together with his brother.
The subsequently long reign of Olaf also contributes to overshadow Magnus's reign, combined with the fact that the later Norwegian royal dynasties only descend (or claimed descent) from Olaf.
The king known today as Magnus VI of Norway (the first Norwegian king known to use regnal numbers) originally used the regnal number IV for himself in contemporary Latin letters, leaving out Magnus Haraldsson.
As the numbering system has seen changes in modern times, Magnus Haraldsson is today included as Magnus II.
Kresimir greatly expands Croatia along the Adriatic coastland and in the mainland eastwards.
He makes the ban of Slavonia, Dmitar Zvonimir, of the related Svetoslavić brand of his house, his principal adviser with the title Duke (or ban) of Croatia.
This act brings Slavonia into the Croatian fold definitively.
It is notable that, according to some royal documents, Kresimir rules with three of his bans, each having a jurisdiction over a major part of the kingdom; Zvonimir as a Ban of Slavonia (circa 1065–1075), Gojčo (1060–1069), who is a Ban of Littoral Croatia, and a Ban of Bosnia.
He has the Constantinople recognize him in 1069 as supreme ruler of the parts of Dalmatia that the Empire had controlled since the Croatian dynastic struggle of 997.
The empire is currently at war both with the Seljuq Turks in Asia and the Normans in southern Italy, so Kresimir takes the opportunity and, avoiding an imperial nomination as proconsul or eparch, consolidates his holdings as the regnum Dalmatiae et Chroatia.
This is not a formal title, but it designates a unified political-administrative territory, which has been the chief desire of the Croatian kings.
Kresimir gives the island of Maun, near Nin, to the monastery of St. Krševan in Zadar in 1069, in thanks for the "expansion of the kingdom on land and on sea, by the grace of the omnipotent God" (quia Deus omnipotenus terra marique nostrum prolungavit regnum).
In his surviving document, Kresimir nevertheless does not fail to point out that it was "our own island that lies on our Dalmatian sea" (nostram propriam insulam in nostro Dalmatico mari sitam, que vocatur Mauni).
Harold had married Gruffydd's widow Ealdgyth, though she was to be widowed again three years later.
Gruffydd's realm had been divided again into the traditional kingdoms.
Bleddyn ap Cynfyn and his brother Rhiwallon had come to an agreement with Harold and had been given the rule of Gwynedd and Powys.
Thus when Harold was defeated and killed at the Battle of Hastings in 1066, the Normans reaching the borders of Wales had been confronted by the traditional kingdoms rather than a single king.
Gruffydd had left two sons who in 1069 challenge Bleddyn and Rhiwallon at the battle of Mechain in an attempt to win back part of their father's kingdom.
However, they are defeated, one being killed and the other dying of exposure after the battle.
Rhiwallon is also killed in this battle, leaving Bleddyn to rule Gwynedd and Powys alone.
Gytha, mother of the defeated King Harold, had been living in Exeter after the Norman conquest of 1066, and this may have caused the city to become a center of resistance to William the Conqueror.
Another reason for discontent may have been William's insistence that the city's traditional annual tribute of eighteen pounds must be increased.
After Exeter's citizens rejected William's demand that they should swear an oath of fealty to him, he had marched to the city in 1068 and laid siege to it for eighteen days before it capitulated.
The citizens of Exeter had been able to withstand William's siege thanks to the city wall, which had been first built by the Romans and extensively repaired in around 928 by King Athelstan.
Although the siege had ended with the surrender of the city, William had ordered a castle to be built within the wall to safeguard his position.
The place selected is at the highest point, inside the northern angle of the wall, on a volcanic outcrop.
The building of the castle had been left to Baldwin FitzGilbert who was appointed castellan, among other honors.
A deep ditch and internal rampart have been constructed between the northwestern and northeastern city walls, forming a roughly square enclosure with sides of about 600 ft.
The Domesday Book of 1086 reports that 48 houses had been destroyed in Exeter since the King came to England—this has been interpreted by historians to mean that this many houses were on the site cleared for the castle.
A large stone gatehouse, which still survives, is built into the bank at the south side of the enclosure.
It has clear elements of Anglo-Saxon architecture, such as long-and-short quoins and double triangular-headed windows, suggesting that it was built very early by Anglo-Saxon masons on the Normans' orders.
At this early stage, the rampart is probably surmounted by a stockade, though two corner turrets are soon built where the bank meets the city walls, the western one of which (mistakenly known as "Athelstan's Tower") is still present.
The stockade is soon replaced by a masonry curtain wall.
The remains of this wall shows that it was bonded into the repaired city walls, but not the gatehouse, indicating that it was built from the former towards the latter Another early enhancement is the construction of a protective barbican over the city side of the drawbridge.
There is evidence that the castle was attacked before it was completed.
This evidence is both physical, in the form of repairs to Athelstan's Tower; and documentary, in a report made by Orderic Vitalis of an attack made on Exeter in 1069.
Henry had in the late 1060s demonstrated his determination to reduce any opposition and to enlarge the national boundaries.
He has led expeditions against the Lutici and the margrave of a district east of Saxony.
Much more serious is Henry's struggle with Otto of Nordheim, duke of Bavaria.
Otto belongs to the rich and influential Saxon family of the counts of Northeim, and having distinguished himself in war and peace alike, in 1061 had received the Stem Duchy of Bavaria from the Dowager Empress Agnes of Poitou, widow of Emperor Henry III and mother of the child Emperor Henry IV.
In 1062, he had assisted Archbishop Anno II of Cologne to seize Henry IV at Kaiserswerth in order to deprive his mother of power.
Otto had led a successful expedition into Hungary in 1063 and had taken a prominent part in the Empire's government during the King's minority.
In 1064, he had gone to Italy to settle a papal schism and had been largely instrumental in securing the banishment from court of Archbishop Adalbert of Bremen-Hamburg.
He had crossed the Alps in the royal interests on two other occasions and in 1069 had shared in two expeditions to the east of Germany.
Otto is in 1070 accused by a certain Egeno von Konradsburg of being privy to a plot to murder the king, and it is decided he should submit to trial by combat with his accuser at Goslar.
The duke smells treason and asks for a safe-conduct to and from the place of meeting.
When this is refused, he declines to appear and is consequently placed under the imperial ban and deprived of Bavaria, while his Saxon estates are plundered.