This swing of the pendulum from the center to the periphery is seen in other ways as well. Later Han saw an increasing restiveness of various groups along the western and especially the northern -- Inner Asian -- frontiers. During much of the Han, the Inner Asian groups had been bound together by the Xiongnu empire, a mirror-image of the Han largely dependent on the funneling-off of resources from the Chinese state.(6) The collapse of the Xiongnu regime under Later Han led to an atomization of these groups, which now came to be placed not under the fundamentally political label "Xiongnu"(7) but ethno-linguistic categories such as "Särbi" (a reconstruction of the original term, based on the Chinese transcription "Xianbei"). They played various, sometimes contradictory roles at the edges of the Chinese world, raiding one year, in the next serving as an increasingly important supplement to the emperor's soldiery. Though not "Chinese," in terms of language, custom, or mode of life, neither were they something entirely foreign. Many of these groups had lived from time immemorial in the frontier zones between the steppe and the sown.
Among these groups there was a significant diversity. Some spoke ancient forms of Tibetan. Others spoke Turkic tongues. The most important during the early medieval period were the Särbi, who are generally though to have used an ancestral form of Mongolian.
What must be recognized, at any rate, is that these ethno-linguistic groups were not rigidly discrete entities but were in a constant state of interaction and recombination. Very early in the history of the Särbi, for example, following the fall and flight of the last Xiongnu lord, at the end of the first century AD, "more than 100,000 households (luo) of the remaining tribes went to Liaodong, where they lived interspersed among (its inhabitants, most of whom, at least, were Särbi). They all called themselves 'Särbi soldiers'."(8)
As a group, the peoples who called themselves "Särbi" never did take on an enduring, overarching political organization. In the third century, however, smaller, more compact "nations" began to form out of, or around them.(9) These were complex political entities -- transcending ethno-linguistic limits -- built around loyalties and beliefs shared by a particular group of individuals. A minor example is the Qifu, a conglomeration of several groups that had come down into the frontier lands of Inner Mongolia from steppelands north of the Yinshan Mountains.(10) Only one -- the core Qifu clan -- was clearly Särbi; some were Turkic. As nations sometimes do, the Qifu crystallized around a myth. Entering the Yinshan region, so the legend went, they encountered a "huge reptile," with the shape of a "divine tortoise."(11) To this, they sacrificed a horse, praying "If you are a good spirit, then open the gate; if an evil spirit, then through the stopper we will not pass" Y µ½ ¯« ¤] ¡A «K ¶} ¸ô ¡C ´c ¯« ¤] ¡A ¹E ¶ë ¤£ ³q ¡C Suddenly it was gone, and in its place appeared a boy, who grew up to be "Qaghan of the Qifu, brave demi-god"; a successor to the holy boy "brought together many tribes; the tribal army gradually grew stronger" ¦} Ý ½Ñ ³¡ ¡A ³¡ ²³ º¥ ²± .
Here we see the development around a group belonging to the dominant ethno-linguistic group -- Särbi, as was often the case -- of a complex polity built around a shared mythology. Our evidence is quite slender and it is difficult to say how tightly these merged culturally; whether, for instance, they came to speak a common tongue. But they did, clearly, band together to push into the rich frontierlands. Soon after the formation of the Qifu nation, we see in this region the rise of the Tuoba, or Tabgatch as dominant power in the central frontier region. In the mid-third century, the Qifu leader led a great exodus to the southwest, where after enduring as a polity for more than a century, they founded perhaps the most minor of all the minor Sixteen Kingdoms, the "Western Qin."
...
Särbi had legends of coming from far away. Some, perhaps, did. Others had lived on the fringes of the empire for a very long time. In the course of turbulent times, they developed into nations -- with names and myths that afforded them a sense of collective identity. They did so both because they were endangered by others and because, like the armies of the interior, they wished to lay hold of the material wealth of the Chinese lands. The lords of these new, invented nations quickly came to be drawn to the book as well, or -- and perhaps this is true of all -- to what they wished to take from the book. In form and content, a Northern Wei tomb discovered at Guyuan in Ningxia was apparently built for a man of the Särbi elite. It contains stirrups and swords, and depicts the fellow on the coffin in a form seen among the Hephtalites, at the other end of Asia. Incorporated into this, however, in a complex interweaving, are Chinese elements -- an image of the Queen Mother of the West on the coffin's cover, and on its sides, depictions of traditional Chinese morality tales, such as that of a fellow who dug a pit in which to put his son so that he would have enough food to keep his mother, and in the process found a pot of gold. To take this to an even more interesting level, the clothing worn by the tale's protagonist is not traditional Chinese garb, but that of a Särbi.(38) In this context, it is interesting to note that, apart from military treatises, the Xiaojing was one of the few texts translated into the Särbi "national language" (guoyu).(39) As the early history of the Tabgatch -- with its acts of royal parricide -- will show, this did not always work for the Tabgatch. But then again, neither did it always work for the self-defined Chinese of the Southern Dynasties.
These changes did not take place in a smooth, orderly fashion; instead, they occurred in eddies of cultural interaction, in different forms under different circumstances. In her "Hybrid Vigor" chapter, Audrey Spiro describes for us the process of "localization" -- the creation of a cultural unity of a particular group of people in a particular place. The discussion is built around a Buddhist stele dating from 471 in the Chang'an region, on the back of which is depicted the tale of Sumedha (Ch. Rutong), an early incarnation of the historical Buddha, ending in his birth as kyamuni. Using clearly recognizable iconic elements, the images on the stone call up in the viewer an already-known story. At the same time, as Spiro says, it "turns the old into something new." On the one hand, as is quite familiar, it transports a tale from India to China -- placing the final birth of kyamuni in China. At the same time, at least certain episodes of this tale turn from the "Chinese" as well, to the Särbi; in the pictorial depiction of garb we see a style that "calls into question the very meaning of 'native'." Sumedha is "born a Särbi but in a later reincarnation he has become, at least in part, Chinese, like the virtuous wife on his right. However in the next scene he reverts to Särbi identity while awaiting his final rebirth." Spiro goes on to discuss the depictions of donors shown on the base of the stele, in which some men at least wear Särbi garb, while the women wear Chinese. "It is possible that this donor procession reflects the actual ethnic mix of the donor family. It is more likely, however, that this arrangement was the conventional pattern accepted by the Buddhist community in Chang'an, an effective ethnic-political compromise that, like that of the narrative scenes, was pleasing to all in its suggested inclusiveness. By this date, intermarriage among Chinese, Tuoba, Di, Qiang and perhaps still other ethnic or tribal groups in Shaanxi province had produced a generation of Chang'anese whose ethnic lifestyles -- as proclaimed by clothing -- were undoubtedly more a matter of choice, expedience, or opportunism, than of genealogy."
www.ac.wwu.edu/~pearce/introduction.htm