d him. The Kao
family, which may have been originally a Hsien-pi family, had its
estates in eastern China and so was closely associated with the eastern
Chinese gentry, who were the actual rulers of the Toba State. In 534
this group took the impotent emperor of their own creation to the city
of Yeh in the east, where he reigned _de jure_ for a further sixteen
years. Then he was deposed, and Kao Yang made himself the first emperor
of the Northern Ch'i dynasty (550-577).

The national Toba group, on the other hand, found another man of the
imperial family and established him in the west. After a short time this
puppet was removed from the throne and a man of the Yue-wen family made
himself emperor, founding the "Northern Chou dynasty" (557-580). The
Hsien-pi family of Yue-wen was a branch of the Hsien-pi, but was closely
connected with the Huns and probably of Turkish origin. All the still
existing remains of Toba tribes who had eluded sinification moved into
this western empire.

The splitting of the Toba empire into these two separate realms was the
result of the policy embarked on at the foundation of the empire. Once
the tribal chieftains and nobles had been separated from their tribes
and organized militarily, it was inevitable that the two elements should
have different social destinies. The nobles could not hold their own
against the Chinese; if they were not actually eliminated in one way or
another, they disappeared into Chinese families. The rest, the people of
the tribe, became destitute and were driven to revolt. The northern
peoples had been unable to perpetuate either their tribal or their
military organization, and the Toba had been equally unsuccessful in
their attempt to perpetuate the two forms of organization alongside each
other.

These social processes are of particular importance because the ethnical
disappearance of the northern peoples in China had nothing to do with
any racial inferiority or with any particular power of assimilation; it
was a natural process resulting from the different economic, social, and
cultural organizations of the northern peoples and the Chinese.

2 _Appearance of the (Goek) Turks_

The Toba had liberated themselves early in the fifth century from the
Juan-juan peril. None of the fighting that followed was of any great
importance. The Toba resorted to the old means of defence against
nomads--they built great walls. Apart from that, after their move
southward to Loyan