After the death of Empress Wu the true T'ang Dynasty resumed control. Of particular note is Ming Huang (or Hsuan Tsung) (712-756), the "Brilliant Emperor" under whom China stood in the very forefront of civilization, the most powerful, enlightened, progressive and best-governed empire on earth. By the middle of this 8th century the imperial officers began exchanging excess grain for various luxury goods and the effect was to expand a market for highly skilled artisan wares such as fine silks, porcelains, lacquer works, etc. A substantial enlargement of merchant and artisan classes ensued, with an increase in urban growth. Sugar cane, native to Bengal, was imported in China and adapted itself readily in the neighborhood of Canton where a wooded hinterland supplied the great amount of fuel necessary for its processing. Tea, known in Szechwan for centuries, now spread throughout the country. (Ref. 260) From the Han to the T'ang dynasties China's population had varied greatly but had now built back up to about 50 million people, kept from being still larger, at least in part, by infanticide. (Ref. 46, 101)

The army was professional and largely recruited from and commanded by "barbarians". In fighting with the expanding Arabs in west Turkistan, the Arabs were helped by the Karluk Turks, who attacked the Chinese from the rear. In the steppe, the Uigur and Girghiz Turks were now in control and the last of the Turkic peoples to reside in Mongolia. In China, proper, in 754, 75% of the total population lived north of the Yangtze River. The city of Ch'ang-an had 2,000,000 inhabitants with half of those living within the walled inner city of 30 square miles. A total of 26 cities had registered populations of over 500,000. The oldest datable printed materials were produced in 770 when 1,000,000 copies of a Buddhist charm were run off by commission from a Japanese empress. (Ref. 101, 213)

It has been said that Emperor Hsuan-tsung lived too long, because in 745 at age 60 he fell in love with one of his sons' concubines, Lady Yang (Yang Kuei-fei), and soon her family monopolized the most powerful ministerial posts. One of these, An Lu-Shan, an audacious Turk, had the run of the palace as Lady Yang 's adopted son. Soon thereafter when the "barbarians" of Asia again bore down on the Chinese borders, An Lu-Shan, then a general, rose in rebellion against the T'ang forces and they had to be recalled from the frontiers to defend the emperor. The rebellion was checked in 763, but the T'ang Dynasty had been eroded and Chinese power did not return to central Asia for six centuries. (See also previous section, this chapter). This type of revolt by a border "guard" was always a threat to the Chinese central authority and explains, in part, their continual efforts to keep the military under tight control. The same paranoia determined their policy of breaking up undue concentrations of wealth. No one - military commander or rich trader – was ever to be in a position to challenge the authority of the political ruler. (Ref. 279) In the An Lu-Shan revolt some 3, 500,000 lost their lives and this was followed in 762 by a plague in Shantung province with more than one-half of the people dying. The disease risk in the south was greater than the risk of death on the nomad frontier. (Ref. 101, 140) Intervention of the Uighur Turks from Mongolia helped to save the T'ang Dynasty after the tragedies, but thereafter the T'ang court was essentially a vassal of the Uighur khan. In this period of tragedy from revolt and disease, Chinese poets reached great heights, with Li Po becoming the "Keats" of China.

In Manchuria, the proto-Mongolian people, the Khitan, had begun to raid the Chinese border as early as 695 and they continued throughout this 8th century. A little to their east were the P'o-Hai, a powerful kingdom set on the Chinese model but established by the remnants of the Korean Koguryo nobles. They remained independent from 710 on for some two centuries. (Ref. 8)

We have previously indicated that for centuries it had been the custom for the Japanese royal family to change its capital each time a ruling emperor died. The so-called Nara period started with the capital at that city in 710, but this metropolis was too large to be torn down and moved each generation and that practice was stopped, at least until the final move to Kyoto in A.D. 794. Both Nara and Kyoto had been constructed using Baghdad as a model. (Ref. 8) After Emperor Kammu transferred his capital to Kyoto, Japanese art, previously under Chinese influences, developed its own mature style and taste. (Ref. 19) After Kammu's death the emperor's role deteriorated somewhat. Throughout this period, under Fujiwara ministers, court life had become a great pageant of ceremonies and costumes, and gradually the emperor's person, itself, became so taboo and awe-inspiring, as a rouged and gilded doll, that he began to be veiled from the world and the Fujiwaras took all responsibility for decisions, good or bad, shielding the throne. gradually came to believe in an emperor who was at the same time "a mortal god, a zero infinity, an impotent omnipotence"1. New civil and penal codes and the Yoro Laws, which were revisions of the Taiho Reforms, came into effect about 757 and gradually became more effective.

In 752 the Great Buddha at Nara, a 53 foot bronze figure, was dedicated as the cherished project of the Shomas. At the end of the century, in 790, Japan had a sustained epidemic with women under 30 years and males of all ages afflicted. (Ref. 140)

Most of Korea was now united under the Silla Dynasty. Buddhism and art flourished, particularly at the capital on the site of modern Kyongju.

The T'ai, or Shan, peoples had been infiltrating down into the southeast Asian peninsula for several centuries and now they formed a kingdom in Yunnan province of China.

The Dvaravati kingdom of Khmer people was Buddhist, rather than Brahman in religion, and in this century migrants were sent to the upper Menam Valley where they established the independent Kingdom of Haripunjaya, with a capital near the present Chiengmai. All of this occurred in what is now Thailand. Burma was under Indian influence and had Hindu commercial settlements on the Tenasserim coast and at the principal river mouths. In Cambodia the war-like course of the Chenlas was brought to an end when a king from Java entered and beheaded the Chenla ruler. Although the Javanese soon withdrew, that kingdom declined. On the Atlantic coast was Champa, under strong Indian influence. (Ref. 119, 37, 8)

Throughout the first millennium after Christ, but particularly from the 7th to the 16th century, Indian culture and religious influence spread throughout Indonesia and in particular it created a distinctive civilization in Java. This society, controlled by the Buddhist king of the Sailendra Dynasty, was second only to the Khmers in southeast Asia. (Ref. 18, 19) In this and the next century, Arab traders brought the Moslem religion to the Philippines and then, in turn, came the Indians. (Ref. 153)