Modu

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Modu (冒頓; c. 234 BCE – 174 BCE), or Modun, was the chanyu of the Xiongnu who was chiefly responsible for their rise to power as a nomadic empire on the steppes north of China. Years prior to his ascension, he was sent to the Qin as a political hostage amidst the Xiongnu incursions into China. He succeeded his father Touman after having him assassinated on a hunting trip.

Biography

The eldest son of Touman Chanyu, Modu was not favoured as a successor to the Xiongnu throne. When Touman was defeated in a war against the Qin general Meng Tian, he offered Modu to the Qin as a political hostage in exchange for peace, thereby "kill[ing] two birds with one stone", while creating Modu's youngest brother heir. Not content with this, in 215 BCE, Touman Chanyu renewed his attack on the Qin by raiding a section of the Great Wall then under construction. By violating the truce, he sought to incite the Qin into executing Modu and eliminating him as a threat forever.

Modu was rounded up with other Xiongnu hostages in Yangzhou City by Meng Tian's soldiers and moved to the local prison, where they awaited their death. By chance, two youxia were in the city investigating the whereabouts of Yang Duanhe, the commander of a new military department called the Department of Immortality that was antagonistic towards Meng Tian. Meng Tian suspected correctly that Duanhe was secretly collaborating with Touman and tipped off one of the youxia that they could find a lead in the Xiongnu prisoners. Armed with this information, the youxia broke Modu out of jail while he was being interrogated with the intent of enlisting his aid as a guide in Xiongnu lands.

Modu agreed to honour this debt to the youxia but initially hid the fact he was a a prince and contender for the Xiongnu throne. He reconvened with the two youxia at the northernmost watchtower that looked out onto the steppe beyond the Great Wall. There, he advised them to wait at Mu Us Village while he searched for his tribe. The youxia were mistrustful that he would bother to meet with them again once he had returned to his tribe, but he convinced them that they could not accompany him in his search without slowing him down to the extent that they would never be able to catch up to his tribe's movements. In fact, Modu's tribe was encamped at Mu Us Village at that very moment. When the youxia who rescued him earlier was caught in a fight with his tribe, he intervened to stop his men and finally revealed his background to the youxia. He claimed that his father had "installed [his] youngest brother as the next puppet king" and sold some of their own people into slavery. The youxia in turn opened up about their investigation, and Modu saw that their goals aligned, having also suspected collusion between Touman and the Qin.

He shared his intel that his father's troops were on the way to a nearby Qin village, and the youxia left to further investigate Touman while Modu rallied his forces. Soon, his scouts discovered that his father was gathering an army to mount an attack on the Great Wall at Tulu Pass in an apparent attempt to lure Meng Tian out. Modu hurried to relay this information to the two youxia, first making contact with Yu Ying, the youxia who was not directly involved in his earlier rescue, then finding the other just in time to save them from an ambush from Touman's warriors. Grateful for his help, they wished them good blessings and acknowledged him as the rightful chanyu of the Xiongnu.

Behind the scenes

Modu Chanyu is a historical figure who will feature in the upcoming mobile game Assassin's Creed: Jade.

Name

Modu is the romanization and pronunciation chosen for the name of the historical chanyu in Assassin's Creed: Jade. Written in Chinese characters as 冒頓, there has been uncertainty on the closest contemporary pronunciation of the name since at least as early as the Tang period. According to a specialist on Central Eurasian studies, Christopher I. Beckwith, the name itself is a phonetic transcription of a Xiongnu name that likely later evolved into the word baγatur, meaning 'hero', while Chinese historian Luo Xin (罗新) argues that it was actually an appellation to the title of chanyu as opposed to a personal name in its own right.

The character 冒, meaning 'to cover', is commonly read in modern Mandarin as mào and in Cantonese as mou⁶, with the corresponding Middle Chinese pronunciation being reconstructed by sinologist Edwin G. Pulleyblank as *məw^h. However, it has a less common reading of mò in Mandarin and mak⁶ in Cantonese when meaning 'covetous', whose corresponding Middle Chinese pronunciation Pulleyblank reconstructs as *mək. The confusion stems from not knowing which of the two would correspond closer to the way it was pronounced in the chanyu's lifetime. In contrast, the second character 頓 only has one Middle Chinese reading, *twən, corresponding to Mandarin dùn and Cantonese deon⁶. In his 8th-century commentary on Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian, the Tang-era historian Sima Zhen glosses the reading of the name as the same as if it were written 墨頓 *mək-twən, for which reason scholars today choose the Mandarin reading Modun over Maodun.

The confusion has been further compounded by an alternative reading of the name as Modu. This convention has only been traced back no further than the 11th century historian Song Qi. He glossed the pronunciation of the second syllable 頓 as homophonic to 毒, meaning 'poison' and pronounced *duok in Middle Chinese. On this basis, some modern Chinese historians have taken to pronouncing the second syllable as the same as they would the Chinese word for poison, i.e. dú in Mandarin and duk⁶ in Cantonese, yielding the full reading of the name in Mandarin as Modu. This entered the mainstream with the Qing-era Kangxi Dictionary. According to Pulleyblank, there is no source or reasoning supporting Song Qi's unconventional reading of the second syllable 頓 and therefore the pronunciation Modu is incorrect.

Historical information

In his backstory for closed beta test for the game, Modu was given over to the Qin by his father Touman Chanyu to serve as a political hostage, a form of human collateral, for the cessation of hostilities between the Xiongnu and the Qin. In hopes of getting Modu killed, Touman then renews his attacks on the Qin, legally triggering the condition for Modu's execution, but Modu is rescued just in time by the protagonist. He then resumes his rebellion against Touman for leadership of the chanyu and is portrayed as a righteous saviour to his people whom his father exploits and sells into slavery.

Historically, a similar course of events occurred between Touman and Modu according to Sima Qian's Records of the Grand Historian, with the notable difference being that Touman had sent Modu as a hostage to the Yuezhi instead of the Qin. Touman then launched an attack on the Yuezhi with the intention of either inciting Modu's execution or causing his demise in the fog of war, but Modu conducted a daring escape on horseback that impressed Touman enough for him to reinstate him as a commander with 10,000 warriors to call his own.

Having never forgiven his father, however, Modu continued to conspire his usurpation, inventing the whistling arrow for the plot. The whistling arrow emitted a signature noise while in flight, and Modu brutally trained his troops to synchronistically unleash arrows at any target designated by his whistling arrow without hesitation. He tested their unflinching obedience by ordering the deaths of his favourite horse and one of his most beloved wives in this way and executing all who refused. Finally, when his troops had been thoroughly conditioned as such, he assassinated Touman on a hunting trip by targeting him with his whistling arrow, signalling his men to ambush him with a hail of arrows. The whistling arrow was alluded to in the closed beta test of Assassin's Creed: Jade with the Whistler bow.

Appearances

• Assassin's Creed: Jade