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| 8923411413 | dynastic cycle | the theory that Chinese dynasties go through a predictable cycle, from early vigor and growth to subsequent decline as administrators become lax and the well-off find ways to avoid paying taxes, cutting state revenues |  | 0 |
| 8923428712 | China | the largest country of the world at the time; it's population probably exceeded all of Europe; this country was the world's first to produce government-issued paper money | 1 | |
| 8923436981 | paper money | legal currency issued on paper; developed as a convenient alternative to metal coins |  | 2 |
| 8923458551 | compass | a tool developed in Song times to aid in navigation at sea; consisted of a magnetic needle that would point north in a small protective case |  | 3 |
| 8923487668 | Song and Liao | the two long lasting states from the fragmented Tang China; the first controlled almost all of China proper south of the Great Wall; the second was ruled by the house of Khitan and held the territory of modern Beijing and areas north; the first was more populated, but the latter was the militarily stronger | 4 | |
| 8923511944 | Taizu | the founder of the Song Dynasty; placed armies under central government control; retired or rotated his own generals and assigned civil officials to supervise them; in time civil bureaucrats came to dominate every aspect of Song government and society |  | 5 |
| 8923626993 | bribery | essentially how the Song defended against the Khitans; they made huge payments of silk and gold to the Khitans in exchange for them not to take them over |  | 6 |
| 8923658678 | Jurchens | the state that conquered the Khitans and a third of the Song territory | 7 | |
| 8923662099 | Hangzhou | the place where the Song court was reestablished by a prince | 8 | |
| 8923674949 | examination system | a system of selecting officials based on competitive written examinations; aristocratic habits and prejudices largely disappeared after this system was fully developed | 9 | |
| 8923722538 | movable type | a system of printing in which one piece of type was used for each unique character; never used widely in China because whole-block printing was cheaper | 10 | |
| 8923762277 | Ouyang Xiu | a busy official, who wrote love songs, histories and the first analytical catalogue of rubbings of ancient stone and bronze inscriptions | 11 | |
| 8923776989 | Sima Guang | served as prim minister; wrote a narrative history of China from the Warring States Period to the founding of the Song Dynasty | 12 | |
| 8923792024 | Su Shi | wrote more than 27 hundred poems and 800 letters while active in opposition politics; and esteemed painter, calligrapher, and a theorist of the arts | 13 | |
| 8923804225 | Su Song | a high official; constructed an 80 foot tall mechanical clock; adapted the water-powered clock invented in the Tang period by adding a chain-driven mechanism | 14 | |
| 8923820789 | Wang Anshi | the chancellor in 1069 who proposed a series of sweeping reforms designed to raise revenues and help small farmers | 15 | |
| 8923844039 | Neo-Confucianism | the revival of Confucian thinking that began in the eleventh century; supported by Zhu Xi |  | 16 |
| 8923892177 | concubine | a women contracted to a man as a secondary spouse; although subordinate to the wife, her sons were considered legitimate heirs | 17 | |
| 8923899564 | foor binding | the practice of binding the feet of girls with long strips of cloth to keep them from growing large | 18 | |
| 8923915499 | Fujiwara | the family who took over political management, who supplied most of the empresses of the period; their dominance represented the privatization of political power and a reversion to clan politics; for the next thousand years, Japan's political contenders sought to manipulate the emperors rather than control them | 19 | |
| 8923940343 | cloistered government | a system in which an emperor retired to aBuddhist monastery, but continued to exercise power by controlling his young son on the throne |  | 20 |
| 8923961059 | The Tale of Genji | a Japanese literary masterpiece written by Lady Murasaki about court life |  | 21 |
| 8923969863 | Esoteric Buddhism | a sect of Buddhism that maintains that the secrets of enlightenment have been secretly transmitted from the Buddha and can be accessed through initiation in to the mandalas, mudras, and mantras | 22 | |
| 8923987319 | Kiyomori | a Taira (warrior clan) who dominated the court, taking the position of prime minister and marrying his daughter to the emperor; his relatives became governors of more than 30 provinces, managed some 500 tax-exempt estates, and amassed a fortune in the trade with Song China and Koryo Korea | 23 | |
| 8924024760 | Minamoto | the clan that managed to defeat the Kiyomori; the leader, Yorimoto became shogun (general-in-chief); this began the Kamakura Shogunate; often referred to as Japan's feudal period because it was dominated by a military class whose members were tied to their superiors by bonds of loyalty and supported by landed estates rather than salaries | 24 | |
| 8924083493 | Bushido | literally the "Way of the Warrior"; the code of conduct by which samurai were expected to live | 25 | |
| 8924089710 | military land stewards | officials placed in charge of overseeing estates | 26 | |
| 8924097055 | military governors | officials appointed to enforce the law in the provinces and oversee samurai there | 27 | |
| 8924108460 | seppuku | the ritual suicide of slashing the samurai's belly when he was disloyal | 28 | |
| 8924115475 | Zen | a school of Buddhism that emphasized meditation and truths that could not be conveyed in words | 29 | |
| 8924131694 | The Tale of the Heike | written by a courtier in the early thirteenth century, tells the story of the fall of the Taira family and the rise of the Minamoto clan; reached a large audience because blind minstrels would chant section of the tale to the accompaniment of the lute | 30 |
