Please note that the content of this book primarily consists of articles available from Wikipedia or other free sources online. The Southern Liang was a state of the Sixteen Kingdoms during the Jin Dynasty (265-420) in China. The founding family Tufa was of Xianbei ethnicity and distant relative of the Tuoba imperial house of Northern Wei. According to the Jin Shu, the name was changed from Tuoba to Tufa because one of the Tufa ancestors was born on a blanket, and in the Xianbei language, "Tufa" meant "blanket." The Sixteen Kingdoms , or less commonly the Sixteen States, were a collection of numerous short-lived sovereign states in China proper and its neighboring areas from 304 to 439 AD after the retreat of the Jin Dynasty (265-420) to South China and before the establishment of the Northern Dynasties.