Authors: Christopher I. Beckwith
Tags: #History, #General, #Asia, #Europe, #Eastern, #Central Asia
Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia From the Bronze Age to the Present (21 page)
57
See
appendix B
. For forms of the name Saka in eastern Eurasia, see endnote 53.
58
They evidently go back to the reports of the envoy and explorer Chang Ch’ien, who was sent to find the Yüeh-chih (*Tok
w
ar) in 139–138
BC
but was caught and detained on the way there and again on the way back. He only escaped back to China in 126
BC
, along with his Hsiung-nu wife and his former slave. For a translation of the account of his journey in the
Shih chi,
see Watson (1961, II: 264 et seq.).
59
The problem of the ethnolinguistic affiliation of the Hsiung-nu is still very far from settled.
60
Coward and Kunjunni Raja (1990: 4).
61
Bilimoria (1998: 220–222).
62
This is my estimate, based on the discussion of his chronology given by E. Bruce Brooks (
http://www.umass.edu/wsp/results/dates/confucius.html
).
63
Most of these dates are disputed. I have taken the unnoted dates from Audi (1999). Most of the texts involved are accretional, so only parts of them could have been composed by their nominal authors.
64
According to the
Tso-chuan,
in the seventeenth year of the Duke of Chao
(Yang 1990: 1389). The whole quote runs:
. Although the standard
Tso-chuan
edition I cite here, by Yang Po-chün, has a doubled
character (i.e., his text has
,
), which he supports with citations of early texts and commentaries, the result is an extremely odd
lectio difficilior
with irregular scansion. Yang’s edition does not tell us which other versions of the text had or have only
one
; nor, so far as I noticed, does he say what any of these texts’ positions are on the stemma. Once again, the lack of a true
critical edition
leaves us in the dark. For an example of a critical edition of a Chinese text—the only one I have ever seen—see the model work by Thompson (1979), and note especially Thompson’s remarks in his preface.
65
Brooks (1999).
66
Hicks (1980, I: 104–111).
67
Cancik and Schneider (1996: 639).
68
Rolle (1989: 13).
69
On one problem with the “high” dates for him, see
appendix A
, on Avestan.
70
For example, Hildinger (2001) claims that “historically, nomads have lived in appalling poverty, at the very margin of life, and this poverty can be mitigated only by contact with settled peoples.” The exact opposite was true, as is pointed out in ancient and medieval travelers’ accounts, many of which have been translated into English.
71
A number of documents from Bactria written in Imperial Aramaic, dating to the fourth century, have recently been discovered. They will shed much light on the local administration and other details of the culture in Bactria during this period (Shaked 2004).
72
Hornblower and Spawforth (2003: 58).
73
Grenet (2005), Moribe (2005), de la Vaissière (2005a).
3
Between Roman and Chinese Legions
My family has married me off to the ends of the earth,
To live far away in the alien land of the Aśvin king.
A yurt is my dwelling, of felt are my walls;
For food I have meat, with koumiss to drink.
I’m always homesick and inside my heart aches;
I wish I were a yellow swan and could fly back home.
—Princess Hsi-chün of Han
The First Regional Empire Period in Eurasia
The central period of Classical Antiquity, from the third century
BC
to the third century
AD
, was marked most notably by the development of the Roman and Chinese empires. Agricultural, partly urbanized cultures, they expanded to great size until they dominated the western and eastern extremes of the Eurasian continent. Both expanded deep into Central Eurasia.
In the Western Steppe, the Sarmatians, the successors of the Scythians, gave way to their Iranian relatives, the Alans. In Western Central Asia, the migrating Tokharian confederation conquered the Greek state in Bactria, from which the Kushan Empire emerged and extended from Central Asia into northern India. Meanwhile, the new Persian Empire of the Parthians spread westward as far as the Greek city-states and contested the Near East with the Romans. The Tokharians’ old enemies, the Hsiung-nu, continued to dominate the Eastern Steppe until they divided into northern and southern halves. With Chinese help, the southern half destroyed the north and left the Eastern Steppe open to the Mongolic confederation of the Hsien-pei, who moved in from the mountains of western Manchuria and replaced the Hsiung-nu.
The volume of trade with Central Eurasia—the Silk Road—grew to such an extent that Roman and Chinese writers, who normally disdain to mention commerce, actually discuss it. But despite the trade, and a few long-distance diplomatic contacts, the Romans and Chinese remained far apart both geographically and culturally. They knew extremely little about each other or about the rest of the world beyond their immediate neighbors, in whom they were not very much interested either. Late in the period the movement of ideas along the trade routes, particularly the Buddhist and Christian faiths, had a great effect on both center and periphery.
The Roman Empire and Central Eurasia