Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia From the Bronze Age to the Present (23 page)

In about 50
BC
Kujula Kadphises, chief of the Kushan (Kusâna), subjugated the other four constituent chiefdoms of Tokhâristân and founded the Kushan Empire. He extended his realm southward into India as far as the mouth of the Indus, taking control of a maritime trade route that directly connected India with the Roman ports in Egypt, thus bypassing the Parthians and their taxes. The Kushans greatly profited from this trade. Their sway extended eastward into the Tarim region as well, where they left their mark in the name Küsän,
²³
the local form of the name of the capital of the later Tokharian-speaking kingdom of Kucha. Records from their rule in the characteristic Kharosthî script they used have been found as far east as Kroraina (Lou-lan). The Kushans were the most important single people responsible for the spread of Buddhism into Parthia, Central Asia, and China. The empire reached its height under the fifth ruler, Kanishka (Kaniska, fl. ca.
AD
150), who patronized Buddhism, among other religions.

The Kushan Empire is unfortunately little known except for its coinage and other material remains; to a great extent it remains a mystery. Ardaxšêr I, founder of the Sasanid Dynasty, attacked the Kushans and forced their submission to him in about
AD
225.

The Chinese Empire and Central Eurasia

The collapse of the Ch’in Dynasty in 210–206
BC
led to the formation of a new, long-lasting dynasty, the Western Han (210
BC
–
AD
6). Under Emperor Wu (r. 141–87
BC
), the Chinese once again set their sights on a vastly expanded empire. After several failed expeditions, between 127 and 119
BC
they won several major victories over the Hsiung-nu, capturing the Ordos region in the north—thus once again forcing the Hsiung-nu to flee from their ancestral homeland and move northward far beyond the great bend of the Yellow River—and also striking west, taking the strategic Ch’i-lien Mountains in Lung-hsi (the area of modern Kansu). The frontier walls built by the three northern kingdoms of the late Warring States period, Ch’in, Chao, and Yen, which had been linked up by Ch’in to run from Tun-huang to Liao-tung to hold conquered Hsiung-nu territory, were repaired, and the fortresses reoccupied. Emperor Wu also sent out expeditions into the Western Regions in an attempt to take control of the Silk Road cities from the Hsiung-nu. The reports of Chinese envoys and generals supplied the Chinese geographers and historians with much firsthand information on Central Eurasia from the Eastern Steppe and Tarim Basin west as far as Iran, and some much less precise secondhand information on regions beyond, including the Parthian and Roman empires.

The most important and vivid accounts are those of Chang Ch’ien (d. 113
BC
), who in 139
BC
left on a mission to entice the *Tok
^w
ar to return to their previous homeland in the region between Tun-huang and the Ch’i-lien Mountains. Chang was captured by the Hsiung-nu, among whom he lived for ten years before escaping and continuing his journey to the west. He was in Bactria in about 128 and returned home in 122
BC
after another, shorter stay among the Hsiung-nu.
²⁴
After being sent out again in 115, he returned and died two years later.
²⁵

The Han Dynasty histories’ description of the Hsiung-nu—“pure” pastoral nomads who herd their flocks, following the pastures and water, and grow up riding and hunting, so that they are “natural warriors”
²⁶
—is strikingly similar to the description of the Scythian pastoral nomads by Herodotus. The two peoples shared the same mode of life, down to details, as archaeology and many studies have confirmed.

Nevertheless, as with Herodotus, the most valuable information about the Hsiung-nu is to be found in other parts of the histories. A Chinese eunuch who had gone over to the Hsiung-nu and was treated with great favor by the Hsiung-nu emperor criticized the Central Eurasians’ liking for Chinese silks and Chinese food.

The Han armies and diplomats were eventually successful in reducing the power of the Hsiung-nu considerably and spreading Chinese culture into the steppe zone.

But the Hsiung-nu’s experience with the Chinese had hardened them and they fought back, always attempting to regain their southern homeland and to retain their control of the Central Asian cities. In fact, despite major Han successes in both regions, the Hsiung-nu continued to exercise effective control over the Tarim Basin cities. Chinese policies could be peaceful and fair:

The Chinese could also be treacherous and violent if they thought they could lure the Hsiung-nu into a trap so they could be massacred. Following just such a failed attempt to capture the Hsiung-nu ruler at the city of Ma-i, near the northeast bend of the Yellow River, in 124
BC
, open war broke out:

Despite their eventual division into two kingdoms in
AD
49, the Northern Hsiung-nu, the stronger of the two, continued to dominate much of Central Asia. Their influence extended as far as Sogdiana, where they were still considered the nominal suzerains of the region.

The Chinese dynastic histories complain about the distance between China and Central Asia as a major factor in establishing and maintaining military control over the region. However, the main reason China did not achieve more than nominal control over the cities of Eastern Central Asia is certainly economic. The economies of the Central Asian cities were founded on the trade relationship between the urban and rural peoples that had developed over centuries. The Hsiung-nu pastoral economy was not distinct from the agricultural and urban economies of Central Eurasia, and the active presence of the nomads was vital for the economic and political health of both the Hsiung-nu and the peoples of the Tarim cities.

The Hsiung-nu insistence on being allowed to trade freely at the Han frontier towns was opposed by some of the Chinese court officials, but the Han usually saw the comparative benefit to be obtained. When they agreed to allow the Hsiung-nu to trade, that meant peace, and the Hsiung-nu then rarely “raided” the frontier. In this connection it cannot be forgotten that the frontier established by the Chinese extended deep into Central Eurasian territory, so that the “Chinese” market towns were in regions where many—perhaps the majority—of the people were not ethnic Chinese. Even at the height of their power, the Hsiung-nu conducted raids (as contrasted with attacks during full-scale war with China)
³²
that penetrated only into the outer limits of former Hsiung-nu territory, places located in former Inner Mongolia, Manchuria, northern Shansi, Shensi, Kansu, and so on.
³³

The Hsien-pei in the Eastern Steppe

When Hsiung-nu power in the steppe declined, due partly to natural internal change and partly to Chinese attacks and political machinations, among other factors,
³⁴
the steppe peoples who had been subjugated by the Hsiung-nu increasingly took the opportunity to establish themselves as rulers in their own right. By far the most important of these revolutions was that of the Hsien-pei, a Proto-Mongolic-speaking people who had lived in the eastern part of the Hsiung-nu realm, in what is now western Manchuria, and had been subjugated already by Mo-tun (r. 209–174
BC
), the second great ruler of the Hsiung-nu.

The Northern Hsiung-nu Empire effectively collapsed between
AD
83 and 87. In the latter year, the Hsien-pei crushed the Hsiung-nu in battle and killed their ruler. When the remainder of the Northern Hsiung-nu moved west into the Ili Valley region in 91, the Hsien-pei moved into their former lands, replaced the Hsiung-nu as rulers of the Eastern Steppe, and expanded as far as the *Aśvin in the west.
³⁵

The Japanese-Koguryoic Conquests

Some time before the early second century
BC
, the Proto-Japanese-Koguryoic people moved into the area of Liao-hsi (what is now western Liaoning and Inner Mongolia) from further south, where they seem to have been rice farmers and fishermen. The Wa, a remnant of the Proto-Japanese branch of the Japanese-Koguryoic-speaking people who were still living in the Liao-hsi area in the second century
AD
, were fishermen, and undoubtedly farmers too, not animal-herding steppe warriors. By contrast, their Koguryo relatives had become a mounted-warrior nation familiar with steppe warfare by
AD
12, when they are first mentioned in historical sources as living in the Liao-hsi area.
³⁶
The Koguryo, the Puyo, and other Puyo-Koguryo peoples had adopted all the major attributes of the Central Eurasian Culture Complex, including the origin myth (see the prologue), the comitatus, the burial of their rulers in large tumuli, and the theoretical division of their kingdoms into four constituent geographically oriented parts.
³⁷