Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia From the Bronze Age to the Present (88 page)

53.
The best-known transcription of the name Saka in Chinese is Sai
MChi *sәk (Pul. 271). In view of the occurrence elsewhere of this word’s phonetic (overlooked or ignored by Karlgren), the word might perhaps be reconstructed with initial *ś-, according with the expected Prakrit form of the name, śak, from śâka ~ Saka. The name of the Sakas ~ Scythians is also preserved in the old name of Yarkand, So-chü ~ Sha-ch’e
*Saklâ ~ *śaklâ. However, due to the later date it may be that the transcription represents an underlying *s- rather than *ś-. The *s- vs. *ś- problem needs further investigation. For references on the early names of Yarkand, see Hill (forthcoming). With regard to the possible Hsiung-nu connection with the Saka, note that in the
Chou shu
account of the origins of the Turks, one of the two versions given says they are in origin a nation of the Hsiung-nu; the other says they came from the ‘kingdom of the
Saka’
(So kuo
NMan
su
ǒ < MChi *sak; Pul. 1990: 298) to the
north
of the Hsiung-nu
(CS
50: 907–908; cf. Sinor 1990a: 287–288). Although some rather fanciful semantic interpretations of the name So in So kuo have been proposed, it is most certainly a phonetic transcription of the name Saka. The same remark is made in Greek by Menander (Blockley 1985: 116–117): “The Turks, who had formerly been called the Sacae …” (i.e., the Sakas). As these are completely independent sources, this information is significant.

54.
Dacia, the land of the Daci or Getae, a Thracian or Phrygian people, was a strong regional state in the area of what is now Romania and Moldova in the early first century
BC
. The Dacians extended their power eastward into the Pontic Steppe down to the Black Sea, and Julius Caesar (d. 44
BC
) intended to attack them, supposedly because they were considered to have been a threat to Rome, but more likely because of their gold mines (in what is now Transylvania). Periodic conflict between the Romans and Dacians continued until finally Trajan (r.
AD
98–117) subjugated the country between
AD
101 and 107 and incorporated it into the Roman Empire, moving large numbers of Romans into the region. Modern Romanian is the direct descendant of the Latin language spoken by the Roman colonists. The province was later abandoned to the Goths. Cf. Tacitus,
Germania,
x, xliii, xlvi (Mattingly 1970: 101, 136–137, 140).

55.
This half line is what the manuscript has, not what is proposed as an emendation by Dobbie (1953), q.v. for other proposed emendations. The quoted passage, lines 81b through 90a in his edition, is translated according to the interpretation given in Beckwith (2003), where other solutions are discussed and it is shown that the usual emendation and interpretation of this half line cannot be correct. The translation of it given here is intended to represent my guess at what the text may originally have said at this point. How the Old English might be reconstructed is another matter.

56.
Historians sometimes equate the Huns of the Western Steppe and Eastern Europe with the Hephthalites or ‘White Huns’ of Central Asia, who defeated the Sasanids in the fifth century and occupied a large area in Bactria and Transoxiana. The Hephthalites were apparently not Huns, and the application of the latter name to them seems to be either a misnomer or a generic usage. The recently discovered Bactrian documents from the Hephthalite period mention Hephthalites (ŋβδαλo), but not Huns (de la Vaissière 2005d: 19). The Chionites, a little-known people active on the eastern border of the Sasanid Empire in the reign of Shâpûr II (r. 309–379), who campaigned against them in 356–357, are sometimes said to be Huns, or to be connected to them (e.g., Frye 1983: 137; Bivar 1983: 211–212), but this too is apparently erroneous. It has been argued that the Chionites were Iranians, based on the derivation of their name in Pahlevi,
Hyon,
from Avestan
Hyaona
(Felix 1992: 485 and others), but this has been convincingly disproved (de la Vaissière 2005d: 5–10), leaving their ethnolinguistic identity unknown.

57.
The trading market or markets are mentioned elsewhere by Priscus (Blockley 1983 II: 230, 243). In one account, the Huns attacked the Romans at a market. When the Romans sent an embassy to complain, the Huns explained that their attack was a reprisal for a serious offense against them: the Roman bishop of Margus (now Požarevac in Serbia) had crossed over into Hun territory and robbed their royal tombs. Although Priscus, and after him most commentators, dismiss the Hun claim, the fact that the bishop later surrendered to the Huns to save his skin suggests (perhaps counterintuitively) that the Huns really had been the victims in this case. This conclusion is supported by the pattern of behavior of border magnates toward Central Eurasians in the Roman Empire and indeed all along the frontier of Central Eurasia from West to East.

58.
The Avars were not part of the Hsien-pei confederation—all of the linguistically identifiable peoples of which, including the *Taghbač, spoke Mongolic languages—but are connected to them, as subordinates, in the origin story given in the Chinese sources. While the story is prejudiced against the Avars and bears every sign of having been related by one of their enemies, it strongly suggests that the Avars were a distinct ethnos and spoke a different language. Although some Avar names and titles do “sound” Mongolic, names and titles are often borrowed (as a well-known example, many of the Huns had Gothic names, and many of the early Turks had Iranian or Indic names). The name of the last Avar kaghan, A-na-kuei
or *Anagai (CS 50: 908), is attested in Menander (Blockley 1985: 172–173, 178–179) far to the west as ’Avάγαioç or Anagai, the name of the ruler of the presumably Turkic Utigurs (cf. Chavannes 1903: 240). Most Avar names and titles seem distinctly non-Mongolic in their phonology. The main problem with the Avars at the moment is not so much the relative paucity of source material as the extreme paucity of scholarly research on them; the topic has been neglected for far too long. Note that the medial *w of Middle Chinese reconstructions of foreign names (such as A-na-kuei) often does not correspond to anything in the actual foreign “original” forms of the same names.

59.
The controversy over the ethnolinguistic history of early Korea and Japan is due partly to modern politics, including Korean nationalism (on which see Pai 2000); partly to Korean, Japanese, and foreign scholars’ neglect of the major sources and studies of them; and partly to the widespread, deep misunderstanding or outright rejection of scientific historical linguistic and philological methods in the field of East Asian studies in general. The relevant materials and issues are examined in Beckwith (2005a, 2006e, 2007a; cf. Kiyose and Beckwith 2006).

60.
The period is identified with the beginning of “Japanese” culture in Japan and is generally considered to begin in the fourth to third centuries
BC
. Recently some scholars, relying on carbon dating, have argued for a much earlier date. The problem is that carbon dating is well known to be unreliable for precisely this period in history. Until a careful dendrochronological sequence has been established for Korea and Japan for the first millennium
BC
and the first half of the first millennium
AD
it will continue to be impossible to date the Yayoi period precisely. See Kiyose and Beckwith (2008).

61.
World histories pay a great deal of attention to the superficial effects of this movement on the peripheral cultures of Eurasia, particularly the Western Roman Empire, and much less attention to the causes. While some mention is usually made of possible causes, the underlying explanation that is given remains the same: the Central Eurasians were hungry, poor, and cold, but they were also aggressive, energetic, and naturally ready for war. They took advantage of the opportunity to plunder the weak agrarian peoples to the south and had unexpected success, such that they were able to establish their own states in the region. This characterization of the history of the period is misleading at best. It is based more or less completely on the mistaken belief that the Central Eurasians (excluding refugees from war, of course) were indeed hungry, poor, and so on in their homelands and imputes to them motives for which there is no evidence. (See the discussion in the epilogue.) Being human, the Central Eurasians undoubtedly did attack their enemies—as much as their neighbors attacked them. But the simple fact is that we do not know why the Great Wandering of Peoples took place. Nevertheless, enough is known about the events themselves in the peripheral cultures, so the reason seems perhaps to be potentially discoverable.

62.
The history of Arabian internal and foreign trade, Muḥammad, and the early Islamic expansion is an extremely contentious field. See the differing treatments of Shaban (1970, 1971, 1976), Crone (1987), and Peters (1994). The present treatment largely follows Shaban and, in part, Crone, particularly her conclusion on the primary driving force behind the expansion out of Arabia. She argues, via a process of elimination, that the putative natural belligerency of the Arabs (q.v. endnote 63) cannot explain the unique history of the foundation of Islam and the subsequent conquests, leaving as the only explanation the “foreign penetration” of Arabia (Crone 1987: 245–250): “Muḥammad’s Arabia had thus been subjected to foreign rule on a scale unparalleled even in modern times” (Crone 1987: 246). On the early conquests, see also Donner (1981).

63.
Crone (1987: 243–245) and others claim that the Arabs were greedy, rapacious conquerors: “Tribal states must conquer to survive, and the predatory tribesmen who make up their members are in general more inclined to fight than to abstain” (Crone 1987: 243). So too, in her view, were the Muslims: “Muḥammad had to conquer, his followers liked to conquer, and his deity told him to conquer: do we need more?” (Crone 1987: 244). These statements do not seem to have scientific justification. Their remarkable similarity to the received ideas about Central Eurasians discussed in the epilogue is not accidental; see the discussion of similar views on the Islamic comitatus in Beckwith (1984a).