Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia From the Bronze Age to the Present (90 page)

75.
The year 740 is the explicit date in the Hebrew work of Jehuda Halevi (who wrote in Muslim Spain in 1140). However, the date remains much disputed. It could alternately have been later in the same century—al-Mas’ûdî (in his
Murûj al-dhahab)
has the Khazars converting to Judaism in the reign of Hârûn al-Rashîd (786–809)—or even in the following century, based on the “Moses coins,” which are dated to 837–838, though the appearance of the Moses coins some three decades after the death of Hârûn al-Rashîd hardly confirms the latter’s reign as the period in which the Khazars converted, because they could have converted at any time
before
837/838 (Kovalev 2005). Moreover, the Khazar conversion was a remarkable event, for which a remarkable cause would seem to be needed. This cause was surely the physical devastation, religious oppression, and humiliation suffered by the Khazars under the Arabs in the 730s, as others have argued (Dunlop 1954: 86). And as noted previously, the major Eurasian states, for reasons that are still unclear, adopted one or another world religion in the mid-eighth century. It was thus the right time for it. For detailed, informed discussion of the sources and arguments, see Golden (2007), who favors the early ninth century for the conversion.

76.
The expression “the Indian Half-Century of Islam” was coined by an earlier scholar of Islamic cultural history. Unfortunately, I cannot remember who this unusually perceptive scholar is, and despite much searching have been unable to discover the work in which he writes on this topic. (I have also asked
many
prominent specialists in early Islamic studies I know or have met, but no one has recognized the reference.) As far as I know this scholar is the only one to have made a special point of treating the first half century of the Abbasids—in many ways the formative period of Islamic intellectual culture—as having come under heavy Indian influence. The fact that his work has evidently been completely overlooked, or forgotten, together with the strong opposition among Islamicists to any suggestion of significant Central Asian or Indian influence on Islamic civilization during the formative period, may be taken as confirmation that he was on the right track. Compare the similar reactions of Ancient Near East specialists and Sinologists with regard to outside influence on their respective areas of specialization, as noted earlier.

77.
Fakhry (1983: 34) says, “The two Buddhist sects of Vaibhashika and Sautrantika, the two Brahmin sects of Nyaya and Vaishashika, as well as the Jaina sect, had evolved by the fifth century an atomic theory, apparently independent of the Greek, in which the atomic character of matter, time, and space was set forth and the perishable nature of the world resulting from their composition was emphasized.” Though Fakhry rightly includes the Buddhist sects in his discussion, scholarship on these topics in general continues to focus on Hinduism, ignoring the fact that the Arabs invaded and subjugated much of Central Asia by the late seventh century
AD
and thus came into intense, close contact with the region’s high Buddhist culture, which is described in detail by the Chinese monk Hsüan Tsang, who passed through on his way to India a mere two decades earlier. The same remark would seem to apply to the development of the distinctive, high mystical, but “non-Islamic component of
S
ū
fism”
by Abû Yazîd al-Bisṭâmî (d. 875), a Central Asian from western Khurasan. His guru was Abû ‘Alî al-Sindî, a non-Muslim whose name indicates he or his family was originally from Sindh (Fakhry 1983: 241, 243–244).

78.
Scholars disagree on the extent of Indian influence on early Arab grammarians. The most prominent specialist, M. G. Carter, in numerous publications (e.g., Carter 1997), argues for Syriac influence alone. However, this view seems to be based largely on the adoption from Syriac of vowel pointing in Arabic, which is not to be doubted but is orthographical and would not seem to have anything to do with the Indian-style treatment of phonology per se in
al-Kitâb.
The absence of Syrians among the early grammarians is notable; those scholars whose origin is known were nearly all non-Arabs, and, as noted, the actual author of the text was from Balkh, the Central Asian center of Buddhist learning. This question calls for reexamination by scholars familiar with both the Indian and the Arab grammatical traditions.

79.
The word
bon
is used in Bonpo texts as the exact equivalent of
chos
‘dharma, the Dharma’. In this sense it is apparently not etymologizable within Tibetan. Its source has not yet been identified. It should also be noted that despite continuing popular belief in the existence of a non-Buddhist religion known as Bon during the Tibetan Empire period, there is not a shred of evidence to support the idea. The first actual textual evidence for the existence of Bon—and of its followers, Bonpos—is in the postimperial period. Although different in some respects from the other sects, it was already very definitely a form of Buddhism. See Beckwith (forthcoming-c).

80.
Twitchett and Tietze (1994: 45–46) express uncertainty about the linguistic affiliation of Khitan, but it has long been firmly established that they spoke a Mongolic language. This has been further confirmed by the progress being made in the decipherment of their script. The recent introduction of the non-linguistic term “Para-Mongolic” (Janhunen 2003: 391–402) for Khitan and other early Mongolic languages, and of similar terms for other languages in the vicinity, reveals unclarity about the nature of linguistic relationships, a problem that dominates the linguistics of eastern Eurasia in general. It has been demonstrated once again that there is no such thing as a
Mischsprache
or ‘mixed language’ (Beckwith 2007a: 195–213), so either Khitan was Mongolic or it was not Mongolic.

81.
The claim has recently been made that the golden age of Islamic civilization, including philosophical thought, never ended or declined, but continued right down to the present. Note the defensive statements in Nasr (2006) regarding the suppression of
falsafa
‘philosophy’ in the Islamic world, alongside his present at ion of evidence of the suppression that directly contradicts his arguments. He stresses throughout that some aspects of philosophy were partially preserved in Shiite schools, among theologians (who were devoted to the explication of dogma), and in other bastions of religious conservatism—only confirming all the more strongly the nearly total loss of freedom of thought in the Islamic world down to modern times, when Western influences (his “modern thought”) have restored some freedom, which he criticizes (Nasr 2006: 259 et seq.).

82.
It is odd that the Tanguts, despite the relationship of their language to Tibetan, did not adopt or adapt the simple Tibetan alphabetic writing system, though they or others did use it occasionally to transcribe Tangut phonetically. Perhaps they chose to develop a completely new, Chinese-type system for political reasons, but it is notable that they also translated the Buddhist canon from Chinese, not from Tibetan. In any case, the phonology of the Tangut language remains a problematic subject as a result. Most of the scholarship on the topic, from Nevsky (1926) on, has rejected the evidence of the Tibetan interlinear transcriptions in favor of highly debatable interpretations of the complex rhyme-book system the Tanguts created on the Chinese model, and pronouncements continue to be made about the superiority of the Tangut and Chinese rhyme-book traditions over segmental transcriptions and normal linguistics.

83.
The title
Chinggis Khan
(traditionally, ‘Genghis Khan’, ‘Jenghiz Khan’, etc.) is believed to mean ‘Oceanic [universal] Ruler’. This follows Ramstedt and Pelliot (cited by de Rachewiltz 2004: 460), who take Chinggis [čiηgis] to be a loanword from Turkic
te
η
iz
(Middle Mongol
te
η
gis
‘sea’ in the
Secret History)
‘sea, ocean’ or a dialect form of it. The vowel of the first syllable reflects a Mongol dialect in which Turkic -e- shifted to
-i-
as it did in the borrowing of Turkic
tegin
‘prince’ as *tigin, which became Middle Mongol
čigin,
or alternately, the form
č
η
gis
derives from a Turkic dialect that already had -
i-
in the first syllable. The title must have been carefully chosen with a view to other rival rulers past and present. Recently it has been proposed that č
i
η
gis
here is an adjective meaning ‘fierce, hard, tough’, and Temüjin’s title means ‘Fierce Ruler’. This idea has been adopted by several prominent scholars; see the discussion and references in de Rachewiltz (2004: 460). Nevertheless, I find it difficult to accept. Traditional Central Eurasian titles make reference to celestial origins, heavenly mandates, universal rulership, and so forth; Chinggis and his heirs are famous for their explicit belief in these ideas. As noted previously, the title given Temüjin’s rival Jamuqa, Gür Khan, means ‘Universal Ruler’, and the same title was taken by Temüjin’s rival Küchlüg when he seized power in the Central Asian realm of the Kara Khitai (q.v. Biran 2005), where it had been the title of the rulers since its foundation. It is highly unlikely that Temüjin, who was or intended to be a much greater Central Eurasian ruler than Jamuqa or Küchlüg had ever been, could have taken a less magnificent title. The equation of ‘oceanic’ with ‘universal’ would seem to be supported by the Mongols’ later bestowal of the title Dalai Lama ‘Ocean Lama’, that is, ‘Universal Lama’, on the head of the Dgelugspa sect of Tibetan Buddhism, to which they had just converted. Moreover, the legend of the Mongols’ wolf and doe progenitors crossing the
Te
η
gis
Ocean’ or ‘sea’ to reach the safe new land where they gave birth to the first Mongols was surely known to all. The name Chinggis Khan thus identified Temüjin with the very beginnings of the Mongol nation.

84.
The efforts of generations of scholars to prove that Marco Polo was never in China or elsewhere in eastern Eurasia are based on the absolutely false assumption that the published account of his travels represents the true and correct statements of Marco himself. He did not actually write the book
Il Milione,
and he very likely had no say at all in what was finally published as his account. It is also well established that the man who did write the book, Rustichello of Pisa, was a popular romance writer. As such, it may be assumed that he was interested in selling as many copies of his work as possible; it has been demonstrated in great detail that much in the book is his own work, including “whole passages of narrative” taken from a fiction work written by him (Latham 1958: 17); in general there is no way for us to know today what is Marco’s and what is Rustichello’s, or in many cases, what the sources of erroneous information are. Moreover, everyone knows, or should know from personal experience, that little if anything related orally to anyone is likely to be reported accurately and, in fact, is more than likely to be distorted out of shape. In view of these problems, the fact that so much accurate material has survived Rustichello’s hand not only is astonishing, it shows beyond any reasonable doubt that Marco Polo’s own account (which we do not have) was essentially true and accurate. The detail about China, and the Orient in general, that is found in
Il Milione
was and remains unprecedented in depth and accuracy for the period in which it was written: there were no Western written sources from which Marco or Rustichello could have gleaned their detailed information about China and about particular historical individuals and places named there until long after the book was published, and it was not to be superseded for several centuries after its publication. The work of Cleaves (1976), followed by that of Yang Chih-chiu in his 1985
Yüan shih san lun
(Rossabi 1994: 463 n. 83), has shown conclusively that Marco Polo was in the Great Khanate during the reign of Khubilai.

85.
The presence of distinct periods in world history, which many recognize (though few agree on their boundaries), suggests that there were watersheds or divides between the periods, but because historical change is primarily an accretional process, it does not occur at an even rate. There are short periods in which many important connected sequences of events take place. One of the best examples is the mid-eighth century, which was marked by rebellions, revolutions, and so forth across Eurasia. Such periods may be considered watersheds, but they are of course periods themselves. Some periods of history are thus shorter and more densely packed with significant change than others. The Mongol conquest was an important period in itself, worthy of study in its own right, but it did not bring about fundamental change of one kind or another in Eurasia, with the significant exception of the transfer of knowledge from East to West, and to a lesser degree from West to East.

86.
Pearson (1987: 14) argues,

One cannot see the Portuguese as the necessary precursors to the European dominance which in the eighteenth century became world dominance, thanks to the industrial revolution and related scientific and technological developments. The point surely is again that these developments must have produced western European dominance, at least for a time. The fact that the Portuguese rounded the Cape of Good Hope some two and a half centuries previous to this then had no bearing on the outcome. Portuguese navigational triumphs in the fifteenth century must be seen as strictly a
tour de force.