The Silk Road: A New History (54 page)

65.
A. S. Polyakov, “Kitaiskie rukopisi, naidennye v 1933 g. b Tadzhikistane,” in
Sogdiiskii sbornik
[Sogdian miscellany], ed. N. I. Krachkovskii and A. A. Freiman (Leningrad: Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1934), 91–117, esp. 103, photograph on 99.

66.
I. Y. Kratchkovsky, “A Letter from Sogdiana (1934),” in
Among Arabic Manuscripts: Memories of Libraries and Men
, trans. Tatiana Minorsky (Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 1953), 142–50.

67.
For a translation of the letter, see Richard N. Frye, “Tarxūn-Türxṻn and Central Asian History,”
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies
14 (1951): 105–29, translation on 108–9.

68.
David Stephan Powers, trans.,
The History of al-Ṭabari (Ta’rĪkh al-rusul wa’l mulūk)
, vol. 24,
The Empire in Transition
(Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), 171, 177–78, 183.

69.
Freiman,
Sogdiiskie dokumenty s gory Mug 1
, 7.

70.
Krachkovskii and Freiman,
Sogdiiskii sbornik
, 29.

71.
Bogoliubov and Smirnova,
Khoziaistvennye dokumenty
.

72.
Krachkovskii and Freiman,
Sogdiiskii sbornik
, 29.

73.
Documents Nov. 3 (the contract) and Nov. 4 (the groom’s obligations) were originally transcribed and translated in Livshits,
Dokumenty s gory Mug 2
, 21–26. The most up-to-date translation is by Ilya Yakubovich, “Marriage Sogdian Style,” in
Iranistik in Europa—Gestern, Heute, Morgen
, ed. H. Eichner, Bert G. Fragner, Velizar Sadovski, and Rüdiger Schmitt (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 2006), 307–44. See also the brief discussion in Ilya Gershevitch, “The Sogdian Word for ‘Advice,’ and Some Mugh Documents,”
Central Asiatic Journal
7 (1962): 90–94; W. B. Henning, “A Sogdian God,”
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies
28 (1965): 242–54.

74.
Maria Macuch,
Das sasanidische Rechtsbuch “Mātakdān i hazār dātistān” (Teil 2)
(Wiesbaden, Germany: Kommissionsverlag F. Steiner, 1981).

75.
Yakubovich, “Marriage Sogdian Style,” surveys a wide range of marriage documents but finds only one other group of contracts—fifth-century
BCE
Aramaic agreements from the Jewish settlement in Elephantine, Egypt—that allow the wife to initiate divorce. He suggests two possibilities: perhaps Sogdian society afforded women more rights than many neighboring societies, or perhaps Cher was able to obtain unusually favorable conditions for his ward.

76.
Scholars of Sogdian debate the meaning of this passage, with some contending that the phrase “by god Mithra” should be translated as “by God [that is, Ahura Mazda] and Mithra.” Henning, “A Sogdian God,” 248; Yakubovich, “Marriage Sogdian Style.”

77.
Document B-4 is transcribed and translated into Russian in Livshits,
Sogdiiskie dokumenty s gory Mug 2
, 56–58; see also the brief discussion in Gershevitch, “Sogdian Word for ‘Advice,’” 84.

78.
Document B-8 is transcribed and translated into Russian in Livshits,
Sogdiiskie dokumenty s gory Mug 2
, 47–48. Ilya Gershevitch revises the translation in his “Sogdians on a Frogplain,” in
Mélanges linguistiques offerts à Emile Benveniste
(Paris: Société de Linguistique de Paris, 1975), 195–211.

79.
Gershevitch, “Sogdians on a Frogplain,” 205–6, with Gershevitch’s brackets removed to make the translation more readable. See also Frantz Grenet, “Annexe: Le contrat funéraire sogdien du Mont Mugh,” in
Les pratiques funéraires dans l’Asie centrale sédentaire de la conquête Grecque à l’Islamisation
(Paris: Éditions du CNRS, 1984), 313–22.

80.
See, for example, Paul Bernard’s response in Grenet, “Annexe,” 321–22.

81.
Grenet and Vaissière, “Last Days of Panjikent,” marks a genuine breakthrough in the clarification of these confusing events.

82.
Vaissière,
Sogdian Traders
, 199–200.

83.
Vaissière,
Sogdian Traders
, 161–62.

84.
Yakubovich, “Mugh 1.I Revisited.”

85.
Frantz Grenet, “Les ‘Huns’ dans les documents sogdiens du mont Mugh (avec an appendix par N. Sims-Williams),” in
Études irano-aryennes offertes à Gilbert Lazard
, ed. C.-H. de Fouchécour and Ph. Gignoux, Cahiers de Studia Iranica 7 (Paris: Association pour l’Avancement des Études Irannienes, 1989), 17.

86.
A-14, A-9, Grenet and Vaissière, “Last Days of Panjikent,” 168–69, 172.

87.
Powers,
Empire in Transition
, 172–74; Grenet and Vaissière, “Last Days of Panjikent,” 156.

88.
E. V. Zeimal, “The Political History of Transoxiana,” in
The Cambridge History of Iran
, volume 3,
The Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian Periods
, ed. Ehsan Yarshater, part 1 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 259–60.

89.
Richard Frye, “Tarxūn-Türxṻn and Central Asian History,” 112–13; E. V. Zeimal, “Political History of Transoxiana,” 259–60; Powers,
Empire in Transition
, 171, 177–78, 183.

90.
Powers,
Empire in Transition
, 178. Powers renders Dēwāštīč’s name in Arabic as al-Diwashini, the same name that Kratchkovsky read as Divashni. Powers inserts the word “Christian” in brackets before “burial place,” but the Arabic original says
nāwūs
(Yakubovich, “Mugh 1.I Revisited,” 249n31), so I have dropped the word here.

91.
Yakubovich, “Mugh 1.I Revisited.”

92.
Document A-21, discussed in Polyakov, “Kitaiskie rukopisi.”

93.
Anna A. Ierusalimskaja and Birgitt Borkopp,
Von China nach Byzanz
(Munich: Bayerischen Nationalmuseum, 1996), item no. 120.

94.
Elfriede R. Knauer, “A Man’s Caftan and Leggings from the North Caucasus of the Eighth to Tenth Century: A Genealogical Study,”
Metropolitan Museum Journal
36 (2001): 125–54.

95.
Hyunhee Park, “The Delineation of a Coastline: The Growth of Mutual Geographic Knowledge in China and the Islamic World from 750–1500” (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 2008), 45.

96.
Bloom,
Paper before Print
.

97.
Grenet, “Self-Image of the Sogdians,” 134.

CHAPTER 5

1.
George F. Hourani,
Arab Seafaring in the Indian Ocean in Ancient and Early Medieval Times
, ed. John Carswell, rev. ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1995), 61.

2.
Sun Fuxi, director, Institute of Preservation and Archeology, Xi’an City, personal communication, April 30, 2004.

3.
Cheng Linquan, Zhang Xianyu, and Zhang Xiaoli, “Xi’an Bei Zhou Li Dan mu chutan” [A preliminary exploration on the Northern Zhou tomb of Li Dan in Xi’an],
Yishushi Yanjiu
7 (2005): 299–308.

4.
For an up-to-date survey of the most important finds and the extensive literature about them, see Judith Lerner, “Aspects of Assimilation: The Funerary Practices and Furnishings of Central Asians in China,”
Sino-Platonic Papers
168 (2005): 1–51.

5.
Structures of this type are usually called “house-shaped sarcophagi” in the scholarly literature. Wu Hung suggests several possible precedents for these funerary structures, which were in use in earlier centuries and in regions some distance from Xi’an and the other cities with Sogdian graves, in his “A Case of Cultural Interaction: House-Shaped Sarcophagi of the Northern Dynasties,”
Orientations
34, no. 5 (2002): 34–41.

6.
Juliano and Lerner,
Monks and Merchants
, 59.

7.
There was a hole through the entry passage where a Tang-dynasty well had been dug. Shaanxi sheng kaogu yanjiusuo,
Xi’an Bei Zhou An Jia mu
[An Jia tomb of Northern Zhou at Xi’an] (Beijing: Wenwu Chubanshe, 2003), 12; Rong Xinjiang, “The Illustrative Sequence on An Jia’s Screen: A Depiction of the Daily Life of a
Sabao
,”
Orientations
34, no. 2 (2003): 32–35.

8.
Shaanxi sheng,
An Jia mu
, 61–62.

9.
His mother’s surname was Du, a family name not associated with foreigners.

10.
Rong Xinjiang,
Zhonggu Zhongguo yu wailai wenming
[Middle-period China and outside cultures] (Beijing: Sanlian Chubanshe, 2001), 119.

11.
Insufficient sources mean that we do not know the position of the sabao in the bureaucratic ranking (eighteen ranks existed, from a low of 9b to a high of 1a) of the Northern Zhou, but the next dynasty, the Sui, adopted its bureaucracy from the Northern Zhou. Under the Sui, the sabao of Yongzhou County (the capital) had a rank of 7b, while a sabao of rank 9a was appointed in every prefecture with a population of more than 10,000. Because the Sui adopted much of its bureaucratic structure from the Northern Zhou, it seems likely that the sabao of the Northern Zhou were similarly ranked. Albert E. Dien, “Observations Concerning the Tomb of Master Shi,”
Bulletin of the Asia Institute
17 (2003): 105–16, esp. 109–11.

12.
Frantz Grenet, Pénélope Riboud, and Yang Junkai, “Zoroastrian Scenes on a Newly Discovered Sogdian Tomb in Xi’an, Northern China,”
Studia Iranica
33 (2004): 273–84, esp. 278–79.

13.
Rong,
Zhonggu Zhongguo yu wailai wenming
, 32.

14.
Grenet, “Self-Image of the Sogdians,” 134–36; for an opposing view, see Lerner, “Aspects of Assimilation,” 29n73.

15.
Grenet, Riboud, and Yang, “Zoroastrian Scenes”; see also Yang Junkai, “Carvings on the Stone Outer Coffin of Lord Shi of the Northern Zhou,” in Vaissière and Trombert,
Les Sogdiens en Chine
, 21–45. The best translation of the Sogdian epitaph is Yoshida Yutaka, “The Sogdian Version of the New Xi’an Inscription,” in Vaissière and Trombert,
Les Sogdiens en Chine
, 57–71, while the best translation of the Chinese epitaph is Dien, “Observations Concerning the Tomb of Master Shi.”

16.
Another bilingual epitaph, in Chinese and Middle Persian, was dated 874 and found in Xi’an; see Yoshida, “Sogdian Version,” 60.

17.
Similarly, the Chinese text records that the three sons built a stone item for their father, but the word right after “stone” is missing. Yoshida, “Sogdian Version,” 59, 68; bracketed material in Yoshida’s translation.

18.
Grenet, Riboud, and Yang, “Zoroastrian Scenes.”

19.
Arthur F. Wright,
The Sui Dynasty
(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978).

20.
Heng Chye Kiang,
Cities of Aristocrats and Bureaucrats: The Development of Medieval Chinese Cityscapes
(Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1999), 9.

21.
For brief reports about the excavation of the Tang capital, see
Kaogu
1961, no. 5: 248–50; 1963, no. 11: 595–611.

22.
Twitchett, “T’ang Market System,” 245.

23.
Heng,
Cities of Aristocrats and Bureaucrats
, 22.

24.
Edwin O. Reischauer, trans.,
Ennin’s Diary: The Record of a Pilgrimage to China in Search of the Law
(New York: Ronald, 1955), 333.

25.
Wallace Johnson, trans.,
The T’ang Code
, vol. 1,
General Principles
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), 252:
chapter 6
, article 48; Liu Junwen,
Zhonghua chuanshi fadian: Tanglü shuyi
[Chinese law codes for the ages: The Tang Code] (Beijing: Falü Chubanshe, 1999), 144; Liu Junwen,
Tanglü shuyi jianjie
[Commentaries on and interpretations of the Tang Code] (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1996), 478.

26.
Liu,
Jiu Tang shu
, 37:961.

27.
Xiang Da,
Tangdai Chang’an yu Xiyu wenming
[Tang-dynasty Chang’an and the civilization of the Western Regions] (1957; repr., Beijing: Sanlian Shudian, 1987), 28n8.

28.
Rong Xinjiang, “The Migrations and Settlements of the Sogdians in the Northern Dynasties, Sui and Tang,”
China Archaeology and Art Digest
4, no. 1 (2000): 117–63, esp. 138.

29.
Matteo Compareti, “Chinese-Iranian Relations, xv. The Last Sasanians in China,” in
Encyclopædia Iranica
, Online Edition, July 20, 2009, available at
http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/china-xv-the-last-sasanians-in-china
.

30.
Rong, “Migrations and Settlements,” 141.

31.
James Legge,
The Nestorian Monument of Hsî-an Fû in Shen-hsî, China
(1888; repr., London: Trübner, 1966).

32.
Pénélope Riboud, “Tang,” in
Handbook of Christianity in China
, ed. Nicolas Standaert vol. 1,
635–1800
(Boston: Brill, 2001), 1–42. For a recent study of the Syriac inscription with a helpful line-by-line translation, see Erica C. D. Hunter, “The Persian Contribution to Christianity in China: Reflections in the Xi’an Fu Syriac Inscriptions,” in
Hidden Treasures and Intercultural Encounters: Studies on East Syriac Christianity in China and Central Asia
, ed. Dietmar W. Winkler and Li Tang (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction, 2009), 71–86.

33.
Valerie Hansen and Ana Mata-Fink, “Records from a Seventh-Century Pawnshop in China,” in Goetzmann and Rouwenhorst,
Origins of Value
, 54–64.

34.
Deng Xiaonan, “Women in Turfan during the Sixth to Eighth Centuries: A Look at Their Activities Outside the Home,”
Journal of Asian Studies
58, no. 1 (1999): 85–103, esp. 96.

35.
For a sketch of the pots at the time they were found, see Helmut Brinker and Roger Goepper, eds.,
Kunstschätze aus China: 5000 v. Chr. bis 900 n. Chr.: Neuere archäologische Funde aus der Volksrepublik China
(Zurich: Kunsthaus, 1980), 33. Like many Cultural Revolution finds, the Hejia Village site was never the subject of a detailed site report. A preliminary report, which included a list of everything that was found, was published in
Wenwu
1972, no. 1: 30–42, and I have published a short English article about the site that includes a table of all the finds, “The Hejia Village Hoard: A Snapshot of China’s Silk Road Trade,”
Orientations
34, no. 2 (2003): 14–19. For the most thorough treatment in Chinese, see Qi Dongfang,
Tangdai jinyinqi yanjiu
[Studies of the silver and gold vessels of the Tang dynasty] (Beijing: Zhongguo Shehui Kexue Chubanshe, 1999). For a summary in English, see Qi Dongfang, “The Burial Location and Dating of the Hejia Village Treasures,”
Orientations
34, no. 2 (2003): 20–24.