APPENDICES
A. The Main Caravan Routes.
B. The territories of Haixi, Haibei andHaidong.
C. The “great seas” and the“Western Sea.”
D. Sea Silk.
E. Wild Silks.
F. Maritime Commerce and Shippingduring the Han Period.
G. The Water Cisterns on the Routebetween Petra and Wadi Sirhan.
H. The Identification of the city ofAngu with Ancient Gerrha and Modern Thaj.
I. The Spread of Ideas and Religions along the Trade Routes.
J. Climate and other Changes along theSilk Routes.
K. The Identification of Jibin asKapisha-Gandhāra.
L. The Introduction of Silk Cultivationto Khotan in the 1st Century
M. The Canals
N. Kanishka’s Hostage in Historyand Legend.
A. The Main Caravan Routes
The overland routes from China to India,Parthia, and the Roman Empire stretched thousands of kilometres and presentedthe traveller with many geographical, and ever-changing political, obstacles.
Rarely,if ever, did caravans travel the whole route. Goods were carried tomarket-places where they were sold or traded, local taxes paid, and then othermerchants transported them onward.
Long-distancefreight costs were high, so preference was given to trade in rare or preciousgoods that were relatively light, compact, and non-perishable (such as silk).
Theanimal that made this long-distance trade possible was the camel. Camels cancarry half as much as a horse and cart, and twice as much as a mule. They cantravel long distances with minimal water and fodder. Carts and formed roadswere, not needed, substantially reducing transport costs. Caravans could usealternative routes, or head across open country, whenever necessary. There wasno need to stick to a road, if there was enough water, fodder and fuel available.
At first the caravansmostly used the two-humped, or ‘Bactrian’ camel, native to CentralAsia, and better adapted to the cold than the one-humped dromedary, or‘Arabian’ camel. Cable and French (1943), pp. 169-172.
At some point, it wasdiscovered that first-generation hybrids between the two had more stamina thaneither of the original breeds, but it was some centuries before acold-resistant one-humped variety was bred. Bulliet (1975), pp. 141-175.
Astandard camel load in Roman times was about 195 kg (430 pounds). Over 227 kg(or 500 pounds) could sometimes be carried for shorter distances. A pack camelcould travel 24 to 32 kilometres (15 to 20 miles) a day, and go for longperiods without food or water. Bulliet (1975), pp. 20, 24, 281, n. 35. The maineast-west caravan routes provided excellent conditions for camel travel almostthe whole way from China to the Roman Orient.
Trade between distant parts of theEurasian landmass has been occurring for several thousand years at least. Lapislazuli was traded from the mines in eastern Badakhshan to Mesopotamia and Egyptby the second half of the fourth millenniumBCE at thelatest.
The earliestlong-distance road, the ‘Persian Royal Road,’ may have been in useas early as 3,500BCE
This ‘RoyalRoad’ linked in to many other routes –some of them, such as theroutes to India and Central Asia, were also protected by the Achaemenids,ensuring regular contact between India, Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean.
Another very ancientseries of routes linked Badakhshān in northeastern Afghanistan –theonly known source of lapis lazuli in the ancient world – with Mesopotamiaand Egypt by the second half of the fourth millennium
By the second millenniumnephrite jade was being traded from mines in the region of Yarkand and Khotanto China. Significantly, these mines were not very far from the lapis lazuliand spinel (‘Balas Ruby’) mines in Badakhshān and, althoughseparated by the formidable Pamir, routes across them were, apparently, in usefrom very early times.
Regular diplomaticcontacts and large-scale trade between China and the West first occurred soonafter the daring explorations and international contacts developed by thefamous explorer and diplomat, Zhang Qiancirca 112
The main ‘Silk Route’ to thewest crossed out of the Tarim Basin past Kashgar by relatively easy passes,accessible to camel caravans. They crossed into Ferghana, and then continuedthrough relatively flat country, with sufficient water and fodder for camels,all the way to Parthia, Syria, and beyond.
However, camels do poorly inmountainous or rocky regions, so goods had to be off-loaded onto mules, yaks,or human porters before crossing the high passes over the Pamir and Karakorammountains into southern Bactria and northern India.
Dunhuang was at thecrossroads of several routes, including the main route from Central Tibet toMongolia, and the three main branches of the ancient ‘Silk Routes’across and around the Tarim Basin.
The first majordifficulty facing caravans after leaving Chinese territory at the YumenFrontier Post (about 85 km northwest of Dunhuang – see Stein (1921), II,p. 691), was to find a way around or across the fearsome Taklamakan desert. TheTaklamakan forms a giant oval enclosed to the north, northeast, west, and southby some of the highest and most forbidding mountain ranges in the world. To theeast, it opens into the vast wastes of the Gobi desert.
‘Silk Routes’ rather than‘The Silk Road.’
“The useof the plural above, ‘Silk Routes’ rather than the more familiar‘Silk Road’, is deliberate. We are not dealing with a single entitylike Watling Street or the Appian Way, but with a complex network of roads andtracks reaching right across Eurasia. There are some permanent nodes in thenetwork, such as Ch’ang-an where much of the silk was produced and Romewhere much of it was consumed; but the line taken by a particular caravandepended on the weather, the economic situation and the political situation,any of which might change with surprising suddenness.” Sitwell (1984), p.174.
“Themiddle and shortest route by Lou-lan became deserted because of the shifting ofthe waters; but the southern, known in many stretches, was mentioned later byMarco Polo in regions east of Khotan, by streams of chalcedony and jasper. Sixcrossings between south and north are referred to in the Chinese annals, acrosswhat is now the central desert of Taklamakan.
In these outer lands theraid of a single enemy was enough to ruin an oasis for ever. ‘Manytravellers stick in the swamp. On the northern road, the Hiung-Nu fall uponone. On the southern there is neither food nor water, and on many uninhabitedstretches there is hunger’: there was in fact a ten days’ trekwithout habitation worth mentioning, and the settled places when reached weretoo poor to afford the traveller sufficient provision for the way. The Chinesesolved the problem through colonies of soldier-peasants: an imperial komissarwas established to watch over crops and harvests and care for the visitingambassadors; and the northern route in the second half of the first centuryB.C. came to take eight days less than the southern, while the Hiung-Nu werekept down.” Stark (1968), pp. 189-190.
The confusion surrounding the names ofthe routes.
Not surprisingly, the routes havefrequently been confused in the literature. This is particularly because whatwas called the “Northern Route” in the two Han histories, is calledthe “Central Route” in theWeilue, and we have mention ofboth a “New Route” and a “New Route of the North” intheWeilue.
There are, in fact, three maincaravan routes around and across the Taklamakan Desert, and one to the north ofit, described in theWeilue. Also briefly mentioned are the twosecondary north-south routes joining the Southern Route with the Central Route,and the maritime route. See Appendix F.
“Yu Huanshows here how the route which led from Hami to Barkol and then to Gucheng(Guchen) to rejoin the Central Route at Kucha by turning off abruptly to thesouth after leaving Gucheng to cross the Bogdo ola mountains and reachingTurfan. Meanwhile there remains one obscure point for me : why Yu Huan saysthat the Northern Route rejoins the Central Route only at Kucha? He should havesaid, it would seem, that the two routes coincided from Gaochang (Turfan), butthis is not a sufficient reason to presume that the Central Route had anotherlay-out than the one we have determined. – In the detailed examination YuHuan makes later on of the three routes, he does not show that the Northernroute fits together with the Central Route, but it proceeds to the Wusun, thatis, as far as the Ili Valley. It is thus clearly proven that the new routeestablished by the Chinese in the 2nd year of our era was the onewhich passed to the north of the Tianshan by Urumchi, Manass, Kur-kara-wusu [=modern Wu-su or Usu. 84o 40’ E; 44o 26’ N],then crossed the Iren Shabirgan [Erenhaberga Shan] mountains by the Dengnul[Talki Pass or Ak Tash Davan?] Pass to enter the Ili Valley (cf.Documentssur les T’ou-kiue occidentaux, pp. 12-13). – As one can seefrom the above, the three routes mentioned by Yü Huan basically correspondwith those which the Imperial Commissioner Pei Ju裵矩 described inhis “Treatise with Maps on the Western Countries”
The ‘New Route’ to Turfanprobably became an alternative after the Chinese lost control of Hami to theXiongnu. At the best of times this a difficult route north across the desert tothe northeast of Loulan, with little fodder or water available. Caravans couldhave been supplied and supported from both Loulan and Turfan but only atconsiderable expense.
The ‘New Route ofthe North’ followed through the kingdoms beyond Hami, which stretch in along arc to the north of the Bogoda and Tianshan ranges to Wusun territory inthe west. There is no mention of where it begins, or of Hami.
Presumably, since Hamiwas off-limits, one would first head to Turfan via the ‘New Route.’Then, to reach Jimasa and territories to the east, one would cross directlynorth across the Bogoda Mountains by a rather difficult track to Jimasa andjoin the ‘New Route of the North’ there. If one wanted to travelwest, the route left Turfan and travelled along the relatively easy road to theregion of modern Urumchi, and then west along the ‘New Route of theNorth’ to the north of the Tianshan range.
The nature of the trade.
“Sometimeafter the death of Alexander, Chinese silk, transported by caravan throughcentral Asia and passed along by a chain of middlemen, started to filterthrough to the Mediterranean, where its superiority to the nearest thing theGreeks had, produced from wild Asia Minor silkworms, was swiftly recognized. Inthe second half of the second century B.C., the Chinese became more active inthe trade, dispatching caravans on a regular basis. Starting from Paochi,centre of a complex of roads, these moved inside the Great Wall by way ofT’ienshui, Lanchou and Wuwei to the western end of the wall and deep intoChinese Turkistan; by 118-114 B.C., some ten caravans a year were making thetrip. At Anhsi between the Gobi desert and the Nan Shan mountains the routeforked into three branches to avoid the vast salt swamp in the Tarim Basin, twolooping to the north and one to the south. The southern loop and one of thenorthern came together at Kashgar, then forked again to snake through thedifficult Pamir mountains; this stretch was more or less the halfway point tothe Mediterranean. All three rejoined at Merv to continue across the desert andjoin up with the tracks that led through Persia and Mesopotamia to the sea.Nobody went the whole distance. Somewhere between Kashgar and Balkh was a placecalled Stone Tower, and here the Chinese turned their merchandise over to localand Indian traders. The latter carried their share south to India to send itthe rest of the way by boat, the others plodded on into Persia, where they metup with Syrians and Greeks who took care of the final leg.” Casson(1974), pp. 123-124.
“Thewhole Indian trade shifted gradually north-west because of the overland routethrough Bactria, until the Hiung-Nu in A.D. 23 fell upon it and made itimpossible again for fifty years. In A.D. 73 the Chinese began to resuscitateit, and again advanced along both sides of the great chain of oases of theTarim basin to ‘open the roads that lead to China and establishpeace’. Merchants along the trade line, from Parthia and Bactria andIndia, sent their requests and prayers to the Celestial Court; and it wasduring this renascence of the trade around A.D. 100, that the Syrian-Romanmerchants and the Chinese tried to link up their trade directly, and failedbecause Parthia lay between.
At this time, the tradewas in its heyday: ‘peasant colonies were founded in the fertile lands;inns and posts for changing horses were established along the main routes;messengers and couriers travelled in every season of the year; and the MerchantStrangers knocked daily on our gates to have them opened’. It was theperiod of the Roman peace with Parthia and the never-to-be-repeated summit ofthe Asiatic trade in the ancient world. By 127 A.D. the Tarim relapsed intochaos, while traffic increased in the Persian Gulf or Aden as it waned in thenorth: that there was any connection between the Chinese of the north (the‘long-lived’Seres of Lucian) and those of the south (theSines),was still undiscovered in Ptolemy’s day.” Stark (1968), p. 191.
“Unfortunately,whether by land or sea, the contact between the two great cultures was alwaystenuous. Shipments of Chinese goods came to the Mediterranean year in and yearout, cinnamon-leaf and camphor and jade and other items as well as silk, andGraeco-Roman statuettes and jewellery and pottery made the journey the otherway, but rarely was there a direct exchange; in between were merchants fromother countries, particularly India, which not only lay astride the sea lanesbut was firmly linked by branch roads with the overland silk route. Thesemiddlemen had solid information to pass on – it was they who supplied themany place-names in Central Asia and the names of the Indonesian islands thatthe geographers know now – but they were businessmen, not reporters. Whatfiltered back to the man in a Roman or Chinese street was mere fancifulhearsay. The Romans thought the Chinese were all supremely righteous; theChinese thought westerners were all supremely honest. Kan Ying, sent as envoyto Mesopotamia in A.D. 97, describes the people he met as ‘honest intheir transactions and without any double prices’ – probably thefirst and last time that has ever been said about Near Eastern tradesmen. KanYing, the embassy of An-tun [in 166CE] – wecan number on the fingers of one hand the known occasions when westerners andChinese met face to face.” Casson (1974), pp. 125-126.
“TheChinese are mild in character, but resemble wild animals in that they shun thecompany of the rest of their fellow men and wait for traders to come tothem.” PlinyNH (a), p. 64 (VI, 54).
(a) The “Southern Route”
There were two branches of the SouthernRoute between Dunhuang and Shanshan (northwest of Lop Nor). The first leddirectly across the desert. It was short but difficult and dangerous. By themiddle of the first centuryCE, the Han were able to cutoff support from the Xiongnu and pacify the Er Jiang who lived in theAltin-tagh ranges to the south. They were then able to make use of thebetter-watered and sheltered, though longer, route further south. Aurel Steinpointed out:
“A lookat the map shows that the route meant [in theWeilue] is the one whichskirts the high Altin-tagh range, and still serves as the usual connectionbetween Dunhuang and Charklik during that part of the year when the shorterdesert route is closed by the heat and the absence of drinkable water.”Stein (1912), pp. 514-515.
The most feared stretches of desert werebetween Cherchen and Khotan. Not only was there a lack of water and fodder but theconstant crossing of sand hills was very tiring for both man and beast.“The desert itself is quite flat, a billowing sea of soft yellowsand-dunes 5 to 30 m high. However, in some central areas, for example in thewest of the Keriya River, the dunes can rise to more than 200 metres high– a tough challenge even for a camel caravan.”
From Khotan there wereseveral routes south: the one in theWeilue headed southwest across thePamirs and through Hunza and Gilgit (Xuandu – the notorious ‘HangingPassages’) to North India and Jibin (Kapisha-Gandhāra). Branchroutes led south to Ladakh and Kashmir, northwest to Kashgar, and north alongthe Khotan River join the ‘Middle Route’ near Aksu. TheWeilueinforms us that an extension of the Southern Route extended right across Indiato the Pandya kingdom at the southern tip of the sub-continent.
Although it is not known if the followingalternative route to India was in use this early, it is quite possible, and soI will mention here for consideration:
“South ofthe Southern Silk Road proper were more roads. One of them was the so-calledQinghai Road that led from Lanshou to Xining (the present capital of QinghaiProvince), from whence it crossed the desert and reached the classic SouthernSilk road near Miran. Another was and extremely arduous trade route that ledfrom Xining in a south-westerly direction to Tibet, finally to reach Nepal andIndia. This Tibetan Route was opened in the 5th century AD [andperhaps earlier], even before Songsten Gampo (609-650) had politically unifiedthe Snowlands.” Baumer, p. 8. See alsoIbid., p. 2.
Historical records suggest that from thefirst centuryBCE
By the late third andearly fourth century this climatological process seems to have reversed itself,making the Southern Route more difficult to cross. Caravans were forced to usethe longer middle and northern routes and even, when the northern nomads couldbe controlled, to avoid the Tarim Basin altogether, and pass to the north ofthe Tian Shan ranges. Stein (1921), p. 1524; Stein (1928), pp. 79, 435, 837;Almgren (1962), p. 101; and Hoyanagi (1975), pp. 85-113; Bao et al. (2004).
Recent research hasconfirmed these historical indications. Ice samples from the Guliya ice corewhich is situated in the mountains about 150 km due south of Keriya haveprovided valuable temperature and precipitation data for the region over thepast 2,000 years. They show that there was a relatively warm and wet periodbefore 270CE
“Thisworsening of climatic conditions was not limited to the Tarim Basin alone, butconcerned all of China, which was plagued by periods of severe drought betweenaboutCE
In spite of its difficulties, the SouthernRoute remained important. It was better protected than the Central and Northernroutes from raids by the northern nomads. It was by far the shortest and mostdirect route to the jade centres of Khotan and Yarkand. It remained passable,if difficult, for individuals and smaller caravans travelling to India, overthe notorious Karakoram Pass, and human porters could even travel through theWakhan corridor to Gandhāra and southern Afghanistan.
Not quite halfwaybetween Kashgar and Yarkand, between modern Yengisar and Qizil, a route turnedwest and headed towards Badakshan as described in theTarikh-i-Rashidi:
“Thedistance from Káshghar to Yángi-Hisár is six statute [shari]farsákhs. At about sixfarsákhs fromYángi-Hisár is an insignificant hamlet called KaráChanák,1 in front of which flows another stream calledShahnáz, which waters several [other] places. The valley of the Shahnázlies in the western range, and the [high] road from Káshgar toBadakhshán runs through this valley.” Elias (1895), pp. 295-296.
By far the easiest routes from China tothe Turfan oasis – “Nearer (or Southern) Jushi,” as well asto the Jimasa region (“Further Jushi”), went through Hami (Yiwu).Because of its critical strategic importance, Hami changed hands between theXiongnu and China numerous times. China finally lost control of it to theXiongnu in 151CE
South to India
The detailed account of the Southern Routegiven in theHanshu (CICA, pp. 97-99) mentions that, betweenPishan (= modern Pishan) and Jibin (Kapisha-Gandhāra) there is a smallkingdom called Wucha, said to be 1,340li (557 km) to the southwest ofPishan, just before the route turned west into the dreaded ‘HangingPassages.’
Xuandu
It is significant thatXuandu is not listed as aguo (= ‘kingdom’ or ‘country’)in any of the ancient Chinese texts. It is clearly described as a locality, nota state. It has long been recognised that it refers to the terrifying hangingpathways, locally known asrafiks, which are so characteristic of theroute through the Hunza valley to Gilgit. The most difficult passage in thewhole Hunza valley is the section south of the junction of the Misgar and theHunza rivers. See, for example, Chavannes (1905), p. 529, n. 5.
Although it wasimpossible to take pack animals over this route, a route barely practicable forpeople on foot, it was by far the shortest route from the Tarim Basin toGandhara and Jibin in what are now northern Pakistan and southeasternAfghanistan. TheHanshu describes Xuandu as follows:
TheHanshu describes Xuandu(Hunza/Gilgit) as follows:
“What istermed the Suspended Crossing is a rocky mountain; the valley is impenetrable,and people traverse the place by pulling each other across with ropes.”CICA,pp. 99-100, and n. 169.
TheHanshu gives the distance fromthe seat of the Protector General at Weili near Kucha to Wucha as 4,892li(2,035 km), and to Xuandu, the ‘Hanging Passages’, 5,020li(2,088 km). This would indicate that Xuandu was only 128li (53 km) westof Wucha, placing it in present day Ghujal, or ‘Upper Hunza,’ whichis on the way to the Shimshal Pass to the west, or the Kunjerab Pass to thenorthwest. The most difficult passage in the Hunza valley is the section southof the junction of the Misgar and the Hunza rivers.
“Rafiks,the local name for such galleries, are fastened to the sheer cliffs by branchesof trees forced into the fissures of the rock and covered with small stones.Elsewhere natural narrow ledges are widened by flat slabs packed over them. Insome places the rafiks “turn in sharp zigzags on the side of cliffs wherea false step would prove fatal, while at others again they are steep enough toresemble ladders. To carry loads along these galleries is difficult enough, and. . . for ponies, sure-footed as they are, wholly impassable.” Even his[Aurel Stein’s] terrier, Yolchi Beg, so nimble on the rocks of MohandMarg, was fearful and allowed himself the indignity of being carried. Rafiksalternated “with passages over shingly slopes and climbs over rock-strewnwastes.” To negotiate this terrain, the “baggage animals were leftbehind [at Chalt] and coolies taken for the rest of the journey up to theTaghdumbash Pamir.” Mirsky (1977), p. 121.
“The nextday’s march [from Khuabad] to Misgar, he had been warned, would be theworst part of the route. By starting before dawn while the river was still lowenough to ford, he avoided a long detour and a perilous crossing on a ropebridge. Then the going reached a climax of “scramble up precipitous facesof slatey rocks . . . with still more trying descents to the riverbed”;slower still was the progress along rafiks clinging to cliffs hundreds of feetabove the river. But the previous five days had toughened him, and he feltfresh when he emerged from the rocky gorge to an open valley. . . . Herehe discharged the “hardy hillmen who had carried our impedimenta oversuch trying ground without the slightest damage.” Beyond, the route wasopen to baggage animals at all seasons.” Mirsky (1977), p. 125.
The Kushans are thought to have controlledthe whole region from the late 1st century and for most or all of the 2ndcenturyCE
From Xuandu (Hunza–Gilgit) there werefour main routes one could take:
1. south alongthe Astor river and across the Burzil Pass into Kashmir,
2. a difficultroute along the Indus River Valley to Taxila,
3. through theSwat Valley to Peshawar or,
4. via Chitralto Jibin (Kapisha-Gandhāra), and on to Wuyi (Kandahar) or Gaofu(Kabul/Kabulistan).
“Surroundedthus by granite precipices and huge wastes of ice and snow, affording only ahazardous passage during a few summer months into the neighbouring countries,Hunza-Nagar has but one vulnerable point on the southern part of the HindooKoosh, the ravine of the Kanjut River; while the junction of that torrent withthe Gilgit River is the one gateway of the country assailable for an invadingforce. Even this entrance is practically closed during the summer months; forthen the river, swollen by the melting snows, becomes an unfordable and ragingtorrent, overflowing the whole bottom of the valley at many points, so that theonly way left by which one can ascend the gorge is a rough track high up uponthe cliff-side, carried along narrow ledges, and overhanging frightfulprecipices – a road fit only for goats and cragsmen, which could beeasily held by a handful of determined men against a large force; while at thisseason the river can only be crossed by means of the frail twig-rope bridges,which will support but two or three men, and can be cut adrift with a knife ina few moments.
Such is the road intoHunza-Nagar from our side; but at the head of the Kanjut Valley there is agroup of comparatively easy and low passes, leading across the Hindoo Koosh onto the Tagdambash Pamir, in Chinese territory, which are used by the Kanjuts ontheir raiding expeditions. . . . ” Knight (1893), pp. 345-346.
“As oneascends the valley beyond Hunza. . . . It is only at certain points, where passage along the cliffs wouldotherwise be absolutely impossible for the best cragsmen, that any steps havebeen taken to open a road, and then it is but the narrowest scaffolding thrownfrom ledge to ledge. One comes upon position after position of immense naturalstrength in this gorge, where the dangerous and only path passes under stoutsangas, which could be held by a handful of men against a host. Even as theKanjuts had left the approaches to their valley below Nilt as difficult ofaccess as possible, so had they done here, at the outlet of their country on tothe Pamirs, rendering it almost impossible for an enemy to invade them fromeither direction.”Ibid., pp. 488-489.
“Strategicallythe Pamirs had always been written off as too bleak and barren to appeal to theRussians and too formidable for them to cross. Wood’s story suggestednightmarish conditions, which the Mirza’s travels fully supported. And,in April, Gordon found the going quite as bad, the wind unbearable, the snowfreezing to their faces as it fell, and fuel and provisions desperately short.But from the Wakhi people he heard a different story. In summer the grazingwas, as Marco Polo had recorded, some of the best in the world. Moreover,though mountainous, it was nothing compared to the Karakorams or the Kun Lun.The Pamirs, he was told, ‘have a thousand roads’. With a guide youcould go anywhere and, in summer, considerable forces might cross withoutdifficulty. The Chinese had done it in the past, the Wakhis had recently sent acontingent across to Kashgar, and the Russians might do it in the future.
Finally, and mostimportant of all, it was discovered that the passes leading south from thePamirs over the Hindu Kush to Chitral, Gilgit and Kashmir were insignificant.This was so disconcerting that Gordon, ever discreet, omitted all mention of itin his published account. The discovery was made by Biddulph who, while theothers explored the Great Pamir, made a ‘lonely journey by the LittlePamir’ (a misprint – in Gordon’s book actually has it as a‘lovely journey’). In the process he climbed the northern slopes ofthe Hindu Kush and ascertained that at least two passes constituted veritablebreaks in the mountain chain. One you could ride over without ever slowing froma gallop and both had artillery transported across them. To these Gordon addedanother ‘easy pass’ conducting from Tashkurgan to Hunza.”Keay (1977), pp. 257-258.
“Communicationwith Badakhshan is easy [from Gilgit and region] by the Darkot and WarogilPasses, which are the lowest depressions in the great Hindu Kush and Karakorumchains from Bamian on the west to the unknown passes of Tibet on theeast.” Neve (1945), p. 132.
“And inthose days [the journey from Gilgit to Kashmir], before ever Mr. Knight wasthere, before a regular road was made, when even the Indus had to be crossed bya rope bridge, and when the only track led by crazy wooden galleries along thesheer face of the most dreadful precipices, the journey was an experience wellworth having and well worth talking about.” Younghusband (1909), p. 161.
“Gilgit,the northernmost outpost of the Indian Empire, covers all the passes over theHindoo Koosh, from the easternmost one, the Shimshal, to those at the head ofthe Yasin River, in the west. It will be seen, on referring to a good map, thatall these passes descend to the valleys of the Gilgit River and itstributaries. But the possession of the Gilgit Valley does more than this: itaffords us a direct communication through Kashmir territory to the protectedState of Chitral. . . . ” Knight (1893), pp. 290-291.
From Gilgit a relatively easy route,accessible to pack animals for most of the year, led to Mastuch in the UpperChitral Valley. From here one can head either west into Badakshān or southto Chitral.
From Chitral therelatively easy route ran through ancient Hadda (near modern Jalalabad) toPeshawar, the ancient city (where Buddhist accounts tell us Kanishka made hiswinter capital), and then to northern India; or directly southwest towardsGhazni, Kandahar, and the Persian Gulf.
The Mastuch, or capitalof Upper Chitral, is situated in the same valley as that of Lower Chitral, atabout three days’ march, and about thirty miles north-west from Gilgit.It stands upon a river, and consists of about four hundred houses, with a fort,on a moderately extensive plain, from whence roads lead to Peshawar,Badakhshan, and Yarkand. The mountains in the neighbourhood are bare, and muchsnow falls: the climate, however, upon the whole, is temperate. Some traffictakes place with Badakhshan and Yarkand, whence pearls, coral, cotton baftas,and chintzes, boots and shoes, and metals are imported: horses are also muchbrought, and tea, but the latter is not much in use. The chief return is inslaves, kidnapped from the adjacent districts, or, when not so procurable, theRaja seizes and sells his own subjects. Soliman Shah, the Raja, resides chieflyat Yasin, which is not so large as the capital, but is better situated for thecommand of the country. . . . Westfrom Yasin is the Darband, or fortified pass, of Chitral. . . . ”Moorcroft and Trebeck (1841), pp. 268-270.
Both Hadda (or Hidda – near modernJalalabad) and Kapisha (near modern Begram) were probably considered part ofthe territory of Jibin at this time. See: Appendix K.
(b) The “Central Route”or “Middle Route.”
The Central Route headed west from theYumen (‘Jade Gate’) Frontier Post, then northwest to the ancienttown of Loulan, to the north of Lop Nor, and then on via the now-dry Kum (orKuruk) Darya and Konche Darya to the region of modern Korla, where it joinedthe route coming from Turfan.
This route was probablypreferred for large caravans because of the ready availability of water. Theimportance of this route is underscored by the recent discovery of elevenbeacon towers along the banks of the Konche Darya (Kongque River):
The Great Wallof China is 500 kilometers longer than the earlier recorded length, accordingto archeological findings released in Urumqi recently.
The new findings showthat the Great Wall extends to the Lop Nur region in northwest China's XinjiangUygur Autonomous Region, instead of previously acknowledged Jiayu Pass in GansuProvince.
Lop Nur now is adesolate desert region where China had established nuclear test facilities.
Mu Shunying, a researchfellow with the Xinjiang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology,discovered during a field survey conducted in 1998 an earthen wall stretchingfrom western Yumen Pass in Gansu Province to the northern edge of Lop Nur.
Luo Zhewen, president ofthe China Society of Cultural Heritage, said, "There is no doubt this ispart of the Great Wall as it consists of the city wall and beacon towers,forming a complete defense system."
The wall is identical tothe sections at Jiayu Pass and Yumen Pass in terms of architectural style andfunction. However, this newly found section was made with yellow sandy stoneand jarrah branches found locally, he added. Luo, 77, is China's top Great Wallexpert.
Mu said it's obviousthat the new find is a man-made wall built for the purpose of defense, as itsshape and size resemble the other sections of the wall. Moreover, a largenumber of arrowheads have been found near the new site which indicates battlestook place nearby, Mu said. Great Wall Extends to Xinjiang, 500 km longer. TheGreat Wall is a military installation built some 2,000 years ago. It has beenrenovated by numerous dynasties in the years following the Qin Dynasty, whenEmperor Qin Shihuang ordered to link up separated wall sections.
With the addition of thenew section found in Xinjiang, the total length of the Great Wall would be7,200 kilometers. The Great Wall was listed as a World Heritage site by theUnited Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) in1987.
According to historicalrecords, Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty (206 B.C.-A.D. 220) mobilized 600,000laborers to build a wall from Dunhuang to Yanze, the present site of Lop Nur.The massive construction project is illustrated in frescos at the DunhuangGrottoes.
During a recent tour toLop Nur, a Xinhua reporter saw the new section of wall, which undulateswestward at heights ranging from one to three meters, with some portionscompletely missing. The lower part of some of this section is covered by reeds,jarrah and other kinds of plants that live in arid areas.
The portion of the GreatWall in eastern China was made of brick, while most parts of the wall inwestern China were made of yellow sandy soil and jarrah branches.
Luo said the Great Wallin Xinjiang was built to protect merchants traveling on the ancient Silk Road.
Wang Binghua, aresearcher of the Xinjiang Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology, saidthe Great Wall in Xinjiang runs parallel to the Silk Road. An official with theState Administration of Cultural Heritage said the state will furtherinvestigate this valuable historical site and take measures to protect it.
Experts believe thenewly discovered segment of wall is not likely to be the end of the Great Wall,as beacon towers continue to appear along the Kongque River, pass throughWulei, the site of the prefecture government of the western region during theHan Dynasty, and extend to Kashi in southwestern Xinjiang. Eleven beacon towershave been seen at the bank of the Kongque River.
The Lop Nur River, whichsupplied water for Lou Lan, a busy commercial city on the ancient Silk Road,has dried up and civilization there moved elsewhere in China. The kingdom ofLou Lan was ruled by the government of the Han Dynasty. Troops of the HanDynasty were stationed in Lou Lan. (Xinhua) Downloaded on 13 May 2001 from:
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/cover/storydb/2001/02/22/cn-wall.222.html.
It has even been suggested that it might once have been possible to transportgoods by water from Loulan to Yarkand or Kashgar, but there is no mention ofthis in the historical sources:
“Fromabout 120 BC to AD 330, the MIDDLE SILK ROAD was regarded as the preferredcaravan route. It crossed the dreaded Lop Desert from Dunhuang to Loulan, thenled to today’s Korla, and from thence west to Kucha and Aksu and onceagain to Kashgar. This route had the advantage of making it possible to use abarge from Loulan on the Kum Darya (also called the Kuruk Darya), and then onthe Konche Darya to Korla. The meaning of these two river names refers to theconditions in the 19th and early 20th centuries, forKuruk Darya means “Dry river” and Kum Darya “SandRiver”. According to Hedin’s explorations, during the first fewcenturies of our era the Tarim also flowed into the Kuruk Darya, so thatperhaps in those days it was possible to transport wares on water from Loulanto Yarkand or Kashgar.4 It is not known whether this waterway wasactually used in ancient times or whether the overland route waspreferred.”
4.Sven Hedin,Scientific results of a journey in Central Asia 1899-1902,Stockholm, 1904-1907, vol. II, p. 263.
Baumer (2000),p. 9 and note 4. Baumer goes on to say that:
“Themiddle route could be used during winter only, not merely because the heat wasless oppressive, but most of all because it was easier to take along waterreserves in the form of ice blocks. This stretch offered no springs, and waterwas so scarce en route that it would never have been enough for an entirecaravan.” Although he does not say so, he must be referring only to theperiod after the Kuruk and Konche rivers dried up – a process whichprobably began after the severe droughts which occurred fromc. 270 ADonward.”
Zhang Qian probably took the Central Routeinc. 119BCE
TheWeilue says that the‘Central Route,’ after reaching “ancient Loulan and, turningwest, goes to Qiuci(Kucha), and on to the Congling mountains.”
The ‘CentralRoute’ probably became the main route to the west whenever the Chineselost control of Hami and/or Turfan. Fortunately, the section of the routebetween Loulan, to the north of Lop Nor, and Kucha is now well established:
“. . . .Dr. Hedin on his journey of 1896 to the terminal Tarīm had found anobviously ancient route line leading from Korla to Ying-p’an, where thedried-up bed of the Kuruk-daryā branches off towards Lou-lan, marked by aseries of big watch-towers. His description of them strongly supported thebelief that this line of towers dated back to the period when the ancientChinese route from Tun-huang to Lou-lan and thence to the northern oases of theTarīm Basin was first opened. The careful survey of them which I was ableto make in the spring of 1915 on my way from the Kuruk-daryā to Korla hasfully confirmed this belief. It has furnished conclusive evidence that these towersserved as watch and signal stations along the road which connected Lou-lan withthe Chinese administrative posts and military colonies established under theEmperor Wu-ti in the oases dotting the southern foot of the T’ien-shan.
The chief, if not thesole, danger which threatened the safety of this great military and trade routecame, as the account of the Former Han Annals shows, from the irruptions of theHsiung-nu, or Huns. For these, as we have seen, the open Kara-shahr valley,with its easy approaches from the Yulduz and other great camping grounds north,must have at all times been the main gate. Experience gained during centurieson their far-flung northern borders must have proved to the Chinese commandersthat the best safeguard against such attacks and raids lay in securing quickwarning which would allow for timely preparation for defence. Korla and theadjacent parts of the route lay certainly nearest to the ground whence thedanger of incursions threatened, and if they were to be adequately protected, aline of signal-stations pushed out to the north-east into the Kara-shahr valleywould certainly suggest itself.” Stein (1928) Vol. III, p. 1227.
“Thespecial interest to us of theWei lio’s notice of ‘thecentral route’ lies in the fact that it makes a definite reference to theLou-lan Site, almost contemporary with the documents found there, by itsmention of ‘the ancient Lou-lan’, and that it details some of thechief stages on the desert journey by which the site was reached by travellersfrom the ‘Jade Gate’ and the westernmost extension of the‘Great Wall’. The position of the last of these stages, theLung-tuior ‘Dragon Mounds’, was first determined by me, in the course of myexplorations of 1914, when I traced the line of the old Chinese route where itcrossed the salt-encrusted ancient Lop Sea, some forty miles to the north-westof the station L.A.”. Stein (1921), p. 419.
“Bydeduction, one can accept that the route called ‘Central’ in theWeiluemust coincide with the route called ‘Northern’ in theHanshu.The fact that Yu Huan tells us that formerly there were only two known routesto the western countries, but that now a third, more northerly route, had beenopened. Thus the only new route is the ‘Northern Route’. The‘Central’ and ‘Southern’ routes are the same as thosealready followed during the period of the Former Han. We are, therefore, rightto consider the ‘Central Route’ according to theWeilue asidentical with the route called ‘Northern’ in theHanshu. .. . ” Translated from Chavannes (1905), p. 531, n. 1.
TheHanshu describes the‘Northern Route’ (i.e. theWeilue’s ‘CentralRoute’) as follows:
“The one[route] which starts from the royal court of Nearer Chü-shih [Turfan],running alongside the northern mountains and following the course of the riverwest to Shu-lo [Kashgar], is the Northern Route. To the west, the NorthernRoute crosses the Ts’ung-ling and leads to Ta Yüan [Ferghana],K’ang-chü and Yen-ts’ai.”CICA, p. 73.
“But itstill remains for us to fix the location in detail of such intermediate stagesas the text names, in the light of the knowledge now gained of the actualground which the route crossed. For convenience of reference I may quote againthat portion of the passage [from theWeilue] which concerns us here :‘The central route is the one, which, starting fromYü-mênkuan, sets out on the west, leaves the well of the Protector-General, turnsback at the northern extremity of theSan-hung (‘ThreeRidges’) [desert of] sand, passes theChü-lu granary ; then,on leaving from theSha-hsi well, turns to the north-west, passesthrough theLung-tui (‘Dragon Mounds’), arrives at theancient Lou-lan.’ Stein (1921), Vol. II, p. 555.
Apparently, a short cut, not mentioned intheWeilue or in the Han Histories, also existed between the region ofLoulan and Miran (= Yuni – the early capital of Shanshan). At Miran(ancient Yuni) it rejoined the Southern Route via Khotan to Kashgar. For theidentification of Miran as Yü-ni, the ‘Old Town’, the earlycapital of Shan-shan, see Stein (1921a), I, pp. 326 ff.
This route was probablyonly used when political or other pressures demanded, as it crossed over 190 kmof waterless salt crust, and was only really feasible in winter, when watercould be carried in the form of blocks of ice:
“Anotherland route branched off near Loulan to Miran, where it joined the southernroute. This section from Dunhuang to Loulan and Miran was rediscovered by SirAurel Stein in 1914. It was the shortest connection with Shule [Kashgar]. Moreover,since the Han dynasty it was protected by watch-towers from which could betransmitted smoke signals during the day and fire signals during the night. Atthe same time, however, it was very trying for men and animals, for a 190 kmwide, waterless wasteland across the Lop Desert had to be traversed on a hardsalt crust.5
It was probably nobetter than now, a fact reported by Hedin as well as by Stein; namely, that thesensitive soles of the camels’ hoofs would be injured by the razor-sharpedges of the ground surface, until blood appeared. Then would come the painfuloperation of “re-soling” the camels to make them fit to go on.Pieces of leather literally would be stitched over the camels’ woundedheels!”
5.Marc Aurel Stein,Innermost Asia, Oxford, 1928, vol. 1, p. 285.
Baumer (2000),p. 9 and n. 5.
From Korla the route led to Kucha,and Aksu, rejoining the Southern Route at Kashgar. TheWeilue does notgive details of the route past this point but it does list two‘kingdoms’, Juandu and Xiuxiu, as dependencies of Kashgar. Both ofthese places (but with the variant Xiuxun) are mentioned in theHanshuas being on the route from Kashgar to the Da Yuezhi, and both were near forksin the road which led to Ferghana (Da Yuan).
Stein (1928), Vol. II,pp. 849-851 makes a very strong case for placing Juandu in the region of modernIrkeshtam, about 200 km west of Kashgar, on the modern border between China andKyrgyzstan. This is near a major fork in the route here. One branch headed overthe Terek Pass to Ferghana; the other led down the Alai valley, pastDaraut-kurghān and Chat (where Stein locates Xiuxiu/Xiuxun – seenotes 9.18 and 9.19), into the valley of the Surkhab (or Kizil-su), and thenprobably via the huge fortified Kushan city of Shahr-i Nau (40 km west of themodern Dushanbe – see note 9.22), and thence on to Termez, where itcrossed the Oxus (or Amu Darya) and on to ancient Bactra (modern Balkh).
Interestingly, the nameJuandu can be translated as ‘Tax Control’, a function whichIrkeshtam retains to this day. As Stein and many others have pointed out, thefamous ‘Stone Tower’ of Ptolemy, where caravans from the westoff-loaded their cargoes, must have been located not far to the west ofIrkeshtam, in the Alai trough.
“But during the centuries before and after the beginning of the Christianera, when Baktra was a chief emporium for the great silk trade passing fromChina to Persia and the Mediterranean, all geographical factors combined todirect this trade to the route which leads from Kāshgar to the Alai valleyand thence down the Kizil-su or Surkh-āb towards the Oxus. Nature hasfavoured the use of this route, since it crosses the watershed between the Tārīmbasin and the Oxus where it is lowest. Moreover, it has, in Kara-tēgin, acontinuation singularly free from those physical difficulties which precludethe valleys draining the Pāmīrs farther south from serving asarteries of trade. According to the information received at Daraut-kurghānand subsequently on my way through Kara-tēgin, the route leading mainlyalong or near the right bank of the Kizil-su is practicable for laden camelsand horses at all seasons right through as far as Āb-i-garm. From thereroutes equally easy lead through the Hissār hills to the Oxus north ofBalkh.” Stein (1928), Vol. II, p. 848.
“Topographicalfacts, climactic conditions and local resources all support the conclusion thatalong the great natural thoroughfare of the Alai trough, which skirts the high northernrim of the Pamirs from east to west and is continued lower down by the fertilevalley of the Kizil-su or Surkh-ab, “the Red River,” there oncepassed the route which the ancient silk traders coming from China and the Tarimbasin followed down to the middle Oxus. Of this route Ptolemy, the greatgeographer of the second century A.D., has preserved for us an important andmuch-discussed record of Marinus of Tyre, his famous predecessor. Thisdescribes the progress made in the opposite direction by the trading agents of“Maës the Macedonian called Titianus” as they travelled fromBaktra, the present Balkh, to the “country of the Seres,” or China,for the sake of their silk.
Thereis no need here to discuss the details which this record indicates as to thedirections followed by the route. That it led up from the Oxus to the Alai hadbeen established long ago by Sir Henry Yule, that great elucidator of earlytravel, when he proved that “the valley of the Komedoi,” throughwhich the ascent toward Imaos is said to have led, could be no other thanKara-tegin, the valley of the Surkh-ab. Medieval Arab geographers still knew itby the name ofKumedh. The Kara-teginvalley and its eastern continuation, the trough of the Alai, offer in fact the easiestline of communication from the Oxus to the Tarim basin. But the advantages ofthe physical features which make the Alai particularly suited to serve as anatural highway between the two were brought home to me best by what the actualjourney along it showed most clearly.
Forfully seventy miles from where the Russian military road crosses it the opentrough of the Alai stretches with an unbroken width of from six to eleven milesat its floor down to the Kirghiz village of Daraut-kurghan. Eastward foranother twenty miles up to the Taun-murun saddle, where the route from theKashgar side enters the Alai, the “thalweg” is equally wide andeasy. Climactic conditions, moister than on the Pamirs to the south, provideeverywhere ample steppe vegetation. Hence the Alai forms the great summergrazing ground for thousands of Kirghiz nomads who actually move up there fromthe plains of Farghana with their flocks, camels and horses. Well did Iremember their picturesque caravans with camels carrying rich carpets, feltsand other comfortable possessions of nomadic households as I had met them ontheir regular migration when I travelled early in June 1901 from Irkesh-tam toOsh and Andijan in Farghana. Now the warmth of the summer had made their campsseek the higher side valleys for the young grass, and thence they would descendlater in the season to graze along the main valley. All the way the great snowyrange to the south, with Mount Kaufmann [now known as “Lenin Peak” or “PikLenina” – 7,134 m or 23,406 ft]rising to close on 23,000 feet, presented grand panoramic views in thedistance.
Longbefore reaching Daraut-kurghan, I came at an elevation of about 9,000 feet upontraces of former cultivation and remains of roughly built stone dwellings suchas are occupied now by the semi-nomadic Kirghiz lower down during the wintermonths. similarly, on the Kashgar side cultivation is to be found at Irkesh-tamand above it to the same elevation. Thus wayfarers of old could be sure offinding shelter and some local supplies all along this ancient route except fora distance of less than seventy miles on the highest portion of the Alai.Though the snow lies deep on the Alai from December to February, the routewould be practicable even then just as the Terek pass (12,700 feet), muchfrequented from Irkesh-tam to Farghana, is now at that season, provided therewere sufficient traffic to keep the track open.
Suchtrade between the Tarim basin and the middle Oxus as was once served by theroute through Kara-tegin and the Alai no longer exists. Balkh and the rest ofAfghan Turkistan to the south of the Oxus have long ceased to see trafficpassing from China. What little local trade comes up Karategin from the side ofthe Oxus proceeds from Daraut-kurghan to Marghilan or Andijan in Farghana,while exports from the Kashgar side find their way across the Terek pass tothese places on the Russian railway.
Daraut-kurghan,where I was obliged to make a short halt for the sake of arrangements abouttransport and supplies, is a small place at the point where the Kara-teginvalley opens out toward the Alai. A Russian Customs post here guarded thefrontier of Bukhara territory. Three miles farther down lies the village ofChat with a large, well-cultivated area and a ruined circumvallation of somesize occupied during the troubled times preceding the Russian annexation ofTurkistan. It is a point well suited for a large roadside station, and it is inthis vicinity that we may safely locate the famous “Stone Tower”which the classical record preserved by Ptolemy mentions as the place reachedfrom Baktra “when the traveller has ascended the ravine,”
Itis equally probable that “the station at Mount Imaos whence traders starton their journey to Sera,” which Ptolemy’s account of the traderoute to China as extracted from Marinus mentions on the eastern limit of theterritory of the Nomadic Sakai, corresponds to the present Irkesh-tam. This isstill a place well-known to those who carry on the lively caravan trade fromKashgar to Farghana and who face here the vagaries and exactions of the Chineseand Russian Customs stations, both established close to each other.”Stein (1931), pp. 223-227.
There can be little doubt that Juandu(‘Tax Control’), in the region of modern Irkeshtam is ‘thestation (όρμητήριον) at MountImaos, whence traders start on their journey to Sēra’, according toPtolemy. See Stein (1928), Vol. II, p. 850. See also the discussions by I. V.P’iankov in the notes 9.18 on Juandu, and 9.19 on Xiuxiu/Xiuxun.
Analternative route led from Tashkurgan (which could be reached either by headingsouth from Kashgar or southwest from Yarkand – thus, either from the‘Southern’ or the ‘Middle’ Routes) past the Pamir Lakesvia the Kushan-controlled regions of Wakhan and Badakhshān, and on toancient Bactria. This route joined up here with the major east-west caravanroutes leading from Chinese-controlled territory in the Tarim basin via theAlai, and past modern Dushanbe to cross the Oxus and reach Baktra (modernBalkh). See Stein (1931), pp. 232-242.
This route, called only the ‘NewRoute’ in theWeilue, has been confused with the ‘New Routeof the North,’ by both Chavannes (1905), p. 533, n. 1, and Stein (1921),Vol. II, pp. 705 ff). See also note 4.3.
The “NewRoute,” after it left Yumen guan [‘Jade Gate Frontier Post’],headed through Hengkeng [‘East-West Valley’], the wide Bēsh-toghrakvalley which heads west towards Lop Nor. The ‘New Route’ seems tohave followed the same path as the ‘Middle Route,’ for awhile, butthen turned north before, or at, Bēsh-toghrak itself, thus avoiding someof the more difficult stages including the Sanlongsha [‘Three SandRidges’] and the Longdui [‘Dragon Dunes’].
It then probablycontinued north across the desert, west of Hami, via the Palgan Bulak, YulghanBulak, and Biratar Bulak springs, to Lukchun in the Turfan oasis. Thence theroute headed west, rejoining the Central Route before Kucha. See:The TimesAtlas of the World.(1980), Map 24;The Contemporary Atlas of China.(1989), pp. 17, 18.
The account of the‘New Route of the North,’ on the other hand, ran via Hami toEastern Qiemi, a dependency of Further Jushi, which was located immediatelyafter crossing the gorge through the Bogda-shan mountains [called the Tianshanduring the Han period], just north of Qijiaojing [Ch’i-chiao-ching].The ‘New Route of the North’ then headed along the northern slopesof the massive range to the north of the Tarim Basin now called the Tianshan(and not to the south of it, as in the ‘New Route’), then throughWusun territory, and north of the Aral and Caspian Seas to reach Romanterritory on the Black Sea (thus avoiding Parthian taxes on the caravantraffic).
Qijiaojing was usuallyapproached from the south via Hami (Yiwu). Here the road branched and oneeither went west to the Turfan oasis, or north through the Bogda shan mountainsto the territory controlled by the king of Further Jushi in Dzungaria.
The route through Hamiwas, and is, by far the easiest route to the north, and the only one withsufficient supplies for large caravans, but there is no mention of it at all inthe itineraries of theWeilue.
This stronglysuggests that, at the time the information was gathered, Hami was out of boundsto the Chinese having once again come under the power of the Xiongnu. TheChinese captured and lost Hami several times during the Later Han Dynasty.“China finally lost control of it to the Xiongnu in 151
This explains the urgentdevelopment of a ‘New Route’ to provide communication with Turfan,which avoided Hami, for China no longer controlled it.
TheHanshu says:
“Duringthe reign-periodYüan-shih [1-5CE] there was anew route in the further royal kingdom of Chü-shih. This led to theYü-men barrier from north of Wu-ch’üan, and the journey wascomparatively shorter. Hsü Pu, the Wu and Chi colonel, wanted to open upthis route for use, so as to reduce the distance by half and to avoid theobstacle of the White Dragon Mounds. Ku-kou, king of the further state ofChü-shih, realised that because of [the passage of] the road he would beobliged to make provisions available [for Han travellers] and in his heartthought that this would not be expedient. In addition, his lands were ratherclose to those of the southern general of the Hsiung-nu. . . . [Ku-kou wasfinally beheaded by the Chinese for disobedience].”CICA: 189-190,192.
“I haveexplained elsewhere how this ever-present threat of the Huns [from 121
This route left the Yumen frontier postand then headed west through part or all of the Hengkeng (literally;‘East-West Gully’ = the present Bēsh-toghrak valley), and thendirectly north, past the still unidentified Wuchuan (‘Five Boats’),some 300 km across the desert to the town of Gaochang, at the southern tip ofthe Turfan Basin. From here it led on to Karashahr and joined the Middle Routenear modern Korla. Almost all authors place the Yiwu(lu)
“Known asKhamil in Mongolian, the name of this important Silk Road town is transcribedin Modern Standard Mandarin as Hami. It is famous for its succulent melons suffusedwith fragrance and sweetness. Large amounts of cotton are also grown inirrigated fields.” Mallory and Mair (2000), p. 13.
A few scholars, however, identify Yiwuwith the modern settlement of the same name (and written with the samecharacters) about 160 km by road northeast of modern Hami, across the Karlikrange. See, for example, de Crespigny (1984), pp. 43 and 522, n. 71. This tinysettlement is also known as Aratürük or Atürük. For thederivation of the nameQāmul = modern Hami, see Bailey (1985), p.10.
I have chosen thetraditional identification, however, placing it near modern Hami, on thegrounds that the strategically important and famously fertile Hami oasis is afar more likely location for the State Farms the Han established at Yiwu thanthe rather limited agricultural potential of the region surrounding modernYiwulu / Aratürük. Pelliot places Yiwu some 30 miles (48 km)west of the town of modern Hami:
“In A.D.73, the Chinese created a military colony in the region, with a walled city. .. . The military colony of I-wu-lu or I-wu did not thrive like that ofKao-chang..., and was abandoned with the whole of the region in 77. A newoccupation in 90 was still less durable. The third effort, in 131, was moresuccessful, but only for a time, and Qomul had already passed out of Chinesereach at the end of the Han dynasty. . . . As to the I-wu-lu of the Han, whichthe commentary of 676 on the two passages of theHou Hanshu calls theancient small town of I-wu, it was located about 30 miles west of Qomul [Hami],in the district of Na-shih....” Pelliot (1959), p. 155.
“Perhaps the earliest reference to Hami – or Yiwu, Yizhou or Kumul,as it was variously known – was in a book, made of bamboo slips and boundtogether with white silk, found in a second-century BC tomb in Henan Province.This record, discovered in the third century, is an account of thequasi-mythical travels of Emperor Mu, the fifth emperor of the Zhou Dynasty(1027-256 BC), who, on returning from his visit to the Queen Mother of theWest, stayed in Hami for three days and received a present of 300 horses and2,000 sheep and cattle from the local inhabitants.
Hami was considered bythe Chinese the key to access to the northwest, but they were not alwayssuccessful in keeping the city free of nomadic incursions. In 73 BC [sic– should read AD] the Han general Ban Chao wrested the area from aXiongnu army and established a military and agricultural colony. . . .
Like Turpan, Hamiis in a fault depression about 200 metres (650 feet) below sea level, andtemperatures are extreme, from a high of 43o C (109o F)in summer to a low of -32o C (-26o F) in winter.”Bonavia (1988), pp. 105; 110-111.
“Cumul occupies a geographical position of great strategical importance.Like Ansi on the south, so Cumul on the north is a stepping-off andlanding-place for all travellers who cross the inhospitable tract of Gobibetween the provinces of Kansu and Chinese Turkestan. The approach to the oasisis by long and desolate stages, but from the moment that the traveller’sfoot touches watered land he is in the midst of beauty and luxuriantagriculture, and for several miles before reaching the town the road leadsthrough fields and by farmhouses surrounded with elm and poplar trees.Everything indicates prosperity and an abundance of every product.” Cableand French (1943), p. 138.
“Beyond Hami the track led to Tsi-kio-king [Qijiaojing – not quite200 km northwest of Hami], the Seven-Horned Well, which stands as sentinelwhere north and south trade-roads divide, each taking its own way on one or theother side of the dividing mountain range. The old well watches the South Roaddisappear over a dismal gravel plain toward the burning oases of the FlameHills [north of Turfan], and the North Road enter the narrow tortuous defilewhich cuts the Tienshan range of mountains in two. In times of peaceSeven-Horned Well was a dreary hamlet, but in war-time it became a strategicdesert outpost from which soldiers guarded three main arterial roads towardTurfan, Hami and Urumchi. It has been a scene of fierce Gobi battles, and itssands have many a time been reddened with blood and littered with the bodies ofmen and carcasses of horses. Every invader covets its strategic position andknows of its tamarisk growth, which, though smothered by sand, will supplyabundant fuel for his army. . . . The southern road kept south of the mountainrange, past East Salt Lake and West Salt Lake to Turfan, and over the steepDawan Pass to Urumchi. The northern road, however, led through a jagged cut inthe Tienshan where, for a long nine-hour stage, a narrow and almost level pathwound with innumerable turns between great bare crags and lofty granite cliffs,emerging at last on the Dzungarian plain.”Ibid. 297-298.
“This constant liability to northern attack, from which Hami has sufferedwhenever Chinese power in Central Asia weakened, is fully illustrated by itschequered history, as recorded in the Chinese Annals, and right down to our owntimes. . . . As regards the former [Han] period, it will suffice to point outthat within four years of the first establishment of a Chinese military colonyin A.D. 73 I-wu was lost again to the Hsiung-nu; reoccupied between A.D.90-104, it suffered once more the same fate. The notice concerning there-establishment of a military colony there in A.D. 131 brings out clearly thestrategic value which the Chinese rightly attached to Hami. But obviously theirhold upon it ceased when imperial control over the ‘Western regions’was abandoned after the middle of the second century.” Stein (1921), p.1149.
From just north of Lop Nor all the way tothe Turfan Basin across the dreaded Gashun Gobi, there is a string of saltsprings. During the Han, and up until about 270CE,however, the whole region was much wetter than it is now, so they may have beenfresh enough at the time to provide water for the camels, at least. WildBactrian camels still live in the area and have apparently adapted so they candrink the water from the salt springs:
“There is no fresh water in the Gashun Gobi, only salt springs. Nohumans, not even the hardy nomad, can survive in this utterly barren area ofover 1,750 square kilometres. The only inhabitant of this huge space is thewild Bactrian camel. Far removed from contact with domestic Bactrians and fullyadapted to drinking salt water, the camels migrate from water point to waterpoint, some of which are over 100 kilometres apart.” Hare (1998), p. 80.
As this route was protected from the raidsof the Xiongnu by the empty desert to its east, and because it was less thanhalf the distance of the difficult, but better-watered, route through Loulan,Korla and Karashahr to Turfan, it may have proved economical for the Chinese,when the route via Hami was not available to them, to set up strategic cachesof supplies along this route.
Stein (1928, Vol. I, p.319) reports that some of his party found old tracks and their guide“took them to mark the passage of some Mongols making for Tun-huang from thewestern Kuruk-tāgh. On questioning, the guide told him that hisgrandfather “who like his father had been a hunter of wild camels andfamiliar with the wastes of the Kuruk-tāgh, knew vaguely of a routeleading through them to the Tun-huang side.”
The “New Route of the North”or “New Northern Route” ran to the north of the Bogdo ShanMountains through Further Jushi (near modern Jimasa) and then almost parallelto the Central Route, and north of the Tian Shan, past modern Urumchi to theWusun.
The distance of 208 kmmentioned in the text matches that between Turfan and the region of modernGuchen and Jimasa on modern maps. The town of Jinman金滿城 [Ch’in-man]is described ashoubu後郶
“Accordingto theXiyushuidaoji (chap. III, p. 5 a), the site of the ancientBeiting is none other than the locality of Hubaozi, about twentyli tothe north of the present sub-prefecture of Baohui. In fact, a Tang period stelehas been found at this place which, although badly damaged, categoricallyproves that previously the sub-prefecture of Jinman was to be found here. Now,here is what one reads in theJiu Tangshu (chap. XL, p. 29 b): “Jinman...was, during the Later Han, the Posterior Royal Court (of the kingdom) of Jushi.In the ancient barbarian court, there were five towns. The common name wastherefore, the ‘Territory of the Five Towns.’ In the 14th Z
Aurel Stein found the ruins of the oldtown about 10 km north of modern Jimasa, just beyond the village ofHu-p’u-tzu (Hupuzi): “The outer walls... appear to have onceenclosed a roughly rectangular area, measuring approximately 2,160 yards [1,975m.] from north to south and 1,260 yards [1,152 m.] from east to west.”Stein (1928), pp. 554-559. See also:CICA: 184, n. 622.
TheHou Hanshustates that the king of the Posterior Jushi lived in the Wutu valley, which was500li [= 208 km] from the residence of the Jangshi [‘AdjutantGeneral’] in Lukchun. As I measure it, this is exactly the distancebetween Lukchun and a point about 10 km beyond Jimasa on two maps of the routefrom Turfan to Guchen. See: Stein (1928), Map 28, and the U.S. Defence MappingAgency’s ONC, Sheet F-7. This confirms the findings of Chavannes andStein, making the identification virtually certain.
Although this shortroute was probably used for military communications and the like between Nearerand Further Jushi, it could never have been a major caravan route:
“I may point out here that the direct tracks leading from Turfān toGuchen across the high, snowy portion of the T’ien-shan intervening areonly open for a part of the year, and, as my crossing in 1914 of the leastdifficult of the passes, the Pa-no-p’a, showed, impracticable at alltimes for any but the lightest transport. Trade caravans and military convoyswould at all times have to make a great detour either west (via Urumchi) oreast (via Ulan-su) in order to get round the Bogdo-ula range by a routepracticable for camels or carts.
This point has to beborne in mind when we compare the two routes referred to in the notice of theFormer Han Annals. The ‘new route of the north’ coming from theShona-nōr must have crossed the T’ien-shan by the easy and lowsaddle north of Ch’i-ku-ching over which the present Chinese cart-roadfrom Hāmi to Guchen and Urumchi passes.” Stein (1921), p. 706, n. 6.
There were two main routes through Wusunterritory. One ran west through Santai (near Lake Sairam) and then over theTalki Pass into the Ili valley. From Urumchi the route ran west through Manass.
Tothe west of Manass there were two main passes south into the Kax He [K’oshih Ho] Valley which led on to modern Yining or Guldja near the junctionof the Kunes and the Ili Rivers. The first headed over the mountains throughmodern Dushanzi to the south of Kuytun and Usa. The second pass, further east,led to the south of Lake Ayram:
“Another[of the so-called “Iron Gates”] is the defile of Talki leading fromthe Sairam (nor) or Sut (Kul) lake southward, to the Ili River. This was calledKulugha by Turki-speaking people, andTimur-Khalaga by theMongols ; and Dr. Bretschneider explains that the wordKhalaga orKhalga,means, in Mongol, a pass or gate, whileTimur signifies iron. TheChinese traveller Chang-Te, in 1259, passed through the Talki defile, anddescribed it as “very rugged with overhanging rocks.” He speaks ofit by a transliterated Mongol name which stands for “iron roadway.”Elias (1895), p. 20, n. 3. TheTCAW marks this pass as the“Xin’ertai.”
This route continued to the north of IssykKul through modern Almaty to Tokmak and Bishkek. All these routes wereaccessible to camel caravans:
“But hisfirst words contained a test, and I had failed to meet that test. ‘Thecamel caravans did not cross the mountains,’ he had said. I should havecorrected him, politely; knowing he had been referring to these mountains, tothe Tien Shan.
The camel caravans hadcrossed these mountains, through the eastern passes coming from the Middle tothe Northern Route; making their way from Gao Chang, from Turfan. And theycrossed them again from the west, travelling the Northern Route that led toKuldja and the Ili.” Martyn (1987), p. 432.
The alternative route (which would havebeen safer from the attacks of northern nomads) ran even further south, alongthe Kekes River Valley to Issyk-kol where, according to theHanshu theWusun had their capital at Chigu (“Red Valley”) – which Ihave located in the spectacular Jeti-Öghüz Valley just southwest ofmodern Karakol near the Issyk-kol lake itself (seeCWR note 1.61).
From Issyk-kol the waycontinued around the northern perimeter of the lake (“Most of thepopulation and agriculture, and all the decent roads, are along the northshore.” King, et al. (1996), p. 375), and on via Tokmak to Bishkek, whereit joined the previous route to Talas in Kangju territory. From there one couldhead through the Ferghana Valley to Khojend (Khodzhent or Kujand, known asStalinabad during the Soviet era).
It was, as closely as Ican measure it on my maps, about 820-830 km between Jeti-Öghüz andKhojend by this route. So, it seems fair to assume that this is route mentionedin theShiji, ch. 123, which records that “Wusun is situated some2,000li [832 km] northeast from Dayuan.” SeeTWR, note1.61 for more details on these identifications, which find valuable additionalsupport from this notice.
From Talas there werethree main branch routes: the one mentioned in theWeilue ran northwestalong the Jaxartes or Syr Darya north of the Aral and the Caspian Seas to theland of the Yancai or Alans who, at that time, were living to the north of theBlack Sea and stretching over to the western and northern shores of theCaspian. TheWeilue states the Yancai bordered on Da Qin (Romanterritory) which is undoubtedly a reference to the Roman territories in Armeniafrom which there was access to ports on the Black Sea, and from there to theMediterranean.
The other two routes ransouth from Talas through Northern Wuyi (modern Khojend) to the region of modernSamarkand, where one branch went southwest through the oasis of Bukhara andMerv to Iran, and the other branch headed south through Termez (ancient Dumi– one of the five main divisions of the Yuezhi mentioned in theHouHanshu) and across the Oxus (or Amu Darya) to Bactra (Balkh). From thereone could travel southeast to Gaofu (Kabul) and India, or southwest throughHerat to Iran.
(e) North-South Routes across theTarim Basin
“It is truethat the Southern and the Middle Silk Roads were separated from each other bythe Taklamakan Desert, but since the Bronze Age there were north-southconnections along a few rivers such as the Khotan Darya and the Keriya Darya.Since after a great thaw in the Kunlun mountain range the waters of the KhotanDarya cross the desert and reach the Tarim even today, this transverse linelinking Khotan to Aksu and going along the river has never been abandoned.
About 180 km north ofKhotan a mountain range with a reddish hue rises up from the desert plain. . ..
The Mazar Tag chain ofmountains ends next to the Khotan Darya. Here on a rocky ledge about 150 mhigh, the well-preserved Mazar Tagh fort proudly looks down on the river andwatches over the former trade route. The position of the fort was almostimpregnable, for the rock face near the southern crest falls almost verticallyand is also quite steep in the east, while a tower at a distance of about 30 mprotects the northwestern access. This massive 6 m tower reminds one of thelimes of the Eastern Han and Jin eras between Loulan and Dunhuang. . . .
The tower is certainlythe most ancient structure and could date from the 3rd or 4thcentury AD. . . . ” Baumer (2000), pp. 67 and 69.
“A look at the map as well as analysis of the satellite photographs showthat a trade route along the Keriya Darya would be the shortest connectionbetween the two former kingdoms of Khotan and Kucha. If one believes the reportof Mirza Hidar, Kashgar prince and historian, the Keriya Darya was supposed tohave reached the course of the Tarim as early as the 16th century.We may therefore surmise that Karadong, which was halfway between Keriya(today’s Yutian) and the Tarim south of Kucha, had been a fort at thebeginning of our era, besides serving as a caravanserai for trade caravans. . ..
The excavations ofancient Karadong by a Sino-French team, which began in 1991, have brought tolight sensational finds and caused a reassessment of Karadong’simportance. First, in an area five kilometres long and three kilometres widenext to the fort, the archaeologists found twenty ruined houses, a temple andforty other ceramic sites that indicate completely destroyed houses or ceramickilns. Most structures are concentrated in the northern half of the oasissouth-east of the caravanserai, in an area of 1300 m by 800 m. In the southernhalf, an intricate irrigation system could be identified, extending more thanthree kilometres in a north-south direction. Coins from the Han Dynasty andnumerous remnants of millet, wheat, oats and rice were also found. In view ofthe extended irrigation network, conceivably one or more of these cereals hadbeen produced in Karadong itself. . . .
As previously described,forty kilometres north of Karadong are the extended ruins of the proto-historictown of Yuan Sha as well as traces of even older settlements. Since Yuan Shahad been abandoned shortly before the turn of the era in favour of Karadong,the golden age of the latter settlement must have been in the first twocenturies of our era. In those times Karadong was part of the Yumi principalitywhich extended as far as Keriya. The complete lack of coins from the TangDynasty and of artefacts of a younger date than the 4th century ADleads to the conclusion that Karadong must have been abandoned in the 4thcentury AD. The political disturbances after the breakdown of Chinese authorityin the 3rd century AD must have led to a recession of trade,depopulation, and as a consequence, neglect of the irrigation canals, whichfavoured the advance of the desert. The Keriya Darya probably transferred itsriver bed eastwards during this period, a fact that also made living conditionsmore difficult.” Baumer (2000), pp. 93, 95, 96.
B. The territories of Haixi, Haibei and Haidong
(a)Haixi海西 –literally: ‘West of the Sea’ = Egypt.
Haixi, and theassociated names, Haibei海北
These regions orcountries are presumably located in the various directions in relation toXihai,or the ‘Western Sea,’ (sometimes called, Dahai, or the ‘GreatSea’).
Although there has beensome speculation that Xihai and Dahai might refer to the Mediterranean or eventhe Black Sea, all the evidence points to both names being used for the IndianOcean which, to Chinese as well as the Romans, included the Persian Gulf andthe Red Sea. See Leslie and Gardiner (1996), Chap. 20.8, pp. 271-272.
There is a detailedaccount of these territories in David Graf’s article, Graf (1996) –especially the section on ‘The Western Regions’ on p. 204, and themap at the end. However, he argues that the use of the terms Haixi
I cannot agree with thisanalysis. It is true that the Chinese, like the Romans, and the Greeks beforethem, considered the Indian Ocean and its two major Gulfs, the Red Sea and theArabian (or ‘Persian’) Gulf as a whole. The Greeks referred to itas the Erythraean Sea. This is perfectly reasonable and accurate, as easilynavigable entrances join all the waterways. Because the Chinese accounts do notmention the Arabian Peninsula does not mean they were necessarily ignorant ofit.
In my view, the Chinesedivision of these regions makes excellent sense. Thus we have: ‘West ofthe Sea’ (= Egypt); ‘East of the Sea’ (the lands on the eastcoast of the Persian Gulf, or Persis) and, finally, ‘North of theSea,’ the region in between and joining them: (probably northern SaudiArabia, Jordan and southern Israel). TheWeilue mentions an overlandroute through Haibei from Parthian territory to Egypt (Haixi):
“Now, ifyou leave the city of Angu (Gerrha) by the overland route, you go due north toHaibei (‘North of the Sea’), then due west to Haixi (Egypt), thenturn due south to go through the city of Wuchisan (Alexandria).”
This could refer to the long route up theEuphrates through Palmyra and Dura Europa, from where it turns south, and laterwest, to Egypt. There were two rather more arduous, but shorter, and moredirect alternatives. the first of these went west from the head of the PersianGulf, across the desert to the oasis of al-Jawf (Dumatha). Here the roadforked, and one could head north up the Wadi Sirhan towards Damascus, or westtowards Petra, Rhinocolura, and Egypt. It seems these routes were guarded byRoman patrols after their annexation of Nabataea in 106
The other route left theregion of the prosperous trading state of Gerrha in eastern Arabia and took oneacross the peninsula either to al-Jawf or to the Nabataean city of Hegra(modern Meda’in Salih – some 25 km north of the ancient site ofDedan) and on to the port of Leukê Komê (literally, ‘WhiteVillage’), which is probably be located in the vicinity of modern Egra =Al Wajh, 26° 13’ N, 36° 27’ E, on the east coast of the RedSea.
“Much ofthe merchandise of the Orient was brought overland from the port of Gerrha onthe Persian Gulf to the Arabian port of Leukê Komê on the east sideof the Gulf of Aqabah and then shipped or transported by caravan northward toAila. From there it was carried to Petra, to which a direct, overland route ledalso from Meda’in Aleh in Arabia. And “thence to Rhinocolura(modern el-Arish in Sinai on the Mediterranean) . . . and thence to othernations,” according to the Greek geographer Strabo, who wrote about theNabataeans at the beginning of the first century A.D.” Glueck (1959), pp.269-270. See also note 16.1.
“For thistrade [with Elymais and Karmania] they opened the city of Carra [Gerrha] wheretheir market was held. From here they all used to set out on the twenty-daymarch to Gabba and Syria-Palestine. According to Juba’s report they beganlater for the same reason to go to the empire of the Parthians. It seems to methat still earlier they brought their goods to the Persians rather than toSyria and Egypt, which Herodotus confirms, who says the Arabs paid 1,000talents of incense yearly to the kings of Persia. Juba (c. 25 BC-AD 25) andPliny,NH (AD 77) 12. 40. 80).” Potts (1990), pp. 90-91.
“The merchants of Palmyra were also active in Egypt. One group residentin Coptos was engaged in the commerce of the Red Sea and thus by implicationpossibly also with India and East Africa. Others used the overland route fromMesopotamia to Denderah in Egypt.” Raschke (1976), p. 644.
The suggestion that best that fits all theevidence is that Haixi refers to Egypt. Egypt is certainly to the west of theRed Sea (which was considered an integral part of Xihai – the‘Western Sea’), and the major Roman ports in the Red Sea which werethe termini of the extensive maritime trade with India and Parthia, werelocated along the eastern coast of Egypt – quite literally ‘west ofthe sea’. The use of Haixi as a name for Egypt was probably reinforced bythe fact that the characters represent a reasonably close phoneticapproximation of the name into Chinese.
A major source ofconfusion has been the identification of Haixi with Da Qin in the Chinese textsas, for example, in the section on Da Qin in theHou Hanshu: “Thekingdom of Da Qin (Rome) is also called Lijian. As it is found to the west ofthe sea, it is also called the kingdom of Haixi.”
This does not seem to becontradictory to me – Egypt had been under the control of Rome since 30
“In AD 212 Emperor Caracalla issued his famous edict granting Romancitizenship to all the inhabitants of the Roman Empire (only the‘capitulated’, whose identification remains a matter of scholarlydispute, were excluded).” Lewis (1983), p. 34.
It is not surprising to find both thenames for Rome and Egypt interchanged at this time in distant China. Thisidentification of Haixi as Egypt is, I believe, amply confirmed in the passagefrom theWeilue.
To add weight to mycontention that Haixi = Egypt – theWeilue says that from Parthianterritory one can sail directly to Haixi – which, in itself, stronglyindicates Egypt. The only other Roman-controlled territory which could bereached by sea from the East were the Nabataean lands, annexed by the Romans in106CE
The port of Aila (alsoknown, at various times as: Aelana, ‘Aḳaba, Elath, Ezion-geber, Ailath and Ailam), at the head of the Gulf ofAqaba, was very difficult to sail to because of the unfavourable prevailingwinds and would have been quite unsuited to handle the large ships the Romansused in the India trade.
The estimate in theWeilueof two months for the journey to Egypt with good winds seems very reasonable.The reference to it taking up to three years with no wind is probably only arepeat of the discouraging reports given to Gan Ying in 97
The reference to a river“flowing out of the west of the country into another great sea,” isclearly a reference to the Nile. This certainly puts an end to any of thespeculation (as discussed above) that Haixi might refer to the Nabataeanterritories.
Some have argued thatthe Nile doesn’t flow out of the west of Egypt, but out of its north. If,on the other hand, one looks at it from the perspective of a sailor reachingthe eastern coast of Egypt on the Red Sea. The Nile would certainly seem toflow out of the west of the country into another big sea (the Mediterranean).
The next section of thetext shows how one could travel from the south of the country and across themain branches of the Nile to get to Wuchisan or Alexandria.
Wu –
chi –
san –
Despite the misgivings of Leslie andGardiner (1996, p. 185),Wuchisan is not an unreasonable transcriptionof Alexandria into Chinese – as Hirth (1875), p. 182, first pointed out.It is also significant that it is never described as a ‘capitalcity,’ or the seat of a king.
Finally, the journey ofsix days (after first “circling around the coast”) across anotherbig sea (which must be the Mediterranean) to Da Qin “Proper” makesthe identification of Haixi with Egypt, for all intents and purposes, certain.This clearly shows that Haixi was considered separate from Da Qin“proper”. While it is true that the journey from Alexandria to Romeusually took considerably longer than six days, the fastest recorded time beingabout nine days, the return journey could sometimes be made in less than sixdays, as Priscus of Panium reports:
“When the[Roman] emperor [Valentinian III] learned of these events he dispatched [c.CE
It is very clear in both the texts of theWeilueand theHou Hanshu thatHaixi (‘West of the Sea’)must refer to Egypt. And, of course, until the Romans annexed the Nabataeanempire (which controlled the ports of Leuke Kome on the eastern shore of theRed Sea), it was the only part of the Roman empire accessible by sea fortraders from the east, and was the western terminus for extensive maritimetrade with Parthia, India and Southeast Asia.
Also, there is otherevidence which supports the identification of Haixi as Egypt. For example:
“At thetime of the Eastern Han, this kingdom [Haixi = Egypt] had communications withChina. During the reign of Emperor Hedi, in theYongyuan period (89-105), the king of Dan [which was probablythe port of Tāmralipti in the Ganges delta – see: Colless (1980), p.169], named Yongyoudiao, sent an interpreter charged with offering preciousobjects from his country. The Emperor gave him a golden seal decorated withpurple silk.
Envoys from the sameprince again came to the Court at the beginning of theYongning period (120), to congratulate Emperor Andi on hisaccession to the throne. They brought some musicians and some skilful jugglerswho performed transformations, belched fire, changed the head of an ox to thatof a horse, amputated limbs, and then replaced them. They also know how to playwith little balls and can keep as many as ten in the air at a time.
These foreignersthemselves said, “We are men from West of the Sea”. Now,‘West of the Sea’ is [part of] Da Qin, and it is situated to thesouthwest of the kingdom of Dan.” Ma Duanlin quoted in Saint-Denys(1876), pp. 268-269. Translated from the French.
Haixi clearly must refer to Egypt for:
a. it is themain Roman territory one reaches after sailing from Parthia;
b. it has alarge river flowing out of the west of the country (the Nile) into another‘Great Sea’ which one crosses to reach the capital (Rome) of DaQin;
c. and itcontains the city of Wuchisan (= Alexandria).
(b)
“The merchants of Palmyra were also active in Egypt. One group residentin Coptos was engaged in the commerce of the Red Sea and thus by implicationpossibly also with India and East Africa. Others used the overland route fromMesopotamia to Denderah in Egypt.” Raschke (1976), p. 644.
(c)
For much of the 1stand 2nd centuriesCE it was, in all but name,independent of the Parthians. It was the seat of Sasanians who, under ArdashirI, founded a new Persian dynasty in 224CE and overthrewthe Parthians circa 226CE
“Persiswas originally a district of the Persian empire that embraced the lands alongthe eastern shore of the Persian Gulf; see W. Hinz,RE Suppl. 12 s. v.Persis(1970). During the centuries when a Parthian dynasty ruled in Persia (ca. 248B.C. to A.D. 226), the district became virtually an independent kingdom, withits own rulers and coinage, acknowledging vassalage to Parthian overlords onlywhen these were strong enough to insist on it (cf. Raschke 815, n. 719). Tojudge from the statements in thePeriplus, at the time of writing[between 40 and 70CE
For more details see notes 11.5 and 11.11.
C. The “great seas” and the“Western Sea.”
Dahai大海 [Ta Hai]– literally, ‘a great sea.’ I believe that, in this context,it can only refer to what we now know as the Indian Ocean, including the PersianGulf and the Red Sea.
The text says that:“The kingdom of Da Qin (Rome) is also called Lijian. It is west of Anxi(Parthia) and Tiaozhi (Characene and Susiana), and west of a great sea. Fromthe city of Angu (Gerrha), on the frontier of Anxi (Parthia), you take a boatand cut directly across to Haixi (‘West of the Sea’ = which isdefinitely Roman Territory and, as I will show later, is almost certainlyEgypt).” See: note 11.5.
The Chinese text reads:
Although the terms usedare somewhat confusing, if looked at carefully the meaning is quite clear.Chapters 96A and 61 of theHanshu (seeCICA, pp, 113, 235) andthe Chapter on the Western Regions of theHou Hanshu refer only to Xihai西海 – the ‘Western Sea,’ which Gan Ying reached at thehead of the Persian Gulf in 97CE, and by which it was saidyou could sail to Da Qin, i.e. Roman territory (which could only be a referenceto Egypt).
This Roman-controlledterritory, Egypt, is referred to as Haixi海西, whichliterally means “West of the Sea” and, as we are told in thissection of theWeilue,was also used as a name for the country because it was, quite literally at thewestern end of the “Western Sea.” It is important to keep these twoentities, Xihai or the “Western Sea,” and Haixi or “West ofthe Sea” = Egypt, separate in our minds.
Further, theWeiluerefers to the same sea (running from the Persian Gulf to Egypt as
Leslie and Gardiner(1996), include a section (12.3 c.) on “The Western Sea” andanother (20.8) on “The Hsi-hai and other seas” on pp. 146 and271-272 respectively.
“They [ofthe Roman Empire] also have a fine cloth which some people say is made from thedown of ‘water sheep,’ but which is made, in fact, from the cocoonsof wild silkworms.”
This is the first known reference to“sea silk” in Chinese literature and is found in the chapter on theWestern Regions of theHou Hanshu which deals with the period of theLater Han (25-220CE
The Chinese Envoy GanYing apparently collected the bulk of this information during his journey toParthia. He had been specifically sent in 97CE tocollect information on the Roman Empire by Ban Yong’s father, the famousgeneral, Ban Chao. Although he only reached the shores of the Persian Gulf, hemanaged to gather much information on Da Qin that was new to the Chinese– presumably from seamen and other travellers he met in Parthia.
Thestory of the ‘water-sheep’ is also found in theWeilue,which was written sometime during the second third of the 3rdcenturyCE
“Thiscountry [the Roman Empire] produces fine linen. They make gold and silvercoins. One gold coin is equal to ten silver coins. They have fine brocadedcloth that is said to be made from the down of ‘water-sheep’. It iscalled Haixi (‘Egyptian’) cloth. This country produces the sixdomestic animals [traditionally: horses, cattle, sheep, chickens, dogs andpigs], which are all said to come from the water.
It is said that they notonly use sheep’s wool, but also bark from trees, or the silk from wildsilkworms, to make brocade, mats, pile rugs, woven cloth and curtains, all ofthem of good quality, and with brighter colours than those made in thecountries of Haidong (“East of the Sea”).
Furthermore, theyregularly make a profit by obtaining Chinese silk, unravelling it, and makingfinehu (‘Western’) silk damasks. That is why this countrytrades with Anxi (Parthia) across the middle of the sea.”
Here we have an account not only of clothmade from the “wool” of “water-sheep”, but also thatmade from domestic sheep wool, tree bark, and silk from wild silkworms (yecan),as well a very light silken cloth produced from rewoven imported Chinesecultivated silk.
EmilBretshneider in his book,Arabs and Arabian Colonies (1871), p. 24,suggested that the ‘down of the water-sheep’ referred to in theChinese accounts was, “. . . perhaps, theByssus, a cloth-stuffwoven up to the present time by the Mediterranean coast, especially in SouthernItaly, from the thread-like excrescences of several sea-shells, especiallyPinnasquamosa.” Hirth (1885), p. 262.
“It isall very arbitrarily, it seems to me, that theshuiyang
Many scholars remained sceptical andaccepted the account in theHou Hanshu that clearly states that theso-called ‘water-sheep’ were a fiction and that the cloth referredto was, rather, wild silk:
“The downof the water sheep is a particular favourite. HIRTH acceptedBRETSCHNEIDER’S suggestion that this was cloth made from the thread-likeexcretions of sea-shells and that this is what was meant by the termbyssus!This particular fable, whose acceptance by modern scholars demonstrates analmost absurd naivety, still continues to flourish (e.g. J. FERGUSON, ANRW II9.2, above p. 590). For the various meanings of byssus see E. WIPSZYCKA,L’industrie textile dans l’Égypte romaine: matièrespremières et stades préliminiaires (Warsaw 1965), 40-41.”Raschke (1976), p. 854, n. 849.
“Theconclusion is that, in the whole of Chinese literature, there is only onemention of theshui-yang, that found in theWei lio, in themiddle of the 3rd cent. Later texts have been copied or abbreviated from it,and do not represent any independent tradition. In theWei lio itself,this “water sheep” occurs only in connection with a certaintextile, which was woven with threads of variegated colours without amonochrome ground (地
Evidence of the existence of sea-silktextiles in the 4th century Roman Empire, and the fact that the“marine wool” mentioned in Diocletian’s Price Edict of 301
On closer examination ofthe wording of the Chinese text of theHou Hanshu, it appears that theclaim that the cloth made from “water-sheep” was false and reallyreferred to wild silks is likely a critical comment added by the compiler FanYe in the 5th centuryCE to theoriginal report by Gan Ying. It seems quite probable to me now that theoriginal reports had a factual basis, only to be discounted as myth at a laterperiod.
In fact,“sea-silk” has always been extremely rare and it is quite plausiblethat similar cloths from Da Qin examined by the Chinese in later periods werewild silks. Although wild silks were themselves uncommon, they were not nearlyas rare (or as costly) as sea-silk. Wild silks could be easily mistakensea-silk, as many of them were naturally similar in colour and appearance tosea-silk and they were, sometimes, blendedtogether.
“The most famous product produced by the Pinnidae is the byssus fiber,which is an extremely fine and soft but strong fiber produced by a gland in thefoot of the animal for the purpose of anchoring the shell. The byssus fiber ofsome of the larger species in this family is sufficiently long so that it canbe spun and then woven or knitted to make small garments. It has a beautifulgolden bronze sheen and was often combined with silk when used in making largergarments. Most authorities believe that the use of the byssus as a fiber inmaking garments probably originated in India near Colchi. This is based on thefact that the earlier Greek and Roman writers referred toPinna but didnot mention the use of the byssus before the time of Tertullian (150-222 A.D.).Tarento was the center of the industry in Italy, and Procopius, who wrote onthe Persian wars about 350 A.D., stated that the five hereditary satraps(governors) of Armenia who received their insignia from the Roman Emperor weregiven chlamys (or cloaks) made fromlana pinna (Pinna“wool,” or byssus). Apparently only the ruling classes were allowedto wear these chlamys. Even today a small remnant of the former industryremains in Italy and a few articles such as gloves, hats, shawls and stockingsare made mainly for the tourist trade. According to Simmonds (1879) in“The Commercial Products of the Sea,” the byssus formed animportant article of commerce among the Sicilians, for which purposeconsiderable numbers ofPinna were annually fished in the Mediterraneanfrom a depth of 20 to 30 feet. He also said, “a considerable manufactoryis established at Palermo; the fabrics made are extremely elegant and vie inappearance with the finest silk. The best products of this material are,however, said to be made in the Orphan Hospital of St. Philomel atLucca.” Though the modern gloves and shawls are knitted, the chlamys,gloves and stockings of the ancients were woven, for knitting was not knownuntil about 1500 according to Yates (1843). Articles made fromPinnabyssus are extremely strong and durable except that they are readily attackedby moths so that great care must be taken in their preservation. There are, asa consequence, very few examples of the early garments in existence. On Plate153 are shown the cleaned byssus ofAtrina rigida Solander ; the shellofPinna nobilis Linné, the species from which the byssus wasobtained for the Italian industry ; and a glove made from byssus fibre atTarento, Italy [presently displayed at the Smithsonian in Washington,D.C.].” Turner and Rosewater (1958), pp. 292 and 294.
The Oxford English Dictionary (1971),Compact Edition Reprint (1988) gives underByssus:
“3.Zool.The tuft of fine silky filaments by which molluscs of the genusPinnaand various mussels attach themselves to the surface of rocks; it is secretedby thebyssus-gland in the foot.”
“These filaments have been spun, and made into small articles ofapparel.. Their colour is brilliant, and ranges from a beautiful golden yellowto a rich brown; they are also very durable.. The fabric is so thin that a pairof stockings may be put in an ordinary-sized snuff-box.” [From:Thedraper’s dictionary, by S. William Beck (1886)].
The Treasury of Natural History or APopular Dictionary of Zoology bySamuel Maunder. London. Longmans, Green, and Co. (1878), p. 526, states:
“PINNA. Agenus of Molluscs, called alsowing-shell, which in many respectsapproaches the Mussels. It has two equal wedge-shaped valves, united by aligament along one of their sides ; and obtains a very considerable size,sometimes being nearly three feet long. The animal fixes itself, by itsbyssuswhich is remarkably long and silky, to submarine rocks and other bodies ; whereit lives in a vertical position, the point of the shell being undermost, andthe base or edge above. Sometimes large bodies of them are found even attachedto a sandy bottom at the depth of a few fathoms. They are common in some partsof the Mediterranean ; and are not merely sought as food by the inhabitants onthe coasts, but they gather the byssus, of which a stuff may be formed which isremarkable for its warmth and suppleness. The filaments are extremely fine andstrong, and the colour, which is a reddish-brown, never fades. The finestbyssus of the ancients was fabricated from these filaments ; and in Sicily theyare still sometimes manufactured into gloves and other articles of dress, though,it must be confessed, more as an object of curiosity than use.”
“ThePinnidae have considerable economic importance in many parts of the world. Theyproduce pearls of moderate value. In the Mediterranean area, material made fromthe holdfast or byssus ofPinna nobilis Linné has been utilizedin the manufacture of clothing for many centuries: gloves, shawls, stockingsand cloaks. Apparel made from this material has an attractive golden hue andthese items were greatly valued by the ancients.
Today, pinnidae areeaten in Japan, Polynesia, in several other Indo-Pacific island groups, and onthe west coast of Mexico, In Polynesia, the valves ofAtrina vexillumare carved to form decorative articles, and entire valves of larger specimensare sometimes used as plates.” Rosewater (1961), pp. 175-176.
The wordbyssus not only refers tothe excretions of seashells, as sometimes assumed, but originally referred tofine threads of linen, and later, of cotton and silk. It is derived from Latinbyssusvia Gk.byssos – flax, linen. It is of Semitic origin related toHebrewbūts – fine linen. This word is probably related tothe material “‘Böz,’ an exotic cloth in the ChineseImperial Court.” Discussed in Ecsady (1975), pp. 145-153.
Itseems that the initial reports of sea-wool reaching China in the 1stcenturyCE
By the 5thcentury, the whole story was being dismissed as a fable; the sea-wool explainedaway as merely a form of wild silk – with which the Chinese had had longexperience.
FelicitasMaeder very kindly, sent me a copy of her excellent article, “The projectSea-silk – Rediscovering an Ancient Textile Material,” from theArchaeologicalTextiles Newsletter Number 35, Autumn 2002, pp. 8-11. She also included acopy of the fascinating chapter, “Oriental Translations: Pinna Wool,Aquatic Sheep and Mermaid Fleece,” pp. 67-75, from Daniel L.McKinley’s monograph, “Pinna and Her Silken Beard: A Foray IntoHistorical Misappropriations” inArs Textrina:A Journalof Textiles and Costume, Volume Twenty-nine, June, 1998. Winnipeg, Canada,9p. 9-223.
Felicitas Maeder’sarticle not only includes a beautiful full-page colour reproduction of a 14thcentury knitted cap of sea-silk but points out on page 10 that:
“Proof ofthe reality of the use of sea-silk for textile production at least in lateantiquity is a fragment of a woven textile of the 4th century. Itwas found in 1912 in a woman’s grave in Aquinicum (Budapest), at thattime a Roman town at the north-east frontier of the empire. It was described in1917 by F. Hollendonner and 1935 by L. Nagy. J. P. Wild mentions this fragmentin his study of textile manufacture in the Northern Roman provinces (1970) andadds that it supports the assumption that the ‘marine wool’ ofDiocletian’s Price Edict meant sea-silk.”
Felicitas Maeder, through the“Project sea-silk” at the Natural History Museum in Basle,Switzerland, has mounted a spectacular exhibition on sea silk from 19thMarch to 27th June, 2004 featuring a wide variety of items made ofsea silk loaned by museums all over Europe. They have just published amagnificently illustrated catalogue on the exhibition with detailed notes onall aspects of the history, production and uses of sea silk in both Italian andGerman, calledBisso marino: Fili d’oro dal fondo delmare –Muschelseide : Goldene Fäden vom Meeresgrund.Edited by Felicitas Maeder, Ambros Hänggi, and Dominik Wunderlin.Naturhistoriches Museum and Museum der Kulturen, Basel, Switzerland.
There can no longer be any question of seasilk being just a fable!
E. WildSilks.
Wild silksare produced by a number of non-domesticated silkworms. They all differ in onemajor respect from the domesticated varieties. The cocoons, which are gatheredin the wild, have already been chewed through by the pupa or caterpillar(“silkworm”) before the cocoons are gathered and thus the singlethread which makes up the cocoon has been cut into shorter lengths, making aweaker thread. They also differ in colour and texture and are often moredifficult to dye than silk from the cultivated silkworm.
Commercially rearedsilkworms are killed before the pupae emerge by dipping them in boiling wateror they are killed with a needle, thus allowing the whole cocoon to beunravelled as one continuous thread. This allows a much stronger cloth to bewoven from the silk.
There is ample evidencethat small quantities of “wild silks” were already being producedin the Mediterranean and Middle East by the time the superior, and stronger,cultivated silk from China began to be imported.
Pliny, in the 1stcenturyCE
Silk-moths have an additional stagein their generation. A very big larva first changes into a caterpillar with twoantennae, this becomes what is termed a chrysalis, from which comes a larva whichin six months turns into a silkworm. The silkworms weave webs like spiders andthese are used forhaute couture dresses for women, the material beingcalled silk. The technique of unravelling the cocoons and weaving the threadwas first invented on Cos by a woman named Pamphile, the daughter of Plateas.She has the inalienable distinction of having devised a way of makingwomen’s clothing ‘see-through.’
Silk-moths, so they say, areproduced on Cos, where a vapour from the ground breathes life into the flowers– from the cypress, terebinth, ash and oak – that have been beatendown by the rain. First, small butterflies without down are produced; thesecannot endure the cold so they grow shaggy hair and equip themselves with thickcoats to combat winter, scraping together down from the leaves with their roughfeet. They compact this into fleeces, card it with their claws and draw it outinto the woof, thinned out as if by a comb, and then they wrap this round theirbody.
Then they are taken away, put inearthenware containers and reared on bran in a warm atmosphere. Underneaththeir coats a peculiar kind of feather grows, and when they are covered bythese they are taken out for special treatment. The tufts of wool are pluckedout and softened by moisture and subsequently thinned out into threads by meansof a rush spindle. Even men have not been ashamed to adopt silk clothing insummer because of its lightness. Our habits have become so bizarre since thetime we used to wear leather cuirasses that even a toga is considered an undueweight. However, we have left Assyrian silk dresses to the women – sofar!” PlinyNH (a), pp. 157-158. (XI, 75-78).
“The use and production of wild silk was known to geographically widelydiverse areas of the ancient world. In this case the larvae are not cultivatedor fed. They spin the cocoon and then chew their way out of it. The cocoons arethen collected and unwound. The domesticated silkworm is killed, either byscalding the cocoon or by the insertion of a needle, to insure that the threadremains undamaged from the efforts of the larvae to escape. Wild silk iscoarser and somewhat less expensive and is the product of a considerablevariety of larvae of the sub-orderbombycina. It is to this class thatthe famous Coan silk of the ancient world belonged. Such wild silk was producedin China and possibly also in India, Central Asia and Mesopotamia. How much, ifany, was exported to the West is unknown.” Raschke, Manfred G., 1976:623. (Also see the discussion of Coan silk,ibid. 722, nn. 380, 381).
As Raymentions in the above quote, Beal does claim that thekauśeya that Xuanzang mentions as being used for clothing inIndia, “is the product of the wild silkworm” (but on vol. I, p. 75of my 1969 reprint of the 1884 edition). However, Watters (1904-05), I, p. 148,specifies that it was a silk made from the cocoon of “Bombyx Mori”– which is the domesticated silkworm. Monier-Williams (1899) p. 317,defineskauśeya simply as:“. . . silken. . . silk, silk cloth, silk petticoat or trousers, awoman’s lower garments of silk. . . .”
“The more than 500 species of wild silkworms fend for themselves,feasting on oak and other leaves. When they become moths, they are bigger andmore gorgeous than the commercialBombyx. More robust than theirdomesticated cousins, wild silkworms produce a tougher, rougher silk, not aseasily bleached and dyed as the mulberry silk.
China is the chief supplier of anoff-white wild silk known as tussah. India has a monopoly on the mugacaterpillar, which thrives in the humidity of the Assam Valley and produces ashimmering golden silk. The eri silkworm, raised on the castor plant in India,produces silk that is extremely durable, but that cannot be easily reeled offthe cocoon and must be spun like cotton or wool.” Hyde (1984), p. 14.
There are anumber of references in early Chinese literature tonanjin as a veryrare and highly-prized tribute item coming from the south. Unfortunately, it hasnever been clear exactly what this product was. TheHanyu da cidian hasseveral references tonanjin which show that as early as the Later Hanit was being included in a list of rare treasures which also included preciousjewels, special fine silk (used to produce fans), and fine mulberry paper. InthePan shui it is listed along with ivory as a tribute item and says ina later entry that it was a form of unbleached silk.
The beautifuland expensive golden-coloured “wild” silk called “Muga”is produced only in the Brahmaputra Valley - mainly Assam and adjoining partsof Burma. This silk has always been highly prized - not only for its beautifulnatural golden sheen, which actually improves with ageing and washing –but for the fact that it is the strongest natural fibre known. Garments made ofit outlast those made of ordinary silk - commonly lasting 50 years or more.
In addition, it absorbsmoisture better than ordinary silk and is, therefore, more comfortable to wear.Nowadays, it is mainly sought after for the highest-quality saris given asdowry presents to wealthy brides in India. There is, apparently, quite a racketin India, where other “wild” silks are dyed so they can be passedoff as the more expensive Muga variety. Also see: “On the question ofsilk in pre-Han Eurasia” by Irene Good.Antiquity Vol. 69, Number266, December 1995, pp. 959-968; “Silk in Ancient Nubia: One Road, ManySources” by Nettie K. Adams (to be published soon).
F. Maritime Commerce and Shippingduring the Han Period.
By the first century
These sea routes were,of course, closely linked with the overland routes, allowing a flow of goodsand ideas across almost the whole of the known world at the time.
Roman and Arab shipsdominated the Egypt to India trade, but most of the trade between India andChina was carried by Malay, Indonesian and Indian ships. It seems it was onlylater that Chinese ships regularly travelled to India. It was rare, however,for Chinese or Roman citizens to make the complete round trip journey betweenChina and Egypt:
“Thewater of the great sea which is crossed on the road thither [to the RomanEmpire] is salt and bitter, and unfit for drinking purposes; the merchantstravelling to and fro are provided with three years’ provisions; hence,there are not many going. . . . During the T’ai-k’ang period of theemperor Wu-ti [=CE
This network of sea routes was madepossible by a series of four almost simultaneous developments:
– Chinagained control of Jiaozhi [Chiao-chih] (Tonkin – centred near modernHanoi in the delta of the Red River) by early first century
– Theannexation of Egypt in 31BCE provided Rome with accessto the Red Sea and Indian Ocean.
– Thestrong desire of China and Rome both for direct trade with India, and to open asea route between their two empires to evade the heavy taxes charged by theParthians on the main east-west caravan routes.
– Theemergence of a regular sea trade between India, Indonesia, and China,particularly by Indian, and Indonesian merchantmen. Some of these ships werevery large for their day and are said to have carried up to a thousandpassengers and cargoes of over a thousand tonnes.
This trade was made simpler and morereliable, for not only did the winds change direction at various seasons, butso did the ocean currents. This meant that ships could sail both ways acrossthe Indian Ocean and in and out of the Persian Gulf (at different times ofyear) with not only favourable winds, but also favourable currents:
“In tropical waters there is an interplay between air currents and oceancurrents. Equatorial currents and trade winds keep one another company fromeast to west all year round across the Atlantic and the Pacific Oceans. TheIndian Ocean differs because the monsoons dominate, and the ocean current isinfluenced by winds that blow from south to north in the six summer months andfrom north to south in the six winter months. This is the only ocean area inthe world where currents change directions with the seasons. Arab and Indiandhows took advantage of those varying tailwinds when they sailed back and forthwith their merchandise, in and out of the Persian Gulf. The changes in themonsoon were part of nature’s clockwork, and just as reliable as the sunand the moon.” Heyerdahl (2000), p. 290.
“We alsohave dramatic new evidence of sailing ability in the early historical period inSoutheast Asia, in this case perhaps involving use of the monsoon winds thatblow seasonally across the Bay of Bengal. About 2,000 years ago, potterycharacteristic of the Indo-Roman site of Arikamedu in Tamil Nadu, on the Indiancoast, found its way to the site of Sembiran in Bali (excavated by I.W. Ardikaof Udayana University in Bali), an astounding 2,700 miles as the crow flies, ormuch more if the sailors hugged the coast. This Indian trade pottery--thelargest assemblage ever found outside the Indian subcontinent itself--heraldeda millennium of cultural contact that gave rise to the temples andcivilizations of Pagan, Angkor, and Borobudur. Much of this trade probablyinvolved spices--even Romans occasionally acquired cloves, which came fromsmall islands in the northern Moluccas.” Bellwood (1997).
Most foreign shipping to China during theLater Han seems to have terminated at the port of Jiaozhi in the Red RiverDelta, near modern Hanoi and Haiphong. Sailing around Hainan Island and up the restof the coast of China was hazardous and uncertain, as were the straits betweenFormosa and the mainland.
From Jiaozhi junks couldtransport goods up the Red River some 330 km [205 miles] to Manhao, in what isnow southern Yunnan and transported from there overland across the famous“five-foot road” to central China and the capital, Changan.
Jiaozhi seems to be theonly port under Chinese control mentioned in the early literature which wasreached by envoys and merchants from Da Qin (the Roman Empire). It was notuntil later that ports to the north such as Nan-hai began to be frequented byships from the south and west.
“Marinos[of Tyre] does not tell the number of stadia from the Golden Chersonese toCattigara, but says Alexander wrote that the shore line extends toward thesouth, and that those sailing along the shore came, after twenty days, to Zaba.From Zaba carried southward and toward the left, they came after some days toCattigara.
He lengthens thedistance, interpreting the expression some days to mean many days, andbelieving (ridiculously it seems to me) that the expression “somedays” was used because the days were too many to be counted.” From:Ptolemy,Geography, 35 (Chap. 14, 1-2).
“. . . ,and from those who have come to us we have also learned much concerning its[India’s] interior as far as the Golden Chersonesus, and from there toCattigara. We have also learned that those who sail there sail to the eastward,and those returning sail to the westward.
The navigators say thatthe time of the passage is uncertain, and that beyond Sina is the region of theSeres and the city Sera. What regions lie east of this they say areunknown, for they have stagnant marshes, in which grow reeds so thick and solarge, that catching hold of them, and upborne by them, men can walk acrossthese marshes. They say further that not only is there a way from there toBactriana through the Stone Tower, but also a way to India through Palimbothra.
The journey from thecapital Sina to the gate of Cattigara runs to the southwest, and therefore doesnot coincide with the meridian drawn through Sera and Cattigara, as Marinusreports, but with one drawn more to the east.” Ptolemy,Geography,37-38. (Chap. 17, 4-5).
“In the 9th year of the Yen-hsi period of Huan-ti of the Handynasty [=CE
Soon after 111
“At thistime Han had already overthrown the kingdom of Yüeh [111
The Han then freed thecriminals of the three districts of the capital area and, adding to them twentyor thirty thousand soldiers from Pa and Shu, dispatched them under the commandof two generals, Kuo Ch’ang and Wei Kuang, to go and attack theK’un-ming tribes that were blocking the Han envoys. The army succeeded inkilling or capturing twenty or thirty thousand of the enemy before departingfrom the area, but later, when another attempt was made to send envoys toTa-hsia, the K’un-ming once more fell upon them and none were able toreach their destination. By this time, however, so many envoys had journeyed toTa-hsia by the northern route out of Chiu-ch’üan that the foreignstates in the area had become surfeited with Han goods and no longer regarded themwith any esteem.” From Chapter 123 of theShih chi of Szu-maCh’ien, translated by Watson (1961). Vol. II, 275-276. See also thesimilar passage in Chapter 61 of theHanshu, translated in:CICA,pp. 220-221.
Nothing is heard of this route again untilCE
“DespiteHan China’s annexation of its Vietnamese province near the end of thesecond century B.C., which brought the Middle Kingdom into close geographicalproximity to Southeast Asia, China’s role in the development of the earlyseaborne trade of the area was relatively unimportant. This fact wasattributable in some measure to the failure of the Chinese authorities tomaintain the naval power needed for suppressing the pirates who infested theFukien and Kwangtung coastal areas. The policing of the south was regarded, apparently,as being not worth the effort required. The Middle Kingdom’s cultural andpolitical centre was located in the Yellow River Valley, so that the distantcoasts constituted only a little-used back door leading to the barbarian worldof the southern seas. In general, China evinced no urge to civilize itssouthern neighbours, even though at a later date it set no geographical boundsto the exercise of its political suzerainty in the area.
China’straditional outlet to the civilized world of India and the Middle East longremained the overland silk road across Central Asia. It was by this route thatBuddhism reached China from India in the first century A.D. In the late fourthcentury it was in reverse along the same route, dotted at the time withmonastic way stations, that the Chinese pilgrim Fa Hsien and others found theirway back to India for the purpose of visiting Buddhist shrines and assemblingPali scriptures. When the Han Chinese undertook in the first century to developshorter trade connections with India, they selected the previously mentionedroute from the upper Yangtse basin through the gorges of the Mekong and SalweenRivers in western Yunnan to the Irrawaddy Valley of Burma and thence to thecoasts of the Bay of Bengal. Proceeding westward in the winter winds, they madefor the Telingana and Kalinga areas of the eastern coast of India, where theMons also maintained their most persistent contacts. The special Chineseprefecture of Yung ch’ang, covering the area of western Yunnan, wasestablished in A.D. 69. This route continued to be used until after thecollapse of the Han dynasty in the early third century; the Yung ch’angprefecture was not abandoned until 342.” Cady (1964), pp. 22-23.
“NearEastern cargoes penetrating to the China market were of necessity luxury goodssuch as frankincense and myrrh, medicinal drugs, jewels, fine textiles andcarpets, and glassware. From Southeast Asian sources, China also began toaccept, as early as the second century, forest products such as pine resins,benzoin, camphor, scented woods, ebony, ivory, and condiments. The forest itemsin particular may have first gained entry into China as cheaper substitutes forthe rare “Persian” drugs and perfumes of the Near East. This Po-ssŭtrade from Sumatra and the Malay Peninsula eventually (by the third or fourthcentury) gained Chinese acceptance on its own merits.” Cady (1964), pp.26-27.
There is no evidence that the Chinese eversucceeded in opening a major overland route from Yunnan to the west, due to thedifficult terrain and hostile native tribes. There was, at times, some movementof goods from Burmese ports, up the Irrawaddy River as far as Bhamo and even asfar as Myitkyinā. From Bhamo, goods were taken overland into Yunnan andsouthern China.
“Commercialtransport is maintained for about 800 miles [1,287 km]. From Henzada to Bhamo(670 miles) [1,078 km], commercial traffic is maintained throughout the year,but from Bhamo to Myitkyina (125 miles), for only seven months.”NEB:vol. 9, 899.
For extensive details on the overlandroutes through Yunnan and to Burma and India, see Pelliot (1904), pp. 131-413,which although it relates to conditions in the 8th century, itcontains much of relevance to earlier periods.
The Mekong River was nota viable alternative for access into Southern China, as waterfalls and rapidsmade navigation on the upper river impossible. The Chinese soon discovered, asthe French did many years later, that the Red River provided the easiest accessto Southern China – when political control of the lower river could bemaintained:
“Garnierand de Lagrée led a small expedition up the [Mekong] river between 1866and 1868; they reached Luang Prabang and, ignoring the King’sdissuasions, followed the river’s course into China as far as Tali. ThereGarnier was courteously turned back, but he had discovered both that the Mekongwas useless as a trade route between Saigon and Yunnan, owing to the rapids ofits wild upper reaches, and that the Red River (Song Koi) was a more feasibleroute to China from Tongking. This route was quickly tested by Dupuis, amerchant whom Garnier had met at Hangkow and who had contacts with Chinesegenerals in Yunnan. In 1871 Dupuis left Yunnan-fu to strike the Red River atMang-hao, south of the provincial capital, and then came down to Hanoi with acargo of tin and copper. He returned up the river to Yunnan with a cargo ofarms, and again made the downstream journey to Hanoi.” Simkin (1968), p.342.
“When, more than five years earlier, the ragged and exhausted members ofthe Mekong mission had met Jean Dupuis in Hankow, this astute Frenchbusinessman had recognized the vital commercial significance of theirinformation about the Red River. As an arms merchant, Dupuis did not need to betold that a river route into Yunnan, such as they believed the Red River to be,offered great opportunities. Instead of having to ship weapons by the long andcostly way of the Yangtze, and then overland to the Yunnanese capital atK’un-ming, the Red River could be used to transport supplies into theheart of southwestern China. After two visits to the capital of Yunnan, Dupuishad, by early 1871, a major commission to purchase arms for the imperialforces. His plan was to buy these in France, then bring them up the Red Riverto Yunnan.” Osborne (1975), p. 201.
“As with so much of the history of the Mekong expedition, the debate overwho first discovered the Red River’s commercial possibilities ended witha final twist of irony. Just as the Mekong was bound to be impossible forlong-distance navigation by craft of any size, so eventually did the Red Riverprove to have little commercial value. It was, as Dupuis had found, navigable,with some difficulty from the Gulf of Tonkin into China, but his experience didnot represent any general indication of the river’s possibilities.Depuis’ arms sales to the imperial forces in Yunnan had been a specialcase. He had, for a brief period, stood ready to supply the one commodity whichthe officials in Yunnan required. When, more than a decade later, France didoccupy Tonkin, the last thing the new colonial administration wished to see wasthe use of the Red River as a conduit for arms. In later years the upper watersof the Red River were important for local commerce but little more.”Osborne (1975), p. 217.
“Decadeafter decade, French planners pored over maps, still convinced that it ought tobe possible to use the Mekong as a link to China; if only the rapids could beconquered, this great river would offer a way to the country that had been sovery much in French minds from the earliest days of their colonial presence inVietnam. In the eighties and nineties, and even into the twentieth century,plans were made and, more rarely, put into action. All to no avail. Highlypowered steam launches could master some of the rapids, but the Khone fallsremained a major obstacle to passage from Cambodia into Laos. In Laos itself,navigation above Vientiane was made tortuous and slow by the rapids that hadcost the French expedition so much effort. The best that could be done was tolink the navigable stretches of the river by other, land-based forms oftransport. When British naval intelligence produced a handbook on theIndochinese region during the Second World War, the information provided on theMekong as a navigable route was succinct and to the point. At the end of the1930s it still took longer to travel from Saigon to Luang Prabang than totravel from Saigon to Marseilles. The golden route to China did not lie alongthe Mekong.” Osborne (1975), pp. 218-219. See also Osborne (2000), pp.102, 103, 114, 119.
The Red River was navigable as far up asManhao [Man-hao] in Yunnan. I can report from my own personal observation thatabove this point navigation on the river is prevented by extensive rapids. Fromhere a road went to Mengzi [Meng-tzu] and on, via Jian-shui [Chien-shui] andTonghai [Tung-hai], to join the main road (the ‘Five Foot Road’),near present day Kunming, which led all the way, via Chengdu, to the capital atChangan (modern Xian).
“The commercial highway from Chiao-chih (Tungking) to Yün-nan, orthe Tunking Manhao trade route to Yün-nan. Man-hao is the landing place atthe end of the Red River in the Circuit or Intendancy of Southern Yün-nan,called I-nan Tao . . . .
The most important ofallroutes to Yün-nan from an economical point of view, as well as from itssuperior convenience, is undoubtedly the Tungking Manhao Route.
However disagreeable itmay be to Englishmen to know it the French in Tungking are in possession of thekey to Yün-nan. The navigability of the Red River for junks as high up asManhao in Yün-nan, has been proven beyond doubt.
Manhao is a town andport at the head of navigation on the Red River. It is in the jurisdiction ofthe Lin-an Fu prefecture and in the county of Mêng-tzŭ Hsien. FromManhao to Yün-nan Fu, the Capital of the province, the journey occupieseleven days, and the whole of the journey from Hanoi to the Capital ofYün-nan can be accomplished within a month by junk and pony, but theintroduction of steam will greatly abridge the time occupied on thejourney.” Mesny (1896), p. 346.
“MENG-TZU,Pin-yin romanization MENG-ZU [now Mengzi], town in southern Yunnan Province (sheng),China. In the 19th century, Meng-tzu was a trading centre for commerce betweenthe interior of Yunnan and the Hanoi-Haiphong area of Indochina. Communicationswere inconvenient: goods were brought to Ho-k’ou on the Indochinese borderby junk, transferred by a small craft to Man-hao, and then brought 37 mi (60km) by pack animal to Meng-tzu. Despite these difficulties, Meng-tzu was animportant point of entry not only into Yunnan but also into western KweichowProvince and in 1889 was opened to foreign trade as a treaty port. Most of thisforeign trade was in tin and opium. The importance of Meng-tzu was ended by theconstruction of the French railway from Haiphong to K’un-ming (provincialcapital of Yunnan) in 1906-10. This railway bypassed Meng-tzu, but in 1915, abranch line was built via the town to the Ko-chiu [Gejiu] tin mines. . . .”NEB: VI, p. 789. See also Pelliot (1904), pp. 141-142.
TheWeilue makes it quite clearthat it was mainly by this route foreigners and their merchandise made theirway to Yongchang [Yung-ch’ang]. The routes from the south and thewest included difficult overland portages that frequently crossed the territoryof hostile tribes. As a result of this situation, Jiaozhi, in the delta of theRed River, near modern Hanoi, soon became China’s major port in thesouth:
“As theJiutangshu(k. 41, p. 33b) says, all the kingdoms of the southern seas who came to renderhomage during the Han, “inevitably took the way of Jiaozhi.”Pelliot (1904), p. 133. See also Hirth (1885), pp. 47-48.
“Thepopulation statistics of Chiao-chih Commandery for A.D. 2 [92,440 households]suggest that by that time Tongking was already a flourishing trade center withlarge households of merchant families dealing in the exotic wares of the southand controlling the southern extreme of the Nan-hai trade routes.”Holmgren (1980), p. 71.
The story of the family of Senghui [Seng-hui],diedc. 280CE
“Theancestors of the SogdianSeng-hui were originally fromK’ang-chü(Sogdiana). They had been established inT’ien-chou (India) forseveral generations. His father came toChiao-chih (Tonkin) totrade.” Translated from Chavannes (1909), pp. 199-200.
The biography of Shi Xie [Shih Hsieh]who ruled Jiaozhi Circuit with his family fromCE189-226gives us a fascinating glimpse of the wealth and trade of Jiaozhi in the earlythird century:
“WheneverHsieh sent couriers to Sun Ch’üan [ruler of the Wu court at Nanking
“Entrancesand exits at his (Shih Hsieh’s) court were heralded by striking of gongsand musical stones, a correct sense of decorum was adhered to, whistles andflutes were played and often there were severalhu (Westerners) burningincense beside his carriage in the street.”SKC 49 (Wu 4), 10a.From: Holmgren (1980), p. 76.
“OfficialChinese use of the sea route to Southeast Asia for diplomatic contact withIndia also occurred in the first century A.D. The Chinese envoys destined forIndia proceeded cautiously around the shoreline from Kwangtung past HainanIsland to Vietnam and along the coasts of Annam and Cochin-China around to apoint at the northwest corner of the Gulf of Siam. Debarking here in thecivilized Mon state called Tun-sun by the Chinese, the envoys proceededoverland via the Mekong Valley and the Three Pagodas Pass to the estuary ofBurma’s Salween River at Martaban. From here they proceeded past thedelta of the Irrawaddy and on up the coast of Arakan, whence they traversed aroute to India much the same as the final stage of the commercial overland route.It was this same Tun-sun portage route from Martaban to the Gulf of Siam shorewhich was presumably used in 120 by a China-bound mission from the RomanEmpire, which included musicians and jugglers. There is no clear indicationthat the water-route to India via Tun-sun, clearly known to the Chinese, wasever seriously exploited by them for commercial purposes. Occasional Chinesejunks, no doubt, braved the dangers of the southern seas down to various pointson the northern and eastern Malay coasts. Fragments of Han porcelains arewidely scattered. Patani was an early port of call, and the Emperor Wang Mangreportedly, sent to Sumatra for rhinoceros horns. A few Chinese may haveproceeded around the peninsula to the port of Trakkola (Trang), but officialChinese initiative and participation in the early Southeast Asian trade werevery meagre.
The reasons for the lackof Chinese interest in the south ocean trade can be surmised. In the firstplace the navigational hazards were great, and the inferior Chinese ships wereobliged to sail close to shore long after Indonesian, Indian, and Arab shipshad learned enough about seasonal winds and navigation to strike out across theopen sea. The officials at South China ports, furthermore, did not encouragethe uncontrolled activity of private traders – a policy which didcharacterize the urban port-centered kingdoms of India. Even after theattractive commercial possibilities of the south ocean trade became apparent inthe second century, the officially acceptable trade from that area was confinedfor the most part to the Vietnamese port of Chiao-chi. Canton began to bewidely used only in the sixth century. It was easier, and no doubt just asprofitable, for port officials to control a segregated community of residentSoutheast Asian traders operating on a seasonal rhythm than to encourage anexpansion of Chinese shipping. The so-called Po-ssŭ trading community atChinese ports to which Chinese accounts of the early centuries make referencewas probably composed of Sumatran or isthmian merchants trading in Persian-typeperfumes, scented woods, resins, and pearls produced in and collected fromtropical forests and coastal waters of Southeast Asia.
In any case theinitiative in the shuttle trade between China on the north and the MalayPeninsula and Sumatra on the south came at first almost entirely from theMalays. If Chinese traders penetrated the south ocean areas, they did so aspassengers of Po-ssŭ ships operated by Malays or Indonesians. . . .
Regular trading contactsbetween Chinese and Southeast Asian ports were developed by the late secondcentury on the initiative of a dozen or so partly Indianized city-stateslocated on the shores of the Gulf of Siam. These port cities were groupedtogether into an empire or federation by Funan probably around the middle ofthe third century. Such trading operations were associated after 240 with theperiodic dispatch of official tributary missions to Chinese courts with giftsadvertising local wares. Commercial exchanges were made at southern Chineseports of entry while the successive missions completed their leisurely journeyto and from the various Chinese courts. . . . ” Cady (1964), pp. 23-24.
“In 190 A.D. in the reign of the Emperor Han Hsien Ti the prefect ofJih-nan in Chiao-chih returned from that country to his native place. This manoriginally a native scholar of the Chinese state of Lu, the modern Shan-tung,being seized with a spirit of unrest and adventure had gone to Chiao-chih wherehe had distinguished himself so greatly that he, a foreigner, had been raisedto the dignity of prefect.
On his return, his fameas a traveller was noised abroad until it penetrated the precincts of the royalpalace and reached the ears of the reigning potentate. Chih Hsieh was presentlysummoned to court and on his arrival this ancient explorer was received inaudience with his sovereign who raised him to the ranks of the aristocracy as aLung-t’ing Hou. After a short stay with his kinsmen Chih Hsieh the newlycreated Marquis Lung-t’ing went back to Jih-nan and quietly resumed hisofficial duties. After the final collapse of the Han dynasty the state ofChiao-chih on receipt of the news resolved to send a special envoy to the courtof the new Emperor, and the Marquis of Lung-t’ing was selected as thesuitable man. The advent of the Marquis of Lung-t’ing at the court of WuTa Ti [r. 222-252CE
The object of theEmperor in making these changes was evidently to impress the Annanese with asense of his great power and authority. It was a clear indication of his desireto govern An-nan directly as a Colony, rather than as a semi-independent state.It was the thin end of the political wedge intended to deprive An-nan of itsautonomy, for when the Annanese government had made Chih Hsieh Prefect ofJih-nan, they did so as a signal mark of their appreciation of his abilitiesand services. But when the Suzerain stepped in and placed this fortunate andenterprising immigrant above all his former Annanese colleagues and superiors,then was struck the death blow of the right of An-nan to promote or demote anofficial without reference to the Imperial Court. On the death of the newViceroy his son Hui did not succeed him but was merely appointed Prefect ofChiao-chou. Time soon proved Hui’s allegiance to the reigning house ofSun to be of the slenderest kind for that official headed a revolt, presumablywith the intention of possessing himself of the power his father had enjoyed.But this was not to be. The Emperor Wu Ta Ti greatly incensed at the treacheryof Hui despatched Wu Tai with an expeditionary force to crush the rebellion,punish the leaders and restore order in the distant Colony. Complete successattended the expedition. Wu Tai, who previous to starting had been createdChiao Chou Tzu Shih, landed without opposition and summoned the rebellious Huito his presence. The order was obeyed for Hui together with his five brotherspresented themselves at the Imperial Headquarters where they humblyacknowledged their guilt and craving pardon for their treasonable offences,offered guarantees for future good behaviour. However, the Imperial Commanderremained obdurate, and, being exceeding indignant with the treason and abjectcowardice of the six brothers who piteously begged for mercy, he, aftertreating them with contempt and contumely ordered his young men to fall on thetraitors and hack them to pieces. This act of severity caused the sternCommander to be held in great awe by all classes so that the imperial authoritywas quickly and firmly re-established. The reigning Emperor in order tocommemorate the suppression of the revolt changed the name Chiao-chou toWu-p’ing Chün and governed it by martial law a practice maintainedby succeeding dynasties.
The Chin dynasty calledit Chiu Tê Chün whilst under the Sung; Ch’i; Niang;Ch’ên and Sui dynasties it was known by the name ofSung-p’ing Chün after which time the ancient name of Chiao-chih wasagain revived.” Mesny (1884), VI, pp. 28-30.
“Chang-ti’sreign saw a distinct improvement in internal communications in the southernpart of the empire. Hitherto, goods that were being transported from the sevencommanderies of Chiao-chih had been sent by sea. The ships had been able to putin at Tung-yeh, the only known settlement at that time on the Fukien coast, butthereafter were subject to storm and shipwreck. In A.D. 83 Cheng Hung, a nativeof K’uai-chi commandery who was conversant with these local conditions,was appointed superintendent of agriculture (ta-ssu-nung). At hissuggestion a land route was opened up across the mountains, through Ling-lingand Kuei-yang commanderies. This became the normal means of communications,which remained in use up to the time of one of the compilers of theHou-Hanshu.” Loewe (1986a), p. 297.
“There isno evidence to show that by A.D. 1 colonists from elsewhere in China hadmigrated to Fukien, and it is likely that only one major settlement existed atthat time. This was the town or county of Tung-yeh, which may have been foundedduring Wu-ti’s reign or somewhat later. It was situated on the seacoastat the mouth of the Min River, and from A.D. 83 at least it served as a stagingpost for ocean-going ships carrying tribute from farther south. Toward the endof the second century some additional counties may have been established in thearea, and these increased in number noticeably from perhaps A.D. 300;presumably some measure of colonization had taken place during the earlierdecades, when China had been split into the three kingdoms of Wei, Shu-Han, andWu.” Yü (1986), pp. 456-457.
“Maritime trade developed slowly but steadily from the first to themiddle of the third centuries A.D., with ships Roman in name though reallyGraeco-Egyptian reaching all parts of India, and towards the end of thisperiod, even penetrating as far as Kattigara, which was either Indo-China, orperhaps the coast of south China itself. Syrian and Graeco-Egyptian‘colonies’ or ‘factories’ may have been established atCanton and Hangchow. Indian and Singhalese ships also plied the same routes,and a few Roman trading settlements were established in India, but it was notuntil after the third century that long-distance Chinese navigators appear onthe scene.” Needham (1978), p. 65.
“Accordingto Wan Chen, who wrote an account of the South during the Wu dynasty (A.D.222-77), foreigners [i.e. natives of S.E. Asia] call shipspo. Thebiggest are 20chang or more in length, and two or threechangabove the waterline. Seen from above they resemble covered galleries. Theycarry six to seven hundred men and a cargo of 10,000hu’.”Christie (1957), p. 347.
During the Han 1chang equalled2.31 metres, so a ship this size would have been 46.2 metres (152 feet) long,and 4.6 metres (15 feet) to 6.9 metres (23 feet) above water (presumablyincluding the “house” or living quarters).
According to Deng(1997), p. xxiv, thechi (of which 10 equal a chang) was equal to 0.2304meters in the early Eastern Han (25-28CE), 0.2375 m.between 81 and 220CE
One Hanhuequalled 19.968 litres – see: Loewe (1967), p. 161. Therefore, if we canaccept the figure of 10,000hu as being approximately correct, the shipscould carry only about 200 tonnes of cargo. Deng (1997), p. xxv, shows theshi(which, during the Han, was the same as thehu) as varying between 24.98kg during the Later Western Han (141BCE to 8
However, this is likely to bea gross underestimate as ships this size could be expected to carry up to 1,000to 2,000 tonnes. ‘10,000’ is probably used here in the common senseof ‘a myriad’, or ‘a very large number.’
“By the thirdcentury B.C.E. the Chinese had taken notice of Malay sailors approaching theirshores from the “Kunlun” Islands in the southern seas, which theChinese learned were “volcanic and invariably endowed with marvellous andpotent powers”. . . . The Chinese also knew these islanders as buildersand as the crews of ocean-going vessels engaged in long-distance overseastrade. The Chinese, in fact, appear to have learnt much from these sailors. TheMalays independently invented a sail, made from woven mats reinforced withbamboo, at least several hundred years B.C.E., and by the time of the Handynasty (206 B.C.E. to 221 B.C.) the Chinese were using such sails (Johnstone,1980: 191-92).
Chinese descriptions ofMalay ships, the earliest of which dates to the third century C.E., indicatethat the Malay sailedjongs (a Malay word), large vessels withmultilayered hulls. The English wordjunk, which is often used to referto Chinese vessels, is a derivative of the Malayjong. The Chinese alsorecognized that their word for Kunlun ships,buo, was a foreign wordthat had been incorporated into Chinese (Manguin, 1980: 266-67, 274). Onaverage, thejong could carry four to five hundred metric tons, but atleast one was large enough to carry a thousand tons. The planks of the shipswere joined with dowels; no metal was used in their construction. On some ofthe smaller vessels parts might be lashed together with vegetable fibres, butthis was not typical of larger ships. Thejong usually had from two tofour masts plus a bowsprit, as well as two rudders mounted on its sides.Outrigger devices, designed to stabilize a vessel, were used on many ships butprobably were not characteristic of ships that sailed in rough oceans (Manguin,1980: 268-74).
The Malays were also thefirst to use a balance-lug sail, an invention of global significance.Balance-lugs are square sails set fore and aft and tilted down at the end. Theycan be pivoted sideways, which makes it possible to sail into the oncoming windat an angle of to tack against the wind – to sail at an angle first oneway and then the other, in a zigzag pattern, so as to go in the direction fromwhich the wind is blowing. Because of the way the sides of the sail weretilted, from a distance it looked somewhat triangular. . . . It is thus quitelikely that the Malay balance-lug was the inspiration for the triangular lateensail, which was developed by sailors living on either side of the Malays, thePolynesians to their east and the Arabs to their west.
Precisely when thePolynesians and the Arabs began using the lateen sail remains unknown, but itwould seem to have been in the last centuries B.C.E. It is known that the Arabsin the vicinity of the Indian Ocean were accomplished sailors by the first centuryC.E. and both they and the Polynesians apparently had the lateen sail by then(Hourani, 1951: 102). This pattern suggests that sailors who came into contactwith the Malays’ balance-lug sail were inspired by it and attempted tocopy its design. They might have misunderstood it to be a triangular sail or,in the process of trying to duplicate it, discovered a triangular sail wouldserve the same purpose.
Arabs sailing inMediterranean waters were using a lateen sail by the second century C.E., butit did not appear on Atlantic ships until the fifteenth century, whenPortuguese mariners put both the lateen and the traditional Atlantic squaresails on their vessels. It was only after they came into the possession of thelateen and learned how to tack against the wind that it became possible forthem to explore the western coast of Africa, because the winds offAfrica’s western coast blow the same direction all year round. Without alateen, Atlantic sailors, including the Portuguese, could not sail south insearch of West African gold, since they would have no way to return toEurope.” Shaffer (1996), pp. 12-14.
Navigation to the northern end of the RedSea was usually difficult for sailing vessels because of the prevailingnortherly winds, but at certain times of the year it was usually possible tosail some distance up the Red Sea. Ships heading for Egypt could unload theircargoes (depending on weather conditions and the ultimate destination of thecargoes) at one of the three main Egyptian ports on the Red Sea: Myos Hormos,Leukos Limen or Berenicê. Some of the cargoes were transported acrossdifficult desert roads to the Nile and then shipped down that river toAlexandria and other delta cities. At other times cargoes may have been carriedby camel caravan north along the banks of the Red Sea and then west across thedelta, probably along roads built on the embankments of the canals which linkedall the major delta cities.
“MyosHormos [“Mussel Harbour”] had the advantage of offering a shorter desertcrossing–six to seven days as against eleven to twelve fromBerenicê. But Berenicê, in turn, had a signal advantage of its ownto offer: it lay 230 nautical miles [426 km] south of Myos Hormos, and thissaved homeward bound vessels that much relief from beating against consistentlyfoul winds. Until the time of thePeriplus, both ports seemed to havebeen used equally. . . . Strabo’s remarks seem to indicate that in his day [he visitedEgyptcirca 25 or 24BCE] Myos Hormos was the mostimportant, whereas statements in thePeriplus point to the balancehaving tipped in favour of Berenicê. A third port, Leukos Limên,saw some use in the course of time but apparently never attained the status ofthe other two.” Casson (1989), pp. 95-96.
“Thesetroublesome northerlies may well lie behind Strabo’s remark (17.815) thatPtolemy II made Berenicê accessible by opening up a road to it“because the Red Sea is hard to sail, particularly or those who set sailfrom the innermost recess”; those who set sail from the innermost recessobviously had to get back there, and that, no question about it, involved hardsailing.” Casson (1989), p. 97.
During the time of Trajan [reigned 98-117
“Trajanhad another canal dug to link Alexandria with the new port of Clysma. By thistime a Roman fleet was patrolling the Red Sea in order to give protection frompirates, and its control extended to the Arab anchorage at Ocelis [near themouth of the Red Sea], where Rome had trading rights secured through costlygifts to the local ruler.” Simkin (1968), p. 39.
“Trajanrepaired his ‘river’, the Cairo to Suez canal; and before A.D. 216the Red Sea was to be patrolled and Coptos was to be garrisoned by Palmyrenearchers officered by Rome.” Stark (1966), p. 253.
Indian ships were making long-distancemaritime trade a regular feature of the first few centuries
“Ancient Tamil literature and the Greek and Roman authors prove that in thefirst two centuries of the Christian era the ports on the Coromandel or Cholacoast enjoyed the benefits of active commerce with both West and East. TheChola fleets did not confine themselves to coasting voyages, but boldly crossedthe Bay of Bengal to the mouths of the Ganges and the Irrawaddy, and the IndianOcean to the islands of the Malay Archipelago. All kinds of goods imported intoKerala or Malabar from Egypt found a ready market in the Chola territory ;while, on the other hand, the western ports drew a large part of their suppliesof merchandise from the bazaars of the eastern coast, which produced greatquantities of cotton goods. The principal Chola port was Kāviripaddinam,situated at the northern mouth of the Kāviri (Cauvery) river [on thesoutheast coast of India]. This once wealthy city, in which the king maintaineda magnificent palace, and foreign merchants found residence agreeable andprofitable, has vanished, and its site lies buried under deep sand-drifts.
The first historical, orsemi-historical, Chola king is Karikāla, who is represented by the earlypoets as having invaded Ceylon and carted off thence thousands of coolies towork on the embankments of the Kāviri river, a hundred miles in length,which he constructed. He is said to have been contemporary with Nedunj CheliyanPāndya, as well as with Athem I Chera, and nearly so with Gajabāhu,king of Ceylon. This last synchronism is valuable as giving an approximatedate, which may be indicated as falling within the limits of the second centuryA.D. Karikāla, according to the poets, was succeeded by a grandson namedChed-chenni Nalank-killi, who was succeeded in his turn by Killi-vallavam.Chen-kudduva, or Imaya-varman, a cousin of Ched-chenni Nalank-killi, is said tohave been contemporary, at fifty years of age, with Gajabāhu, king ofCeylon, to whom the traditional chronology assigns the period from 113 to 125A.D. But the true date must be considerably later.2
2TheTamils Eighteen Hundred Years Ago, pp. 64-78 ; S. Krishnaswamy Aiyenagar,‘Some points in Tamil Literary History,’Malabar QuarterlyReview, 1904. The dates in Mr. Kanakasabhai’s book seem to be placedtoo early.”
Smith (1908),pp. 415-416.
For accounts of Indian passenger ships ofabout this period carrying up to 1,000 passengers, and very large freight ships– up to 176 feet (53.6 metres) long, 22 feet (6.7 metres) broad and 17feet (5.2 metres) deep, see: Prasad, (1977), pp. 128-133; Sastri (1975), pp.115-145.
“Incomparison, the largest galleon in the world when it sank in 1638, the NuestraSeñora de la Concepción, “weighed 2000 tons and measured 45metres [148 feet] from bow to stern. Her beam was one-third that length, andthe depth of her hold 6 metres [20 feet].” Mathers and Shaw (1993), p. 2.
“It can beassumed that fairly intimate trading connections existed from B.C. timesbetween Indian ports of the Bay of Bengal and leading peoples like the Monsliving on the opposite shores. But the primary direction of India’s tradeuntil near the end of the first century A.D. was westward rather than towardSoutheast Asia or China. Trade between the Mediterranean world andIndia’s western Malabar coast was developed originally by traders fromthe lower Red Sea area and by the Hellenistic Seleucids. Roman trade from Egyptto India later attained substantial proportions around 90 B.C. only to declinesharply during the ensuing sixty years of Roman civil strife. It was revivedunder Augustus around 30 B.C. Until the first century A.D., when both Red Seaand Roman ships began to use the monsoon passage direct from Aden to India, theshipping routes had continuously paralleled the Arabian, Persian, and Indiancoasts.
. . . . Thus the moreadventurous Indian traders already familiar with the opposite shores of the Bayof Bengal began collaborating with north Sumatran and east coast Malays tobring to the ports of Ceylon [and eastern India] spices, forest resins, andscented woods from Southeast Asia and choice Chinese silks and porcelains, allof which were marketable in India and the Near East. Greek and Arab vesselsseldom if ever proceeded further eastward than Ceylon, although several scorefamilies of Persian traders were allegedly resident at the Malay isthmus in thethird century.” Cady (1964), pp. 25-26.
“It wasduring the early second century that Indian shippers gained sufficientexperience and confidence to abandon early habits of sailing close to theshore. From the Bengal port of Tamralipti at the western end of the Gangesdelta, sailing ships could proceed southward during the winter season, passingeither to the east of the Andaman Islands or via the 100 latitudechannel south of them, en route to alternative ports on the isthmus. Bengalships might also worry their way through the becalmed Malacca Straits to pointsof rendezvous in lower Sumatra or on the eastern Borneo coast beyond thepeninsula. Access to the same isthmian ports and to the upper reaches of theMalacca Straits might be had during the entire period of the summer monsoon bysouth Indian ships sailing directly across the bay. They could pass eitherthrough the 100 channel between the Andamans and Nicobars or betweenthe Nicobars and the northern tip of Sumatra. In October seasonal winds couldalso carry vessels to the southwest of Sumatra and down to the Sunda Straits[between Sumatra and Java], thus avoiding the pirates and the doldrums of theMalacca passage. The lack of ports of call and the perils of the open seaobviously discouraged the use of this route.
At the lower end ofSumatra, on the east coast of Borneo, and possibly at the western end of Javaas well, safe havens were developed where China-bound ships from the ports ofIndia, northern Sumatra, and Ceylon could await the north-blowing monsoonwinds. From such points, it was fairly easy to proceed up the Malay coast pastPatani, Singora, and Ligor across the Siam Gulf to Funan’s port of Go OcEo near the mouth of the Mekong River. The journey then ran up the coast pastChampa to Chiao-chi port in Vietnam or on to Canton. Ships sailing northwardfrom eastern Borneo would probably make a landfall at Champa, which emerged asa thoroughly Indianized state at the end of the second century. The return tripby sea was equally time consuming. It was particularly dangerous in the MalaccaStraits, subject during the summer months to occasional stormy squalls(“Sumatrans”) interspersed with extended periods of paralysingcalms which left stranded ships at the mercy of swarms of pirates.
However many of theSumatran and Indian ships may have undertaken during the early centuries tonegotiate the seasonally awkward all-sea journey to the ports of China, themore feasible tactic was to synchronize the shuttle traffic to the isthmianportage terminals from the two directions. This was accomplished for the mostpart on the initiative of the Indian traders operating on both sides of thepeninsula. The three most widely used portage routes ran between Takuapa (abovethe Junk Ceylon promontory) and Chaiya on the Bay of Bandon, between Trang(Takkola) and Ligor, and between Kedah and Patani (Lankasuka). The older routethrough the Mon state of Tun-sun (or Dvaravati) to Tavoy or Martaban on thewestern side was less used for the China trade than were the more convenientnewly developed passageways below the Isthmus of Kra. Mergui port apparentlywas used very little.
At a dozen or morepoints on both sides of the isthmus, Indianized city-states developed. Theywere apparently ruled by native chiefs allied with Indian merchant groups. Thedevelopment of such states was conditioned not only on port locations andportage facilities, but also on the availability nearby of paddy land for foodsupplies. Except for the Perlis area around Trang, the best locations for foodpurposes and for political development were on the eastern shore, especiallyaround Ligor and on the Bay of Bandon. None of these city-state enclaves wasstrong enough to conquer the rest of them, although several of them weregrouped from time to time under single governments.
Special reference mustbe made to the role of the port of Kedah, which was used for both portagepurposes and as a point of rendezvous in connection with the passage throughthe Malacca Straits. It was most easily approached from the west via thepassage between Sumatra and the Nicobar Islands during the summer monsoon. Thesilhouette of Mount Kedah afforded a landfall to guide approaching ships. Theoriginal port of Kedah was located up the then broad estuary of the KualMerbok, now swamp-filled, entering the sea some distance above Penang Island.Ruins in the vicinity have been explored on the higher ground to the north,adjacent to the foothills of the peak. In the course of time the centers ofsettlement moved seaward. Kedah was widely used by Indian traders from theearly centuries of the Christian era and probably from the eighth century byMuslim Arabs and Persians. Products available locally, besides food and watersupplies, included camphor, perfumed woods, tin, and gold. The port of Pataniat the eastern end of the Kedah portage route was also used by Indian tradersin the early second century. Kedah may have been used by ships making thenorthward trip through the straits en route to Bengal, the south Indian ports,or Ceylon.
The Mons ports ofThaton, Martaban, and Tavoy were widely used for direct trade with Ceylon andthe Coromandel Coast of India, but less so in connection with the transit tradewith China. It was difficult to proceed from Bengal to the Mon ports duringeither monsoon period partly because of treacherous tidal currents found to theeast of the Irrawaddy delta. Four routes of trade and communication led inlandfrom the Tenasserim ports of the Mons. The northernmost ran eastward to theupper Menam Valley and thence to the Mun and Mekong Rivers, coming to a deadend in the Korat plateau at Bassac, early center of power of the ChenlaKhymers. Another, used early by India-bound Chinese envoys, started at modernMoulmein, proceeded by the Three Pagodas Pass southeastward into the MekongValley, and the Tun-sun (Dvaravati) country to the west of the lower Menam. Theother two ran eastward from Tavoy and Mergui to the Gulf of Siam. Neither ofthe latter two rivaled the importance of the Takuapa and Trang portages.”Cady (1964), pp. 27-31.
By the ninth century, we find referencestopo carrying up to 1,000 men plus merchandise:
“Furtherinformation is to be found in theI-ch’ieh-ching yin-i, adictionary compiled by Huei-lin which according to Pelliot was completed inA.D. 817. Huei-lin gives a number of instances ofpo and includes thefollowing passage:
“Ssu-maPiao, in his commentary onChuang Tzü, says: “largeocean-going ships are calledpo”. According to theKuang ya:‘po is an ocean-going ship”. It has a draught of 60 feet(!). It is fast and carries 1000 men as well as merchandise. It is also calledk’un-lun-po’.
From: Christie(1957), pp. 347-348.
“On theother [eastern] side of the [Indian] peninsula, Indians may have taken a moreactive part in trade and exploration. As already mentioned, they certainly hada profound influence on South-East Asia, even though no one is certain how thiscame about. But the South-East Asians themselves, and the Malays in particular,may have been equally active carriers. A hint about this is given in thePeriplus:
“[There]are the marts of Camara and Poduce and Sopatma [on the Coromandel Coast ofsouth-east India], where are local ships which sail along the coast as far asLimyrice, and others which are very large vessels made of single logs boundtogether and calledsangara; those that cross over to Chryse and theGanges are calledcolandiophonta and are the largest.”
Both thesangara(whose name means ‘outriggers’) and thecolandiophonta wereprobably Malayan or Indonesian rather than Indian. Chinese sources describe thecolandiophonta in more detail, under the name ofK’un-lunp’o, and confirm that they were indeed exceptionally large. Some ofthem could be over 200 feet long, and carry six or seven hundred men and somenine hundred tons of cargo – which makes them perhaps a shade larger thanthose other leviathans of the Ancient World, the grain-ships that plied betweenAlexandria and Rome. They were also probably faster: even the largest Romanships usually managed with a single enormous square sail, whereas aK’un-lup’o had four sails and may even have arranged them in thefore-and-aft rig, like a schooner.” Sitwell (1984), pp. 146-147.
A major port of call for ships arrivingfrom both west and east, would have been the ancient port of Mantai (modernMannar) situated on a small island connected to the Sri Lankan coast by abridge and causeway:
“Mantaiis situated at the northwest tip of Sri Lanka, at the southern extremity of astring of underwater reefs known as Adam’s Bridge, which link the islandto the Indian subcontinent. These reefs effectively block the passage of shipsbetween India and Sri Lanka, and the importance of this fact can hardly beoverstressed when considering the strategic significance of a major settlementin this location. Literary references to Mantai refer to the ancient port asMahatittha (Pali), Mantottam (Tamil), and Matota (Singhalese). . . . It wasdetermined in 1982 that the earliest phase of the site is prehistoric, when aMesolithic campsite existed at Mantai, for which a radiocarbon date at thebeginning of the second millennium B.C. has been established. From at least asearly as the fifth century B.C., there appears to have been a continuousoccupation of the site up to the eleventh century A.D. With a depth of up to 10m of occupational debris over a wide area, the potential exists for a detailedanalysis of the whole history of the site.
The particular interestof the site lies in its strategic position, astride the main maritime routebetween the Near and Far East, while at the same time representing a majorpoint of contact between South India and Sri Lanka. . . . Mantai’s longhistory as a port would argue that it played an essential role in the historyof Sri Lanka; in a broader context the site is crucial for any study of IndianOcean trade, and indeed for the economic history of Asia. Comparable sitesdoubtless exist in central Asia, where the history of Asian terrestrial trademight be studied; but for maritime trade, Mantai is unique. Further, Mantai wasthe leading port for Sri Lanka as a whole for at least fifteen hundred years.With Anuradhapura as the capital, the northern dry zone was developed with theaid of a highly sophisticated irrigation system, providing surplus wealth fromagriculture sufficient to fund international commerce. It was, indeed, thecollapse of the north, concomitant with the invasion by the Colas and thecapture of Anuradhapura in the early tenth century, which led to Mantai’sultimate demise.” Carswell (1991), p. 197.
“ThatMantai was an important link during the classical period for Roman trade acrossthe Indian Ocean is obvious, for parallels between rouletted ware have beenfound at contemporary sites such as Kantarodai on the Jaffna Peninsula, and ata number of sites on the Indian mainland, of which Arikamedu [near modernPondicherry] is to date the most important. The classification of the potter ofthe Roman trade period is being undertaken at the moment, and it would be prematureat this stage to note more than its presence.
. . . . The earliestreferences to Sri Lanka in Greek are by Onesicritus, Megasthenes, Eratosthenes,and Hipparchus, none of whose works is preserved in full and none of whomactually visited the island. With this caveat, many of the details from thesefour writers’ works quoted by Pliny and Strabo are intriguingly apposite.In particular, Pliny quotes Eratosthenes (b. 276 B.C.), who tells us that thesea between India and Sri Lanka is very shallow, but that certain channels areso deep that an anchor will not reach the bottom. Because of this, the shipshave two bows so they need not turn around when negotiating the narrows. Thisequates very well with Mantai’s known role as a point of transhipment forgoods arriving from either east or west in long-distance shipping, to beunloaded and shipped on by using a narrow channel (still extant) at the pointwhere Adam’s Bridge joins the island at Mannar.
Further details aboutSri Lanka are given inPME, which notes that the northern part of theisland, called Palaisimoundou and formerly Taprobane, was civilized andproduced pearls, precious stones, muslin and tortoise shell.9However, it is Ptolemy’sGeographica, written in the secondcentury A.D., that is of particular interest. He locates a place called ModuttiEmporium on the northern side of the island on the right bank of a prominentriver, the Phasis.10
9 G.W. B. Huntingford,The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea by and Unknown Author,with Some Extracts from Agatharkhides“On the ErythraeanSea” [Hakluyt Society] (London 1980), 54.
10 E.L. Stevenson ed. and trans.,Geography of Claudius Ptolemy (New York1932) 158. Stevenson’s translation of the GreekModouttou from andapparently corrupt medieval manuscript is given asMordugi.
Carswell(1991), p. 199; notes, p. 203.
“Theelephants from Sri Lanka were found to easily adapt for war and were consideredbetter than those from the mainland. Their excellent qualities were well knownto the Greeks even as far back as the 3rd Century BC, in the time ofAlexander the Great. Onescritus, who was an Admiral of the Fleet of Alexanderthe Great and probably the first European to describe the trained elephants ofCeylon, has stated that the elephants from Taprobane (later Ceylon and then SriLanka) “are bigger, more fierce and furious for war service than those ofIndia.” Sixth Century writer Indicopleustes says that the elephant fromSri Lanka was highly priced in India for its excellence in war.
Elephantsfrom Sri Lanka were exported to Kalinga by special boats from about 200 BC.From the port of Mantai the present day Mannar. Such exports are also recordedby Ptolemy in 175 AD.
Bythis time Sri Lanka had also earned a reputation for skilled elephant management.The Sinhala kings had special elephant trainers. They were the Kuruwe peoplefro Kegalle. Training elephants caught from the wild, for both traditionalpurposes and war, was the responsibility of these people. Evensons(mahouts) who looked after the elephants after their training were trained bythe Kuruwe people. A brass model of an elephant with a number of movable jointswas used in the training of mahouts.
Recordsshow that even though Sri Lanka was exporting a large number of elephants in the5th and 6th centuries BC, a number of elephants were alsoimported into the country after the 4th century BC. This is apartfrom the gifts that the ruling monarchs of India and Myanmar, (then Burma) sentfrom time to time.” Jayewardene (2003).
“From Romanlevels at Mantai only two glass beads and a bangle of western origin wereuncovered. In contrast, at Arikamedu (whose loci are badly mixed) there are 56glass beads that are likely from Roman-period levels, eleven of which arecertainly of Roman date, the same centuries as Arikamedu pottery atBerenike.” Francis (1999).
“In thiscontext [i.e. in regard to the fact that most artefacts would have been made ofperishable materials and are, therefore, unavailable to the archaeologist], theevidence for Mantai as a production and manufacturing center helps to extendour comprehension of its crucial location. First of all, Mantai lies to thewest of the famous pearl banks in the Gulf of Mannar; pearls were a majorexport until all the oysters died at the beginning of the present century. Bothwhole and drilled pearls have been found in the excavations. So have shellbangles, sawn from conch shells and engraved at Mantai; the shell waste andbangle wasters occur in large numbers. From the earliest literary references toSri Lanka, the island has been renowned for the mining and export of preciousand semiprecious stones. These, too, have been found in worked and unworkedform at Mantai. Of particular interest is evidence for the production ofpolished spherical quartz beads, with many bead blanks and half-drilledspecimens. Microanalysis of these beads has demonstrated that they were piercedwith a double diamond bit, a technique so far only recorded in modern Gujarat.
The beads from Mantaiprovide some of the most striking evidence for external contacts. Overtwenty-five hundred specimens from all levels have been catalogued by PeterFrancis; they furnish evidence for a wide variety of materials, manufacturingtechniques, and international distribution. There is no doubt that Mantai was amajor bead-manufacturing site, particularly for Indo-pacific glass beads. Thefabrication of such glass beads is first recorded at Arikamedu (Phase A,250-150 B.C.); their production at Mantai lasted for over a millennium.Distribution of such beads was worldwide, from East Africa as far as Korea.
Among the earliestimported beads at Mantai is one which is also the most complex, a sphericalbead with a sky-blue glass core overlaid with compound stripes of white andyellow, and with mosaic cane “eyes” in white, yellow, and black. Aproduct of the Roman Empire, parallels have been found among Roman beads inGermany. Another bead of similar date is of coral, a major Western export toIndia and probably traded by the Romans for pearls. Imported beads includeexamples of lapis lazuli, the source material for which was Afghanistan, andfor which striking parallels have been found at Nishapur. Many of the beads,such as those of cornelian, are linked to similar beads excavated inIndia.” Carswell (1991), pp. 200, 202.
“So far the sea alone has figured in this discussion as the way by whichIndian influence came into South-East Asia. It was the obvious way of travelbetween India and the Archipelago; indeed the voyage from the Coromandel Coastto the Straits of Malacca was a comparatively short one, and at the right timeof year was easy and safe even for small vessels. . . .
To reach the countriesin the eastern parts of the indo-Chinese mainland ships had to pass througheither the Malacca or the Sunda Straits.* Owing to the prevalence of piracy inthese narrow waters travellers sought to avoid them by using a number of shortcuts overland. Archaeological discoveries along these overland routes attest theirimportance, not only in the early days of Indian penetration, but later alsowhen the empire of Śrivijaya maintained strict control over the straitsand forced all ships to put in at one or other of its ports.
The favourite short cutwas across the narrow Isthmus of Kra, from Takua Pa on the western side toCh’aiya on the eastern, or from Kedah to Singora. Farther north there wasa route from Tavoy over the Three Pagodas Pass and thence by the Kanburi riverto the valley of the Menam. Two ancient sites, P’ong Tuk and P’raPathom lie on this route. Further still to the north lay a route to the Menamregion by Moulmein and the Raheng pass. . . . ”
*If,indeed, the Sunda Straits even existed at this time. See the thought-provokingbook by David Keys:Catastrophe: An Investigation into the Origins of theModern World (1999), Random House, in which he propounds the plausibletheory that a massive volcanic eruption in the region of Krakatoa in the year535 CE not only separated the islands of Sumatra and Java for the first time,but caused immense worldwide effects on human history and the development ofcultures.
Hall (1968),pp. 23-24.
“So far as the historical evidence goes, the first sign of states formedin the manner that has been described in the preceding section show that theywere in existence by the end of the second century A.D. They appear in threeregions: (a) that of the lower Mekong and its delta, (b) north ofHué in modern Annam, and (c) the northern part of the MalayPeninsula. They probably existed elsewhere, say in Arakan and Lower Burma, butthe evidence is lacking. . . .
Funan’s capitalcity was for some time Vyadhapura, ‘the city of hunters’, which laynear the hill Ba Phnom and the village of Banam in the present Cambodianprovince of Prei Veng. The Chinese say that it was 120 miles [193 km] from thesea. Oc Eo, its port, on the maritime fringe of the Mekong delta bordering onthe Gulf of Siam some three miles from the sea has been the subject ofexcavations by a French archaeologist.1 It was an immense urbanagglomeration of houses on piles intersected by a network of little canals,part of an irrigation system extending for over 200 kilometres, which had beenconstructed, with wonderful skill, to drain what had previously been ‘acesspool of soft mud barely held together by mangrove trees’,2and to irrigate rice fields for the support of a large population mainlyconcentrated in lake-cities. These were linked up with each other and with thesea by canals large enough to take sea-going ships, so that it was possible forChinese travellers to talk about ‘sailing across Funan’ on theirway to the Malay Peninsula. Oc Eo was a centre of industry and trade: its sitebears evidence of maritime relations with the coast of the Gulf of Siam,Malaya, Indonesia, India, Persia and, indeed, directly or indirectly with theMediterranean. It was situated on what was in its day the great maritimehighway between China and the West. The Funanaese were of Malay3race, and still in the tribal state at the dawn of history. The culture of OcEo itself is charactered by Mr. Malleret as half-indigenous, half-foreign; itsforeign affinities, he says, were almost entirely with India.
The earliest Chinesereference to the kingdom comes from the pen of K’ang T’ai, whotogether with Chu Ying was sent thither on a mission in the middle of the thirdcentury.”
1Louis Malleret, ‘Les Fouilles d’Oc-Éo (1944)’, BEFEO,xvi, 1, 1951.
2 B.P. Groslier,Angkor, Art and Civilisation, p. 17.
3 Theword here is used in its widest ethnic sense.
Hall (1968),pp. 24-25.
“When the first emperor of the Chin dynasty came to the throne in 280,the Governor of Tongking addressed a memorial to him complaining of the raidsof Lin-yi, aided by friendly bands from Funan, upon the commandery of Je-nan.TheChin History, in recording this incident, says that the state towhich the Lin-yi raiders belonged had been founded about a century earlier by anative official, Ch’u Lien, who had taken advantage of the weakness ofthe Han dynasty (206 B.C.–A.D. 221) to carve out a kingdom for himself atthe expense of Je-nan in the year A.D. 192. The Chinese name for his kingdomwas Hsiang-lin, which was in fact the name of their sub-prefecture in which theindependence movement took place. It coincided almost exactly with the presentAnnamite province of Thua-thien, in which the city of Hué is situated.
Thus does the statelater to be known as Champa first appear in history. Archaeological evidenceshows that the centre of its power lay just to the south of Hué region,in the modern Annamite province of Quang-nam, which is so rich inarchaeological sites that it was evidently the sacred territory of Champa. But,although the famous sites of Tra-kieu, Misön and Dong-duong have yieldedspecimens of Amaravati art, no evidence exists, as in the case of neighbouringFunan, of the dynastic traditions of the Kings of Champa or of the coming ofIndian influence.” Hall (1968), p. 28.
“The narrow coastal strip from the Porte d’Annam to the Col desNuages, which they [the Lin-yi] coveted, was probably at this time inhabited bywild tribes in a backward state. Their own territory stretched down the coastfrom the Col des Nuages to the Bay of Camranh, but they had settlements also inthe Mekong valley, the valleys of the Sesan and Song-ba, and the neighbouringhills. They held the western slopes of the Annamite Chain up to the Mekongvalley from Stung Treng to the river Mun. They belonged to the Indonesian groupof peoples. Later the Indonesian settlements round the Bay of Nhatrang were toform their southern province of Panduranga, now Phan-rang. But this formed partof the empire of Funan when we first hear of the Lin-yi. The people of thisregion were related to the Funanese rather than to China. They appear to havereceived Indian influence as early as the beginning of the first century A.D.According to Pamentier, their earliest art and architecture is Khymer ratherthan Cham. Their region continued to form part of Funan until the Chenlaconquest of that country in the latter part of the sixth century.” Hall(1969), p. 29.
In recent years, much more informationabout the maritime routes has surfaced, although some scholars, aware of, andprobably overestimating, the risks and uncertainties of sea travel in ancienttimes, do not accept its importance.
“Finally,the third practical way, particularly from the end of the 1st century, and ofwhich the importance has quite recently been put forward by orientalists on thebasis of recent research, left from the southern coast of China, in the regionof Kuang chou [Canton] Bay, passed around the Indochinese peninsula, crossedthe Malacca straits and proceeded as far as the mouth of the Ganges. Thismaritime route was serviced solely by Indian vessels. From the coast of the Bayof Bengal, the merchants sailed up the river as far as “the Gates of theGanges”, then, navigability having ended, the merchandise was takenoverland to the ports of the west coast, where the Persians, Arabs and, beforelong, the Europeans, went to acquire them. We will see, moreover, that thearchaeological excavations allowed the differentiation of the products comingsouthern China through northeastern India, and those from northern Chinathrough Central Asia. It seems that at the end of the 1st century the majorityof silk imported into the Mediterranean countries had been transported by themaritime route and not the overland route which crossed Persia. ThePeriplusof the Erythraean Sea indicates decisively that the “seric”silks were loaded in Indian ports, as were the furs which also came from China,pepper, cinnamon, perfumes, metals, dyes and medicinal products.”Translated from: Boulnois (1992), p. 72.
“Thewestern world reached the Chinese by water as well, although only just. Eversince Eudoxus breached the Arab monopoly of the sea trade with India, thatcountry had become increasingly integrated into the network of Graeco-Romantrade. From the beginning of the first century A.D., fleets of ocean-goingfreighters, sped by the monsoons, sailed there yearly, no longer just to theIndus Valley but all along the coast down to the tip of the peninsula. Agentsof Graeco-Roman trading companies made their homes in India, settling down, intime-honoured fashion, in separate little foreign quarters. They exported avariety of Indian products – cinnamon, nard, cotton, above all pepper– and also some Chinese, the most important, naturally, being silk.Although a certain amount of the silk, as we have just noted, came in overland,the largest part arrived by sea in Indian or Malay bottoms (the Chinese did notget into overseas shipping until centuries later). It was inevitable thatwesterners would move into this portion of the trade as well; by the end of thesecond century A.D. their freighters had ventured into the waters east ofIndia, cutting across the mouth of the Bay of Bengal to trade with Malaya,Sumatra, and Java. What drew them on more than anything else was the desire tomove nearer the source of silk. A Chinese account [in theHou Hanshu]mentions that in ‘the ninth year of the Yen-hsi period, during theEmperor Huan-ti’s reign [CE 166]... the king ofTa-ts’in, An-tun, sent an embassy which, from the frontier of Jih-nan[Annam], offered ivory, rhinoceros horns, and tortoise shell. From that timedates the intercourse with this country.’ Ta-ts’in is the Chinesename for the Roman Empire, and An-tun is Antoninus, the family name of MarcusAurelius. The account goes on to comment about the very ordinary gifts theembassy had brought for the emperor; there were, for example, no jewels. Mostlikely it was not an official body at all but a group of shippers who, to getone jump a head of their competitors, were trying to buy their silk directlyfrom China instead of through middlemen.” Casson (1974), pp. 124-125.
“One wayof by-passing the Parthians, the sea-route to the south of their country, hasbeen discussed in Chapter Eight. Though a great success in some respects (itcut the costs of spices considerably), it was less important to the silkbusiness. From China to the Roman Empire was a long way, nearly twice as longas the overland journey, and the system of monsoon-winds meant that one oftenhad to wait some time before making a particular leg of the voyage. Besides,several stages (such as the Red Sea, the west coast of India, and the Straitsof Malacca) teemed with natural and man-made dangers to navigation. Directsea-borne contact between Roma and China was always rare.” Sitwell (1984),p. 189.
“Meanwhilethe maritime route remained so risky, so long, so full of ambushes for thelittle sailing ships of the Westerners, succumbing to typhoons and other sortsof adversities, that trade took, as far as possible, the overland route.
This was possible when,at the end of the 1st century, four great prosperous empires, stable,militarily powerful, absorbed a large part of Eurasia: in the West, Rome, infull Imperial flower; in the Far East, China of the second Han dynasty; in theEast, the kingdom of the Great Kushans encompassing Afghanistan and NorthernIndia, was at the peak of its existence. In the middle the Parthians,monopolising middlemen. All these empires followed a commercial strategy. Fromthis exceptional situation came the overland silk route.” Translatedfrom: Boulnois (1992), p. 77.
“Alltrade between the Persian Gulf and the Taurus, direct by sea from IndianBarygaza, or sea-borne from Hormuz through Seistan, or overland altogether, wasobliged to pass through the Parthian sieve.
But the distant Romanshad a good name in China. ‘They traffic by sea with Parthia and India . .. honest in their transactions and . . . their kings always desired to sendembassies to China, but the Parthians wished to carry on trade with them inChinese silks, and it is for this reason that they were cut off fromcommunication. This lasted till the ninth year of the Yen-hsi period (A.D. 166)when the king . . . An-tun (Marcus Aurelius) sent an embassy.’ The tradewas continually thwarted, and regular only when Romans and Parthians were atpeace; and about A.D. 160 – when the straits of Malacca were crossed anddirect commerce with China started – the peak of the sea trade wasalready over. By then the strengthened Roman frontier held the South Arabianspice route at one end and the Pontic route round the Caspian at the other, theonly two trading channels that could escape the Parthian dues.” Stark(1968), p. 192.
“TheArabs extended their [the Phoenicians’] trade. By 100 B.C. a line of busyports had grown around the Persian Gulf to service caravans and ships plyingbetween India, Egypt, east Africa, the Middle East, the Mediterranean. As wellas pearls, Italian wine, gold, cloves, nutmeg, mace, they carried a new,extremely profitable product, slaves from east Africa. That nasty tradeincreased over the next 200 years. Ivory, hides and cinnamon made up the restof the cargoes.
The Chinese began totrade. Under orders from the Han emperor Wu (141 B.C. to 87 B.C.) sailors handpickedfrom what are now the provinces of Guandong and Guangxi explored the southernseas in search of precious goods. Then just before or after the birth ofChrist, a great new land route opened in the north.” Rolls (1992), p. 2.
Although there are not many writtenaccounts of early Indonesian shipping, it is generally accepted that theIndonesian settlement of Madagascar and nearby ports of southeastern Africadeveloped during the first few centuriesCE.
Madagascar wasapparently uninhabited when the Indonesians from Southern Borneo arrived, andalthough there was later mixing around the coasts with Africans and Arabtraders, the people of the interior are still mainly of Indonesian stock.Malagasy, the national language is closely related to languages from southernBorneo.
“Duringwinter, Central Asia’s extreme cold causes its air mass to become denseand heavy, while air over the ocean is warmer and lighter. This differential indensity now causes the heavy Central Asian air to flow out against the lighterocean-influenced air, so that from December to March dry winds from CentralAsia blow out over the continent towards the oceans. During the interveningmonths the winds are at their most unpredictable. Although in spring the shiftin wind direction occurs rather quickly, in the month of April, the autumntransition from inward to outward is prolonged, causing variable winds fromSeptember through November. Taking advantage of this seasonal wind pattern,Malay sailors began to ride the monsoons. They departed with the wind at theirback, sailing for thousands of miles to distant locations. There they waiteduntil the winds changed direction, which allowed them to sail home with thewind still at their back.
So far there is littleconsensus regarding when Malay sailors first reached the East African coast andMadagascar, more than 3,000 miles to their west, but some believe that contactoccurred relatively early in the first millennium B.C.E. The uncertain datenotwithstanding, in the process of sailing across thousands of miles ofsouthern ocean, the Malay sailors evidently carried a number of plants fromAsia to Africa, including bananas, coconuts, and the cocoyam. (One East Africanterm for cocoyam is derived from a Malay word [Watson, 1983: 68].) The tuningscales of the Malayo-Polynesian xylophone also appear to have ridden with theMalays to Africa, although precisely how this instrument got from East Africato West Africa, where it can still be heard today, remains controversial (Jones,1971: 115–19).
TheMalay sailors may also have been riding the monsoons of the Indian Ocean tosupply the Mediterranean market with cinnamon – a product of southernChina – even before the development of an overland or overseas silkroute. The Greek word for cinnamon was derived from a Malayo-Polynesian word,through Phoenician and Hebrew. Even though cinnamon was never growncommercially in Africa, Egyptian and Hebrew texts dated to the first millenniumB.C.E. speak of cinnamon coming from Africa, leading several scholars tosuggest that Malay sailors were responsible for bringing this cinnamon from thecoasts of the South China Sea to East Africa. Pliny, writing in the firstcentury C.E., describes an already well-developed trade in cinnamon. The men whobrought the cinnamon “put out to sea . . . when the east winds areblowing their hardest; these winds drive them on a straight course . . . fromgulf to gulf.” Pliny calls their vessels “rafts,” a plausiblebut mistaken description of the Malays’ double outrigger canoe (Taylor,1976: 45). The cinnamon they provided could then have been traded north by theEast Africans until it reached Ethiopia, where Mediterranean merchantspurchased it.
There is also athirteenth-century Arab text that refers to a Malay settlement in the vicinityof Aden sometime around the Roman conquest of Egypt in 31 B.C.E. Vast fleets ofMalay outrigger canoes came and went from this place, it tells us, buteventually the settlers “grew weak, lost their seafaring skills, and wereoverrun by neighbouring peoples.” (Taylor, 1976: 25, 39). According tothe text, this happened after Egypt’s decline, and scholars havetentatively dated the settlement to the first century
At roughly the same timeMalay communities were established on the island of Madagascar, some 250 milesoff the East African coast, where their descendants still constitute themajority of the island’s population and Malayo-Polynesian languages arestill spoken today by almost all. Given the many clusters of islands in theIndian Ocean and the Malay use of islands for navigating, their likely route toEast Africa would have been by way of such island clusters, namely, theMaldives, the Chagos, the Seychelles, and the Comores (Taylor, 1976: 30, 45–46).”Shaffer (1996), pp. 15-16.
Some peopleconsidered Navy Captain I Gusti Putu Ngurah Sedana brave for attempting avoyage from Jakarta to Ghana aboard a traditional wooden sailing ship. Othersjust thought he was crazy. But everyone will be amazed by the stories he has totell.
The captainrecently commanded theBorobudur Samudraraksa, a ship designed based onreliefs from the Borobudur Temple in Central Java, to retrace the cinnamonroute taken by Indonesian merchants in the eighth century to sell spices toAfrica.
Fourteen or 15seafarers, half the crew foreigners and half Indonesians, were on board at alltimes. The Indonesian crew included three boatmakers and 10 inexperiencedcivilians, who took turns on the four legs of the journey.
The ship, 4.25meters wide and 18 meters long, contained no iron or nails, with coconut fiberbinding it together. Although it contained state-of-the-art equipment -- aglobal positioning satellite and NavTex to broadcast information on navigationroutes -- the ship was at the mercy of nature, with only two sails to catch thewinds, its sole driving force.
The first timetheBorobudur encountered a big storm was when it passed through theMozambique channel, going from Madagascar to Cape Town.
Putu wasresting in his bunk when he heard the wind screaming between the ropes.“I knew there were big winds coming,” said Putu. “Wecouldn’t run from them.”
It was 11 a.m.when the wind picked up and the rain began. Thunder and lightning rent the skyas the ship was tossed about helplessly on waves six to seven meters tall.
Trapped in theeye of the storm, the crew panicked. “They just stood there,stunned,” said Putu.
At the yells ofthe captain some of them came back to life, put on their life jackets and tiedthemselves to the mast or any unmovable object. Soaked to the bone, theymanaged to bring the smaller sail down, but the wind was so strong that it wasimpossible to take down the main sail, which was eight meters-by-15 meters insize.
The ship thentipped sideways, so far that it almost capsized. “We knew we would haveto rip the sail,” said Putu. But the wind, at 40 knots, was faster thanthem and shredded the main sail.
“Thosewho worked on the sails first were the Indonesians,” said Putu, pridewritten all over his face. “The foreigners ran to the back, huddling nearthe lifeboats, while we were on the deck playing kite with the sails,” hesaid with a small laugh.
Later in thejourney, when theBorobudur faced another big storm near the Cape ofGood Hope, the crew knew what to do and was able to manage the situation. Butafter that first storm, two of the foreigners asked to leave the ship at thefirst port they saw, in Richard Bay, South Africa.
“This gotto the Indonesian crew too, who started thinking about quitting,” saidPutu.
He could endurethe weather, the storms and the hardships, but when his crew wanted to quit,his spirit sank.
Together, theteam covered some 10,000 nautical miles in more than six months, leavingJakarta on Aug. 15, 2003, and reaching Ghana on Feb. 23, 2004.
“I wasordered to lead the voyage,” said Putu, who looks the part of a Navyofficer with a well-trimmed moustache and a no-nonsense posture.
“I wasdisheartened at first, but an order is an order. So I just had faith.”
It was not alack of competence that worried Putu, his abundant experience on the sea toldhim how dangerous the trip would be.
Ever since heentered the military academy in 1990, the captain has been fascinated withsails. “The free air of the ocean blows away stress,” he said. Andso he took up windsurfing and sailing.
In 1996, Putusailed around the world in 14 months aboard the vessel theArsa.“But that was different from theBorobudur. With a modern ship,one can easily turn on the engine and run from bad winds,” he said.
At that time,his wife, Diah Sriwahyuni Purnamasari, was pregnant with their first child.Putu saw his daughter for the first time when she was 10 months old.
“We namedher Genova, because my husband was in Genoa when she was born,” saidDiah, 30. The couple has two other children, a 6-year-old girl and a 3-year-oldboy.
Putu has takenpart in many competitions, including the Sydney-Hobart trip in 1998 and theRaja Muda Cup in Malaysia in 1999. In both events, Indonesia won.
“I’malways astonished when people underestimate Indonesia. On the sea, werule!”
In his lastevent, the Singapore Strait Regatta competition in 2000, Putu was the skipper andhis team took third place. “We still achieved something although ourships are less modern than those from other countries.”
Diah was proudthat her husband was trusted with bringing Indonesia’s name abroad, buthopes that now he will have the chance to stay on land for a while. “Hehas to continue his education for his career.”
It has been sixyears since Putu became a captain, following the first Post-Graduate Educationfor Officers in Surabaya. In June, he plans to take up the second course, whichwill last for six months, to become a major.
In themeantime, he will take a posting on a warship.
“Idon’t know where I get my love of the sea from, all I know is if Idon’t see the ocean in a month, I develop a headache,” said Putu.
Well,Indonesia’s ancestors were masters of the seas.”
G. The Water Cisterns on the Routebetween Petra and Wadi Sirhan.
Several years ago I first began to come tothe conclusion that Sifu stood for Petra and Qielan for Wadi Sirhan in theWeilue,and that the text indicated that a trade route connected the two. I contactedseveral specialists on the early history of the region who insisted that therewere no significant sources of water in Nabataean or Roman times between theoasis of Al Jafr (to the east of Ma’an) and the first wells in the WadiSirhan – a distance of at least 150 km. This would seem to rule out theroute for regular caravans of any size.
During early 2002,however, I contacted Daniel Gibson, the author ofThe Nabataeans: Builders of Petra, and the “Webmaster”of the excellent Nabataea.net website. He was living with his family at thetime with some Bedouins not far from Petra. He wrote back that he also did notknow of any water sources in the region but he was having a meeting with someof the tribal elders in a couple of days (some of whom had long ago lived inthat region), and he would ask them about it. They told him that there was alarge ancient water cistern about halfway along the route and Dan checked andfound some reference to it on maps in Amman. He wanted to go and visit the sitebut, with the build-up to the last war in Iraq it was considered unsafe for himto visit the region which is close to the border of Saudi Arabia.
So, Dan posted a requestfor information on his website and was thrilled to hear from a young woman,Antonia Willis, who had previously travelled in the region, taken photos andactually made some rough measurements of a cistern which was some 10 metresacross the entrance! She also sent copies of photos of the cistern and hassince sent me several letters and a map.
I will quote from acouple of her email letters below as they speak for themselves [notes in squarebrackets are mine]. It is quite clear from her accounts that the route was notonly possible for caravan traffic but was quite likely used as such:
“Justsome quick thoughts about the area between Wadi Sirhan & Petra. WhenI’ve got time I’ll email you the grid refs but off the top of myhead, there is this to say:
Between the easternescarpment of the Jafr depression and the Wadi Hudruj (my most easterly pointof travel was the police border fort at Mshash Hudruj) are the cistern Danmentioned AND a number of other sites where water collection probably occurred.Wadi Hudruj you know runs roughly n/e to s/w out of the Wadi Sirhan and wouldbe a naturally through-route. The Wadi where I saw it was full of acacia andundoubtedly water collection there could have happened; unfortunately thebloody great anti-tank ditch (the scar visible on sat images) and Saudi borderpost there made exploration impossible.
Not far south of thecistern is a spot marked as “Roman Pools” on a current air map[about 37o 27’ E; 30o 15’ N ]I was workingoff; here we saw surface signs of water collection and a fairly dense scatterof sherds. The chart I used was TPC (Tactical Pilotage Chart) series GSGS, mapsheet H-5B published 1991 by our MoD. You Aussies fly everywhere, so maybe youcan get hold of it over there. If not let me know, and I will send you a copyfrom the UK.
Ifthe Wadi Hudruj is a poss conduit, travellers from Wadi Sirhan to Petra wouldnot have to be more than 2 days’ journey from water, I think.
Alsointeresting is the poss route Azraq oasis - Bayir - Jafr and then east (or thesame in reverse). There are very substantial remains, and heaps ofNabataean classical fineware sherds, at Bayir; then it is not too far to thecistern/”pools”/Wadi Hudruj.
Re navigation; stellar,of course, but I was interested to see that the modern Bedu police have markedout a couple of routes across the Jafr depression and the empty stretch east ofit by piling up mounds of sand/soil some 5 feet high at line-of-sight intervals- no reason why someone couldn’t have thought of that a few thousand yearsago. . . . ” Email from Antonia Willis 27 July, 2003.
“I’veasked for the scanned map to be sent to you via my old office - hope it’sgot to you.
Cisterndepth; again, hard to gauge, because the precarious overhanging lip(you’ve seen the pics) and the shade cast by it meant that there wasno obvious point from which to take a sounding - had we been proper andmethodical about it, we would have taken several, but to tell you the truth Ireally thought I’d be back soon after to do a better job. HOWEVER - weslung a water bottle on string down over the lip at what looked to be thedeepest (most shadowed) area we could safely access from the rim, and it was Isee from my notes 18 metres approx. The other dimensions you can guess at fromthe photos using the human figures as scale indicators. But to repeat, this wasone of TWO water collection sites between the eastern escarpment of the Jafrdepression and the Wadi Hudruj as intersected by the Saudi border - and itwould not surprise me in the least to find more. The mapping there has neverbeen seriously picked up on since the 1948 Royal Engineers survey which hadmany white spaces on it.
I showed pics of thedeep cistern to Rupert Chapman at the PEF in London and he suggested that itwas a karstic depression [limestone formation of caverns, caves, etc] lendingitself to much water collection through the ages. . . . ” Email fromAntonia Willis 34 August, 2003.
I will also quote here from DanGibson’s excellent website, which can be accessed at:http://nabataea.net/
“TheNabataeans greatest accomplishment was probably their system of watermanagement. They developed a system to collect rainwater using water channels, pipes,and underground cisterns. Added to this, they developed very strong, waterproofcement, some of which is still in existence to this day.
Theyalso developed sophisticated ceramic pipelines and reservoirs using gravityfeeds (siphons or inverted siphons), that served the developing urban centers.Outside of the cities, dams closed off wadis to collect water during the rainyseason, while stone circles or terraces retarded runoff from slopes and trappedvaluable topsoil so that their irrigation lines could feed crops.
TheNabataeans were experts at collecting water and storing it in undergroundcisterns. All along their caravan routes, secret water collection systemscollected water and stored it for later use. The ancient historian Diodorus[Didorus Siculus 90-21BCE
Diodorusalso noted in another place: “They take refuge in the desert using thisas a fortress; for it lacks water and cannot be crossed by others, but to themalone, since they have prepared subterranean reservoirs lined with stucco, itfurnishes safety. As the earth in some places is clayey and in others is ofsoft stone, they make great excavations in it, the mouths of which they makevery small, but by constantly increasing the width as they dig deeper, theyfinally make them of such size that each side has a length of about 100 feet.After filling these reservoirs with rain water, they close the openings, makingthem even with the rest of the ground, and they leave signs that are known tothemselves but are unrecognizable to others. They water their flocks everyother day, so that, if they flee, or wander through waterless places, they maynot need a continuous supply of water.” (XIX.94.6-9).”
This account of the cisterns is confirmedby Alois Musil:
From the above accounts it is clear thatthere was almost certainly a well-used caravan route or routes between Petraand Wadi Sirhan from whence well-established routes led to the head of the PersianGulf and also to the ancient trading centre of Gerrha (Angu) to the southeast.See also note 17.3.
H. The Identification ofthe city of Angu with Ancient Gerrha and Modern Thaj.
“Straboprovides an absolute indication of Gerrha’s location when he writes,‘After sailing along the coast of Arabia for a distance of two thousandfour hundred stadia, one comes to Gerrha, a city situated on a deep gulf’(16. 3. 3). Strabo’s description of Androsthenes’ exploratoryvoyage in the Gulf, which preceded the statement just quoted, gives theimpression that the calculation of the 2,400 stadia is meant to commence at thesouthern Babylonian town of Teredon, an impression strengthened when weconsider that Pliny says: ‘those travelling by water from the kingdom ofParthia come to the village of Teredon below the confluence of the Euphratesand the Tigris’ (NH 6. 32. 145). If Teredon was located somewherein the vicinity of modern Basra, where does a journey of 2,400 stadia arrive onthe Arabian coast? Calculating at the rate of 10 stadia to the mile, asStrabo’s principal informant on Arabia, Eratosthenes, did, we reach afigure of roughly 384 km. for the distance from Teredon to Gerrha.* Measuredfrom the Basra area, this places us somewhere in the region of the modern portof al-Jubayl in eastern Saudi Arabia.
But bothStrabo and Pliny suggest that the problem is yet more complicated. Indescribing the east coast of Arabia, Pliny speaks of ‘the bay ofGerrha’,sinus Gerraicus, and ‘the town of Gerrha’,oppidumGerra (NH 6. 32. 147). Strabo says that Gerrha was ‘a citysituated on a deep gulf’, but several lines later he tells us that‘the city is two hundred stadia distant from the sea’ (16. 3. 3).A. Sprenger was perhaps the first scholar to point to a simple explanation forthis apparent contradiction, when he suggested that there was both aportof Gerrha on the Gulf coast, and atown of Gerrha located inland, andone is reminded of similar cases throughout the world where an important‘port city’ actually lies some distance from the sea, but is pairedwith a docking-harbour.” Potts (1990), pp. 88-89. [
“Aheadlay three mesas and a jumble of low hills, and suddenly we were over Thaj. Ihad seen air-photographs, and knew what to expect. But I was not prepared forthe scale. Below lay a considerable city, the parallelogram of its defensivewalls plainly visible. Around it stretched fields of tumuli, many of the moundsoddly ring-shaped, a circular rampart with a hollow in the middle. We flew backand forth over the site half a dozen times while I took in the scene. Therewere no standing walls or buildings, apart from a cluster of obviously recentstone houses. Everything was covered in sand and rubble, but the generaloutline was clear. And one thing was completely obvious.
Thaj was a city on theedge of a lake. It stretched for almost a mile along the lake-shore, and half amile or more inland. Only there was no lake . . . to the northern side of thecity stretched a large salt-pan, asabkha.
Now,sabkhas areareas of salt mud which clearly once have been water. They are dried-up lakes.They are useless to man. There would be no reason to build a city beside asabkha.Therefore this one-time lake had still been a lake when Thaj was built. Thiswas going to tie up with our speculations on the prehistoric climate of Arabia,for only a higher rainfall, or at least a higher water-table, could have heldwater in the lake-bed. We needed to date Thaj.” Bibby (1970), p. 316.
“Beforeleaving the subject of the architecture at Thaj, it is important to stress thatthe ancient town there is constructed on a scale unmatched anywhere else inpre-modern al-Hasa. The city wall alone, with its circuit of 2,535 m. andaverage width of 4.5 m., represents a gigantic quantity of cut stone. Assuminga minimum height of 2 m., and leaving aside for the moment the corner towersand probable turrets, no less than 22,815 cu. m. of stone would have beenrequired, equivalent to a cubec. 28.4 m. on a side. Nor does this beginto take into consideration the hundreds of buildings on the site as well. Thequestion naturally arises, therefore, what the source or sources of thelimestone used at Thaj may have been. It has generally been assumed that it wasall local, an assumption supported by the presence of numerous large limestonejabals in the district; but none of these show any sign of quarrying on a largescale. Near Jubayl, however, is a large limestone quarry which has long beenknown, and in view of the fact that Thaj is connected with the coast by a routeleading directly to Jubayl, it may be suggested that the building stone usedthere was quarried here. During the Second World War, camels used for transportby ARAMCO carried loads of between 336 and 448 lb. (between 152.72 and 203.63kg.). This would more than accommodate some of the larger limestone ashlarsnoted at Thaj, making it possible to conceive of such large quantities of stonehaving been transported overland by camel caravans in antiquity.” Potts(1990), pp. 47-48.
“Oneadditional point which must be borne in mind, however, is the fact thatMeredat’s victories [which seem to include ‘Oman’. He issueda coin from Seleucia in 142 AD on which he refers to himself asBACIΔEΥC OMAN] were, in some measure, Parthia’s as well. As theSeleucia texts attest, Meredat was the son of a former Parthian king of kings,and as such a member of an élite Parthian family. Moreover, it is notunlikely that he was installed on the Characene throne by his uncle Osroes I,following the latter’s removal of the pro-Roman king of Characene,Attambelos, sometime after 116. Thus, to the extent that Meredat and his familywere a leading element in the ruling Parthian aristocracy, his extension ofinfluence over the central and lower Gulf must be seen as a boon to Parthia.Meredat’s ambitions and pretensions, however, must have been indeedgreat, for on his coins he is depicted wearing both the diademand thecrown which were the prerogative of the Parthian king of kings. To have wornthe diadem alone would have been normal, but to assume the crown as wellsuggests that Meredat considered himself the equal of the highest ruler ofParthia.
That the fortunes ofMeredat were soon to change, however, is proved now by the new Seleucia bilingual.The Greek text is dated to 462 Sel., AD 150/1, while the Parthian versionspecifies that the statue bearing the inscriptions was erected on 5 July (the17th day of Tir) of that year. These important sources recount the victory ofVologases IV over Meredat, whom he ‘expelled’ from Mesene. We arenot told anything of the further fate of Meredat, but it is likely that hisinfluence in the Gulf rapidly vanished upon his defeat. Indeed, it is notunlikely that his very power there, which must have entailed considerablecommercial gain, and perhaps prompted him to assume both diadem and crown shownon his coins, was one of the reasons why Vologases was prompted to challengehim.” Potts (1990), pp. 325-326
“Duringthe second century [BCE
Following the Seleucidvictory at Panion in 200 BC, Syria fell to the Seleucids and remained in theirgrip for most of the second century. If Agatharchides’ statement reflectsconditions during his own lifetime (c. 200-131 BC), then it was writtenat a time when Syria, as well as Palestine proper, was a Seleucid domain. Thus,trade with Syria and Palestine entailed no loss of revenue for the Seleucids,and was, in any case, a more direct route to the Mediterranean than the routevia Babylonia. Concrete evidence of Gerrhaean traders in the Aegean during thisperiod comes from Delos. . . .
There is nothing tosuggest, however, that Seleucid control in the west affected the Nabataeanrealm. Thus, while the Seleucids must have had no objections to seeingGerrhaean caravans going to Syro-Palestine, trade with Petra was probablyanother matter. Most probably, Gerrhaean trade with the Nabataean capital wasan offshoot of their trade with Seleucid Syria, but it is possible that thiswas done illicitly, from the Seleucid point of view. In this regard, it isinteresting to reconsider a proposal put forward by Tarn in 1929. Starting outfrom the Agatharchides fragment cited above, Tarn tried to explain why theGerrhaeans should have sent caravans to Petra, when Petra was itself at thehead of a direct caravan route to southern Arabia. Rather than a case ofsending coals to Newcastle, Tarn suggested that the Nabataeans may have beenbarred from receiving South Arabian products by the Ptolemies. It has beensuggested that Ptolemy II Philadelphus (285-246 BC) succeeded in 278/7 inwresting control of the Marib-Petra incense route away from the Nabataeans,seizing the route below Petra, and founding Ampelone on the coast of the Hejazas a port to which the caravan wares coming from southern Arabia could bediverted and trans-shipped directly to Myos Hormos in Egypt, thus bypassing theNabataeans. Given this state of affairs, it could well have been profitable forthe Gerrhaeans to ship merchandise which they had already carried forty daysfrom Hadhramaut to Gerrha (Strabo 16. 4. 4) overland to Petra. Tarn’serror, however, lay in taking Agatharchides’ report as proof that Gerrhawas trading with the Nabataeans in the third century BC. On the contrary,unless it is archaistic, it reflects the situation in the second century BC.
Finally, the rise ofCharax in the late second century BC and its growing commercial importance inthe late first century BC may explain why, as Juba says, the Gerrhaeans at somepoint made yet another reversal and began sending their wares to Charax and theParthian empire.” Potts (1990), pp. 95-97.
“Theprincipal reports concerning the foreign trade of Gerrha are listed below inchronological order:
.. . the Gerrhaeans import most of their cargoes on rafts to Babylonia, andthence sail up the Euphrates with them, and then convey them by land to allparts of the country . . . (Aristobulus (contemporary of Alexander) apud Strabo16. 3. 3)
.. . the Gerrhaeans traffic by land, for the most part, in the Arabianmerchandise and aromatics ... (Eratosthenes (c.284-202 BC) apud Strabo16. 3. 3)
. . . Petra and Palestine where the Gerrhaeans, the Minaeans and all the Arabswho live in the region bring incense from the highlands, it is said, and theiraromatic products . . . (Agatharchides (c.200-131 BC), in C.Müller,Geographi Graeci Minores, § 87).
‘For thistrade [with Elymais and Karmania] they opened the city of Carra [Gerrha] wheretheir market was held. From here they all used to set out on the twenty-daymarch to Gabba and Syria-Palestine. According to Juba’s report they beganlater for the same reason to go to the empire of the Parthians. It seems to methat still earlier they brought their goods to the Persians rather than toSyria and Egypt, which Herodotus confirms, who says the Arabs paid 1,000talents of incense yearly to the kings of Persia. Juba (c. 25
These accounts suggestthat the trajectory of Gerrha’s foreign trade experienced a number ofshifts through time. In the late fourth century BC, i.e. duringAlexander’s lifetime, Aristobulus says Gerrha shipped merchandise toBabylonia by sea. At some point in the third century, as Eratosthenes tells us,Gerrha began to export its goods by land. This may refer to land transport inthe same direction, i.e. to Babylonia. On the other hand, it may point to ashift away from Seleucid Babylonia towards Ptolemaic Egypt and Syria. . . .” Potts (1990), pp. 90-91.
Later, the Seleucids seem to have regainedcontrol of the trade from Gerrha during the visit of Antiochus III to Gerrha in205BCE
“Rostovtzeff,The Social and Economic History, 1, 458: ‘The Seleucids dealt withthe Gerrhaeans in much the same way as the Ptolemies with the Nabataeans. Inorder to prevent the Gerrhaeans from robbing the Seleucid ships that pliedbetween Babylonia and India, they maintained a flotilla in the Persian Gulf. Atthe same time they endeavoured, by diplomatic action and military intervention,to keep the Gerrhaeans more or less under control and to obtain from them alarge proportion of the Arabian and Indian goods held by their merchants. Inthis light we are better able to understand the account given by Polybius (inthe fragmentary form in which we have it) of the expedition of Antiocus IIIagainst the Gerrhaeans. It was a military demonstration on a large scale, whichdid not lead to the conquest of Gerrha, but was imposing enough to frighten theGerrhaeans and make them increase the quantity of merchandise they sent toSeleucia, at the expense probably of the Nabataeans and thePtolemies.’” Potts (1990), p. 93, n. 298. See alsoibid.,pp. 91-95
“During the second century (BCE) changes canbe detected in the direction of Gerrha’s foreign trade.Agatharchides’ report of Gerrhaeans at Petra and in Palestine shows usthat at some time in the beginning or middle of the century the Gerrhaeansbegan trading with the Nabataeans. Juba’s remark, preserved by Pliny,that caravans from Carra,306 i.e. Gerrha, ‘used to’ makethe journey to Syria-Palestine, may also be an echo of the circumstancesdescribed by Agatharchides, although the two need not reflect entirely similarcircumstances. The problem here is to determine under what political conditionsGerrha’s western trade was carried out in the second century.”Potts (1990), p. 95
TheWeilue seems to indicate thatthe “(walled) city of Angu, on the frontier of Anxi (Parthia)”, wasunder Parthian control d 2nd century
“Thedecline of Gerrha and the waning of eastern Arabia’s fortunes in generalafter the Seleucid era have sometimes been attributed to Characene and Parthianusurpation of the Gulf trade route between India and the west. The exact roleof the Parthians in eastern Arabia itself, however, has never been clear. Thearchaeological evidence for contact between north-eastern Arabia and theParthian world has been reviewed above. Early authorities were divided on thequestion of the nature and extent of Parthian political influence in the area.Nöldeke, for example, who emphasized the extent of contact between thePersian and Arabian sides of the Gulf, considered it unlikely that theParthians actually controlled the region whereas Glaser was convinced that theydid. O. Blau believed that the Azd Oman, in particular, put considerablepressure on the region of Mesene and Charax, and that this resulted in theestablishment of a Parthian political presence in the area.
In any case, nothingsuggests that Parthian political or commercial influence extended to easternArabia before the reign of Meredat who, as we have seen (ch. 3 above), had asatrap on Thiloua/os (Tylos) in AD 131. It could be that, followingMeredat’s expulsion from Mesene in AD 151, Vologases IV inherited hisopponent’s former Gulf possessions, although this is pure speculation. Ifthis did take place, it would help explain a much disputed tradition preservedby Tabari (838-923), al-Dinawari (c. 895), the author of the anonymousNihāyatu’l-irabfī abāri’l-furs wa’l-’arab (c. 1000-50),and Ibn al-Atir (1160-1234), which attests to a formal Parthianpolitical presence in the area at the end of the Parthian period. Theinformation is contained in the accounts of Ardašir’s famouscampaign against eastern Arabiac. 240....” Potts (1990), pp.228-230.
“Leslieand Gardiner insist very strongly on identifying Āngŭ
The derivation of the name‘Gerrha’:
The Chinese name,安谷
“Hagarwas a “kingdom” and Gerrha a “city”. At least, we havecoins mentioning a king of Hagar, though, of course, that does not preclude itsbeing a city. Unfortunately, we know very little about it, except that it wassomewhere in northern Arabia, and not necessarily on the coast. Gerrha is knownonly from the Classical geographers who place it on the Arabian/Persian Gulfcoast, but it has never been successfully identified, despite numerousattempts. Your identification of Hagar and Gerrha has been suggested by others,and is possible but there is just not enough information about either twoconfirm it or to rule it out, see D.T Potts “The Arabian Gulf inAntiquity” (Oxford, 1990) vol. 2: 60-62 (Hagar) and 85-97 (Gerrha). Incidentally,the “h” in Gerrha is simply a conventional transliteration of theGreek form where the letter rho is always assumed to be aspirated. Greek, ofcourse, does not have a letter representing “h”, but Latin does andin Pliny (Naturalis Historia VI.32.147) the name is spelt “Gerra”,i.e. without an “h”. This somewhat weakens the case for Gerrhasimply being a metathesised form of Hagar. It should also be remembered thatHagar in Ancient South Arabian is the normal word for “city” andforms the initial part of many site names (Hagar bin Humeid, Hagar Kohlan,etc.). We know that the South Arabians were very active in North East Arabia,both because of the frankincense trade and because the Ancient North Arabianlanguage of the area was written in the South Arabian script (in contrast tothose of North West Arabia which developed there own scripts).” MichaelMacdonald, personal communication, 20/6/99.
“A recent attempt by W. W. Müller to deduce the Semitic origin ofthe Greek name ‘Gerrha’ has important implications for the solutionto the problem of the site’s location. Müller postulates that theancient Hasaitic designation for ‘the city’ would have been *han-Hagar,from which an Aramaicized ‘Hagarā’ could have developed. Asthe use of Aramaic in this area is well-attested (see ch. 5 below), thispresents no difficulties. From the form ‘Hagarā’, then, theGreek form ‘Gerrha’ can be derived. The application of the termha—arto a walled city with towers and bastions was stressed by H. Von Wissmann inhis final, posthumously published work on Sabaean history. If a similar usageobtained in north-eastern Arabia where, as we have seen, the South Arabianalphabet was used in the indigenous Hasaitic inscriptions, then one immediatelythinks of Thaj as a likely candidate for the site of ancient Gerrha.Pliny’s statement that Gerrha ‘measures five miles round and hastowers made of squared blocks of salt’ is, moreover, reminiscent of thewhite limestone city wall at Thaj discussed above; nor are there any othersites of the period in eastern Arabia which fit such a description. Finally, ifwe remember the admittedly rough calculation of the distance between Gerrha andTeredon which brought us to the region of al-Jubayl, it is interesting to notethat this is in fact Thaj’s traditional and indeed only outlet to thesea. Thus, there exists at least a strong possibility that Thaj and al-Jubaylare the sites of the inland town of Gerrha and its coastal port.” Potts(1990), pp. 89-90.
“On thecoast, on the direct line between Hofuf and Bahrain, lay the village of Uqair,and beside it the ruins of a large walled town. It had seemed obvious to manymodern theorists that Uqair must be Gerrha, and the identification seemedclinched by the fact that, in the local dialect of Arabic, the letterqis pronounce asg. Uqair is pronounced Ogair, which was close enough tothe Greek name to be convincing. Admittedly it was known that a walled city hadbeen built at Uqair in Islamic times, but this was believed to lie on theoffshore island where the present Uqair village stands. In any case, we knew ofother sites not so far away where Islamic cities lay beside or above cities ofSeleucid or earlier date.” Bibby (1970), pp. 318-319.
The dating of Gerra.
“Thefigurines [found at Thaj] I could not date; we had found figurines in Bahrainin many different levels, and none exactly like these. But it was notnecessary. The pottery we knew very well indeed with the first fragment of athin bowl, red painted and radially burnished inside, I was on familiar ground.This was the pottery which we had found in the Greek town on Failaka, and inour Fifth City on Bahrain. It belonged beyond a doubt to the third century B.C.There were also numerous fragments of the square four-legged“incense-burners” characteristic of this period. The matter wasclinched with the finding of eight fragments of glossy black varnished pottery,pieces of small ring-based bowls. They were Attic ware, imports from Greeceitself. Some of them were even rouletted, decorated with a close pattern ofsemi-circles made with a toothed wheel, a characteristic which proved theirGreek origin beyond a doubt.” Bibby (1970), pp. 322-323.
“Theimmediate archaeological problem with Thaj was straightforward, and could beanswered by a single carefully placedsondage. Did the city of the timeof Alexander, which surface indications showed to exist, overlie a city orseveral cities of earlier date?. . . .
There was no earliercity at Thaj. Three metres down, we were below the foundations of the citywall, in a pit that had been dug before the wall was built into the sterilesand which at that time covered the site. Five metres down we came to thebottom of the pit. And the pottery was identical from first to last. Thaj hadhad but one period of occupation, and that had not lasted more than perhapsfour hundred years. We have carbon samples from the lowest and the uppermostlevels which may give us the span in time of the city. The ash layers in theupper levels are indeed so thick that it is likely that Thaj died by fire andthe sword.
The city proved evenmore imposing on examination than at first acquaintance. The city wall isfifteen feet thick, faced with stone both out and in, and with towers atregular intervals jutting out from the line of wall. On excavation the wallswould still stand seven feet high, and would be an imposing ancient monument.It must have been even more imposing to the caravans from the Hadramaut twothousand years ago which, after forty days in the desert, saw the crenellatedwalls rising to their full height above the palms and gardens south of thecity, with the blue waters of the lake beyond.” Bibby (1970), pp.367-369.
“In sum,the pottery indicates that Periods I-III at Thaj date generally to the Seleucidperiod. Despite the fact that a very badly worn cylinder seal attributed to theIsin-Larsa period had been found on the surface of the site. . , nothingsuggests that the occupation of Thaj preceded the third or late fourth centuryBC.” Potts (1990), p. 44.
“. . . .A terminal date in the first century AD or even slightly later can thus besuggested if, as appears likely, the rouletted wares at Thaj, obviously oflocal manufacture, represent copies of imported Roman or Nabataean pottery fromthe west. This date would be sustained, moreover, by the presence of Thaj-typepottery, coins, and figurines in small quantities at ed-Dur, most of theoccupation of which dates to the first century AD.
A number of coins fromthe surface of the site should also be mentioned. These include at least oneElymaean bronze, two badly effaced Sasanian bronzes (possibly Šapur II),and adenarius of Constantine the Great minted at Antioch-on-the-Orontesin 347/8. The presence of these Sasanian and Roman coins at Thaj suggests thatthe date for the end of the Thaj ceramic sequence indicated by the roulettedsherds discussed above may be later than currently supposed, although there isno way of knowing whether these coins reached the site during the last periodof occupation recorded in the 1983 excavations, or later still.” Potts(1990), p. 203.
The wealth and importance of Gerrha
“In thetime of the Roman and Parthian empires there was a large port called Gerra onthe mainland somewhere opposite Bahrain. Its exact site is unknown, but wasextensive (Pliny mentions that it had a wall with towers, five miles incircumference) and advantageously placed. Caravans from South Arabia, havingskirted the sands of the Empty Quarter, normally stopped at Gerra rather thancontinue northward up the coast and through Kuwait; instead their cargoescompleted the journey to Parthian territory by sea. The Gerraeans, like theiropposite numbers, the Nabataeans, grew rich by means of their trans-shipmentfacilities. They had also a valuable resource of their own; the pearls of theBahrain region were the second most famous in the Ancient World, outclassedonly by those of Ceylon.” Sitwell (1984), pp. 93-94.
“Thespectacular rise and development of the Nabataean kingdom to great wealth andpower between the first centuries B.C. and A.D. may be attributed in part tothe fact that it was situated on important trade routes between Arabia andSyria. Along them were carried not only the spices and incense of southernArabia, but also goods which had been transported from Africa, India and verypossibly even from China. Heavily laden caravans converged on the great tradeemporium of Petra, with some of them coming from the related centers ofMeda’in Saleh and Teima in Arabia. Other caravans came from as far awayas Gerrha on the Persian Gulf.” Glueck (1959), pp. 195-196.
“At a much later date the same conditions of trade are noted by thegeographer Artemidorus who flourished around 100 B.C. As quoted by the latergeographer Strabo (died around 25 A.D.), Artemidorus describes the Sabaeans,the people of Sabaea or Sheba, as having “aromatics in such abundancethat they use cinnamon and cassia and the others instead of sticks andfirewood... From their trafficking both the Sabaeans and the Gerrhaeans havebecome the richest of all.” The town of Gerrha was the entrepot of theincense trade on the Persian Gulf in the vicinity of Bahrain whence the goodswere transshipped to Iraq, but it was not a settlement of Arab camel breedersas Petra was, at least to some degree. Strabo says that Gerrha was“inhabited by Chaldaeans, exiles from Babylon.” As was the case inSolomon’s time, the major parties in the trade did not include the peoplewho supplied the means of transport.
Since the profits fromthe caravan trade were substantial and the pattern of trade favoring theretention of profits at the termini of the trade routes was well established,there is no reason to suppose that the diversion of those profits into thedesert for the benefit of the carriers of the trade, a development that startedwith the rise of Petra and continued until the Islamic invasions of the seventhcentury A.D., was accomplished without resistance from those parties which hadpreviously been in control. Once the dominance of the trade passed to thedesert dwellers, the attempts of Romans, Persians, and south Arabians to regaincontrol of it by military or diplomatic means are numerous enough to show thatthe change in the trading pattern was worth fighting about.” Bulliet(1975), p. 93.
“In thetime of the Roman and Parthian Empires there was a large port called Gerra onthe mainland somewhere opposite Bahrain. Its exact site is unknown, but wasextensive (Pliny mentions that it had a wall with towers, five miles in circumference)and advantageously placed. Caravans from South Arabia, having skirted the sandsof the Empty Quarter, normally stopped at Gerra rather than continue northwardup the coast and through Kuwait; instead their cargoes completed the journey toParthian territory by sea. The Gerraeans, like their opposite numbers theNabataeans, grew rich by means of their trans-shipment facilities. They alsohad a valuable resource of their own; the pearls of the Bahrain region were thesecond most famous in the Ancient World, outclassed only by those ofCeylon.” Sitwell (1984), pp. 93-94.
I. The Spread of Ideasand Religions Along the Trade Routes
There was an incredible spread ofreligious and other ideas along the newly expanded trade networks. It is clearjust from the number such reports that opening of pan-Eurasian networks causeda rapid flow of ideas and religions from one distant region to another on scalenever seen before:
“Althoughfirm evidence is lacking, it is not unlikely that both Iranian and Jewishmerchants were active along the Silk Road from a very early time, perhaps 3,000years ago or even more. Naturally their religious ideas would have accompaniedthem on their travels and therefore would have become familiar to peoples thesemerchants encountered along the way. There is evidence that Iranian soothsayerswere employed by the Western Chou dynasty of China prior to the eighth century
So we can say thatin ancient times certain religious ideas may have spread geographically eastward,in the sense that thepossessors of those ideas physically went there:this is not to say, however, that Iranian or Jewish religious systems“grew” or won converts. The great missionary religions had not yetentered the stage of world history.
In traditional societiesreligions, like people, are generally considered as being attached to aparticular locality or region and, by extension, to their own local culture.From an Inner Asian or Chinese point of view, whatever religion a foreign merchantof Iranian or Israelite origin practiced was simply the home religion of theIranians or of the Israelites; one would no more think of embracing such areligion oneself than of pretending to be from Iran or Palestine.
Still, as Turks, Chinese,and other East Asian peoples came into contact with these merchants from theWest and became familiar with their ways of thinking, subtle influences musthave penetrated in both directions through everyday encounters andconversation.”
1Victor Mair, “Old Sinitic *Myag, Old Persian Magus, andEnglish ‘Magician,”Early China 15 (1990), pp. 27-47.
Foltz (1999),p. 35 and n. 1.
“One of the most striking features of Rome’s eastern frontier isthe movement of people and ideas across it: Christianity was no exception, andno single pattern of transit will explain it in regions which saw so manytravellers, traders and movements of men with their gods. The Christians inDura [Europos – on the upper Euphrates] with Greek names were only one ofmany possible types. Further south, we can already find Christians with astrong Jewish heritage who lived beyond the reach of Rome. During the secondand third centuries, groups of Baptists could be found in the district betweenthe mouths of the Euphrates and Tigris rivers, where they lived under thenominal control of the Parthians. They acknowledged Christian teachings amongsevere beliefs which had the stamp of Jewish influence. Here, they hadpresumably begun as a splinter group from Jewish settlers and we have come toknow only recently how they combined a respect for Jesus with a strong stamp ofJewish practice and an honour for their original leader, the prophet Elchesai,who had taught in Mesopotamia c. 100–110 A.D. Their sect, then was quiteold and traced back to a heretical Christian teacher, busy in this area at anearly date. It is a reminder that very varied sects and small groups couldmultiply in the Mesopotamian area, just out of the range of Greek and Romanhistorians: Christian groups, already, were not limited to the area of Romanrule.
These Baptists’district was frequented by traders and travellers who moved freely between thecities of Roman Syria, the Persian Gulf and India. The new religion couldtravel yet further eastwards and in Christian tradition there are two distinctstories that it did. The area was the setting for the fictitious [sic]“acts” of the Apostle Thomas, which were compiled in Syriac,probably at Edessa, before c. 250. They told how Thomas, a carpenter, had seenChrist in a vision and had been sold into the service of King Gundophar, theParthian ruler whom we know to have ruled at Taxila in the Punjab during themid-first century. The story was well-imagined. Like Thomas, goods and artobjects from Roman Alexandria and Syria were reaching the Indus River and itsupper reaches in the period of Gundophar’s reign. However, we do not knowif there is any truth in the legend of Thomas’s mission. Possibly somesettled groups of Christians did exist in the Punjab and encouraged this storyof an Apostle’s visit to explain their origin. If so, they are a sad lossto history. In Taxila, during the first and second centuries, they would havelived in a society of rich household patrons, some of whose houses adjoined alarge Buddhist shrine. Here we would have to imagine the two religions’meeting, made without the intervening barrier of pagan gods.
The second story of anIndian mission is largely true. Eusebius reports that an educated Christian,Pantaenus, left Alexandria, evidently c. 180, and went as a missionary toIndia, where he found Christians who already claimed to trace back to St.Bartholomew. They owned a copy of Matthew’s Gospel in “the Hebrewscript” which the Apostle was supposed to have left with them. Contactsbetween Alexandria and the southwestern coast of India make it easy to creditthis visit. Eusebius reports it as a “story,” but he seems to beexpressing his own surprise at the adventure, not his doubt at its source. TheGospel “in Hebrew letters” need not disprove it: “Hebrewletters” may refer to the Syriac script, and we cannot rule out an earlySyriac translation of the Gospels for use in the East.
If Christians availedthemselves of these wide horizons, they were not alone among the travellers onRome’s eastern frontier: soon afterwards, the Christian teacher Bardaisanwas able to give us the best ancient description of India’s Brahmins fromhis vantage point at Edessa, in Syria. In a pupil’s memoire of his teaching,he also alluded to Christians in “Bactria,” beyond the Hindu KushMountains, though not specifically in southern India. His silence does notrefute the stories of Christians in that region: he was not giving a completelist of churches. He does, however, cast light on Christianity in his ownEdessa, where it attracted something more remarkable: the patronage of aking.” Fox (1986), pp. 277-278.
“But whatever may be our opinion of this tradition [of St. Thomas comingto India in the 1st centuryCE], there is notthe slightest reason to doubt that there were Christians in India in the secondcentury of our era. The documentary evidence available for this are thefollowing notices which appear in the writings of Eusebius and Jerome, to theeffect that Pantænus, the head of the famous catechetial school atAlexandria, was sent by Demetrius, Bishop of Alexandria, to India at therequest of some ‘ambassadors’ from there.
1. It is said that he (Pantænus) ‘displayed such zeal for thedivine word that he was appointed as a herald of the Gospel of Christ to thenations of the East and was sent as far as India . . . It is reported thatamong persons there who knew Christ, he found the Gospel according to St.Matthew which had anticipated his own arrival. For Bartholomew, one of theapostles, had preached to them and left them with the writing of Matthew in theHebrew language which they had preserved till that time.’ (Eusebius:EcclesiasticalHistory, Bk. V, Ch. 10)
2. ‘Pantænus, a philosopher of the Stoic school, according to someold Alexandrian custom, where from the time of Mark the evangelist theecclesiastics were always doctors, was of so great prudence and erudition bothin scripture and secular literature that on the request of the legates of thenation, he was sent to India by Demetrius, Bishop of Alexandria, where he foundthat Bartholomew, one of the twelve apostles, had preached the advent of theLord Jesus, according to the Gospel of Matthew, and on his return toAlexandria, he brought this with him in Hebrew characters.’ (Jerome :Liberde Viris Illustribus, Ch. XXXVI.)
3. ‘Pantænus, a philosopher of the Stoic school, was on account ofhis great reputation for learning sent by Demetrius, Bishop of Alexandria, toIndia to preach Christ to the Brahmans and philosophers there.’ (Jerome :Epistola LXX ad Magnum oratorem urbis Romae.)
There is no reason to doubt that the country visited by the learnedPantænus was India, because nowhere else do we find Brahmins. He labouredthere for only a short time, returned to Alexandria and resumed charge of theschool from Clement, who, in a well-known passage, speaks of IndianGymnosophists and ‘other barbarian philosophers’. ‘Ofthese,’ he says, ‘there are two classes, some of them are calledSarmanae and other Brahmins; and those of the Sarmanae, who are called Hylobii,neither inhabit cities, nor have roofs over them, but are clothed in the barkof trees, feed on nuts, and drink water in their hands . . . They know notmarriage or begetting of children.’ Clement is here clearly referring tothe wanderingsadhus of India, and no doubt got all his informationabout India from hisguru Pantænus.
The next record we haveof the existence of a Church in India is that at the Council of Nicaea (A.D.239) a prelate of the Indian Church was present and subscribed as‘Metropolitan of Persia and of the Great India’. We then read ofthe visit to India of two brothers, Frumentius and Edesius, thirty years later.Frumentius obtained the good will of the king of the country, rose high in hisfavour and helped him in his administration. Discovering among the subjectscertain who were Christians, he helped them to build churches and propagate theGospel. Returning to Alexandria and relating the whole story to BishopAthanasius, who had by then been elevated to that see, he entreated him to senda Bishop to India. The prelate asked Frumentius to take upon himself theBishopric. He accepted and returned to India in the year 356 as Bishop of thatcountry. Rufinus, an Italian who had spent twenty-six years in a monastery inPalestine, where he had become intimate with Jerome, returned to Italy in 397,wrote an Ecclesiastical History and died in 412. It is he who gives us thisinteresting narrative (Rufinus :Hist. Eccles. Lin. I,Cap.9).” Paul (1952), pp. 18-19.
“One further factor may be mentioned as not irrelevant to this inquiry.There is a Jewish colony settled in various places round the Periyar river andin Quilon, the very places which claim Christian churches founded by St.Thomas. According to their own traditions the came originally in A.D. 68 andsettled in Muziris, receiving a grant of privileges on copper plates just asthe Christians did in the fourth century. There are Christian copper-plategrants associated with Quilon and generally thought to be of the ninth centurywhich are witnessed by a number of Jews, subscribing their names in Hebrew. Wecannot be certain of these traditional dates, but it looks as if Jewishimmigrants, perhaps driven from the West or Arabia by persecution, settled in Kēra
“A singlestone inscription from a synagogue in K’ai-feng along the lower reaches ofthe Yellow River offers a tantalizing suggestion regarding the earliest Jewishpresence in East Asia. The inscription, which dates from 1663, reads:“The religion started inT’ien-chu [lit.‘India,’ but probably just meaning the West], and was first transmittedto China during the Chou [the Chou dynasty, ca. 1100-221
. . . .
45Quoted in Leslie,Survival of the Chinese Jews, p. 3.
49Leslie,Survival, p. 4.
50Rudolf Loewenthal,The Jews of Bukhara, (Central Asian Collectanea, no.8). Washington, D.C., 1961, p. 6.
Foltz (1999),pp. 34-35 and nn. 45, 49, 50.
“The Parthian Arsacid dynasty, which ruled Mesopotamia and Iran duringthe first two centuries of the common era, did not consider religion aparticularly important political issue. As a result there is little mention ofreligious sects in Parthian sources, and we can only guess at the spread ofChristian ideas in the East based on analysis of later materials. It would seemthat in the western part of the Parthian realm Christian communities grew amongvarious Jewish and other sects, local cults and varieties of Iranian religion.
The earliest referenceto Central Asian communities in a Christian source is the comment of Bardaisanaround 196CE
In 224 a newdynasty, the Sasanians, defeated the Parthians. By then Christians were fairlynumerous in the Iranian world: an early church history states that in 225 therewere twenty bishoprics throughout the Persian controlled lands.5Following the Sasanian Emperor Shapur I’s victories over the Byzantinesin 256 and 260, Greek-speaking as well as Syriac-speaking Christian captiveswere deported to Iran and thus added to the numbers of Christians there.”
4 SeeMoffett,Christianity in Asia, pp. 51-53.
5Alphonse Mingana.The Early Spread of Christianity in Central Asia and theFar East: A New Document. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1925,pp. 7-8.
Foltz (1999),p. 65 and nn.
The following article indicates thepossibility of Christian influence in China as early as the 1stcenturyCE
When studying abatch of stone carvings of Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220 A.D.) stored andexhibited in the Museum of Xuzhou Han Stone Carvings, Jiangsu Province,Christian theology professor Wang Weifan was greatly surprised by some stoneengravings demonstrating the Bible stories and designs of early Christiantimes.
Further studiesshowed that some of these engravings were made in 86 A.D., or the third yearunder the reign of “Yuanhe” of Eastern Han Dynasty, 550 yearsearlier than the world accepted time of Christianity's entrance into China.
The 74-year-oldprofessor, who is also a standing member of the China Christian Council, showedreporter a pile of photos of Han stone carvings and bronze basins taken by him.He also compared the designs on them with that of the Bible, composed of fish,birds, and animals demonstrating how God created the earth.
Designs onthese ancient stones displayed the artistic style of early Christian timesfound in Iraq and Middle East area while bearing the characteristics of China'sEastern Han times.
The stonecarvings, being important funeral objects, are mainly found in four cities, andXuzhou is one of them. It is reported that by now more than 20 intact Han tombshave been found, from which nearly 500 pieces of engraved stones were discovered.
It is globallyaccepted that Christianity was first carried into China by a Syrian missionaryAlopen in 635 A.D. the ninth year under the reign of
Some expertsonce raised doubts that Christianity may have entered China in an early time asthe Eastern Han, but lack evidence. Nevertheless, professor Wang’sdiscovery serves to strongly back up the theory and the earlier works of hisown.
By PD OnlineStaff Member Li Heng. People’s Daily Online. Downloaded on 26 November2003:
http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/
J. Climate and other Changes along theSilk Routes.
The general wide-spread desiccation ofEurasia in historical times is now well attested and universally accepted. Itis particularly noticeable in the Tarim Basin region, where it forced theabandonment of many communities as glacial streams retreated back towards theranges, forcing significant changes to trade routes. See, for example, Almgren(1962), pp. 93-108; Shi and Yao (1999), pp. 91-100; Bao et al. (2004).
The old Southern SilkRoute between Dunhuang and Charklik became almost impassable over the first fewcenturiesCE
Many communities wereabandoned due to the drying up of water supplies and the inexorable advance ofsand. This process continues even today with the Chinese government and localcommunities fighting a constant battle to keep roads open and help presentcommunities survive.
“East ofHetian [Khotan] are some 13 rivers, which used to flow more than 40 kilometres(25 miles) further into the Taklamakan Desert than they do today. Many of theprosperous towns watered by them were abandoned to the sands between the thirdand sixth centuries to become buried treasure troves.” Bonavia (1988), p.191.
“This next stretch of highway is under threat from the desert andfrequently blocked. Fences of reed-matting form sand-breaks. Quemo comprisesone main street only – and no wonder, since for 145 days a year it isblasted by sands blown by Force 5 winds. Until the road was completed in the1960s it took a month’s journey through 800 kilometres (500 miles) ofdesert to reach Korla.”Ibid., p. 192.
It is wise to remember, that not all thechanges in routes or settlement patterns were solely due to climactic changes,they were sometimes hastened by human factors; as Sir Aurel Stein makes clear:
“Accordingto the observations during my explorations of 1900-01, and which I havediscussed at some length in my former Detailed Report, the Dandān-oilikOasis received its water from a canal fed by one or several of the streams nowirrigating the oases of Chīra, Gulakhma, and Domoko. The carefulexamination which Professor Huntington has since made of this ground, and thephysical changes undergone by it, has fully confirmed this view. Now it is ofspecial importance to note that Dandān-oilik lies fifty‑six milesfarther north in the desert than Khādalik, and not less than sixty‑fourbeyond Mazār-toghrak. Were shrinkage of the water‑supply to heconsidered the only possible cause of abandonment, this chronologicalcoincidence in the case of localities dependent on the identical drainagesystem, and yet so widely separated, would certainly be very curious.
Thatsuch shrinkage of the available water‑supply has taken place in the TarīmBasin during historical times, and that it must be connected with a generaldesiccation period affecting the whole of Central Asia and apparently mostregions of the continent, if not of the whole earth, is a conclusion which amass of steadily accumulating evidence is forcing upon the geographicalstudent. It is Professor Huntington’s special merit that he has broughtout the central fact of that shrinkage and has emphasized the importance of theproofs which systematic archaeological investigation of ancient sites in thedesert and near the present oases is able to furnish. At the same time he haslooked towards the results of this investigation to support a theory of his ownwhich supposes that the general process of desiccation has been diversifiedduring the historical period known to us by a succession of minor thoughimportant climatic changes partaking of a pulsatory nature. By a series ofingenious observations Professor Huntington has endeavoured to show that theclimatic pulsations thus assumed, i.e. periods of increased dryness extendingover certain centuries followed in turn by periods of a reverse tendency towardmore abundant rainfall, have exercised a determining influence on history. Hebelieves them to be reflected with particular clearness in the history ofCentral Asia, tend to increase the intensity of any climactic variations.
Itdoes not come within the scope of the present work to attempt a criticalanalysis in general of this theory which the distinguished American geographerhas set forth, with great lucidity and captivating literary skill in hisPulseof Asia. But since many of the specific arguments there advanced arederived from observations and inferences concerning the ancient sites betweenKhotan and Lop‑nōr which I explored in the course of my journeys, itappears to me obviously desirable that I should indicate clearly in each casewhat I think systematic archaeological research can safely establish as regardsthe climatic changes assumed, and what lies beyond its power to prove. Thedistinction is particularly needful, because in the absence of directhistorical information which could throw light on such changes in the TārīmBasin, Professor Huntington has been led to deduce their chronology mainly fromwhat antiquarian evidence he believed available, and in the reverse way toreconstruct the history of economic and cultural development in this regionfrom the climatic pulsations determined on this basis.
Toturn now to the tract which extends along the southern edge of the Taklamakānbetween Chīra and Keriya, it is certain that the water brought down at thepresent time by its rivers would be quite insufficient to reach so distant asite as Dandān‑oilik. Nor would it be adequate to irrigate, besidesthe actual oases, the whole of the adjoining area which can be proved to havebeen cultivated during the pre‑Muhammadan epoch. But a recognition ofthis fact by no means justifies the assumption that, because desiccation hasrendered areas once cultivated incapable of reoccupation after long centuries,their original abandonment must have been due to the same cause.
Whereman’s struggle with adverse conditions of nature is carried on by ahighly civilized community, such as archaeological exploration reveals tous in these ancient oases of the Buddhist epoch, human factors introduceelements of complexity which must warn the critical student to proceed warily,and to look for definite historical or antiquarian evidence before drawing hisconclusions as to the circumstances and events which determined the desertionof these settlements. Where cultivation is wholly dependent upon a carefulsystem of irrigation, and where the maintenance of the latter is possible onlyby the organized co‑operation of an adequate population, as in theseoases adjacent to, or surrounded by, the most and of deserts, a variety ofcauses apart from the want of water may lead to the gradual shrinkage orcomplete abandonment of cultivation. Reduction of population through invasion orpestilence; maladministration and want of security arising from prolongeddisturbance of political conditions; physical calamities, such as changes inriver courses with which a weakened administration would not adequately cope,etc., might all individually or jointly produce the same result.
Thusfor Dandān‑oilik we have significant evidence in an official Chinesedocument of the year A. D.768 found there, which has been fully discussed in myformer Detailed Report. This shows in most authentic form that the settlement,finally abandoned soon after A. D. 790, as other dated records prove, hadalready in A. D. 768 lost a part of its population which had retired to themain oasis owing to the depredations of bandits. In view of this explicitcontemporary record there is every inducement for the historical student toconnect the final abandonment of this outlying oasis after A. D. 790 with thegreat political. upheaval of the years immediately following, when Chineseauthority in Eastern Turkestan after long‑drawn struggles finallysuccumbed to Tibetan invasion. We know from the devastations which accompanied‑Tibetanpredominance elsewhere at that period, that the disappearance of organizedChinese control and protection must have resulted in prolonged politicaltroubles throughout the Tārīm Basin. Without an effectivelyadministered system of irrigation and an adequate population, cultivation inthat and region cannot successfully maintain its constant fight with thedesert, whatever the supply of water available in the rivers may be. Bothconditions were likely to suffer severely during those troubled times, and inno part of the cultivated effect make itself felt so rapidly and completely asin an isolated colony like Dandān-oilik.
Itis obvious that a cause which would suffice to explain complete abandonment inthe case of Dandān-oilik, might reasonably be held capable also ofaccounting for the shrinkage which we must assume to have taken place about thesame time in the occupied area immediately to the north and east of the presentDomoko. But it will be well to remember the lesson which the story of theDomoko dam. as above detailed, can teach us, and to realize that we can neverbe sure of correctly gauging the cause or causes which have produced the changein each particular locality, unless definite historical records come within ourreach. Neither silent ruins nor scientific conjecture can replace them, andwhile reliable materials of that kind remain as scanty as now, we can scarcelyexpect the old sites to give definite answers to all the questions which ariseabout the physical past of this region.” Stein (1921), pp. 207-211.
K. The Identification of Jibin asKapisha-Gandhāra.
The kingdom of Jibin
Ji
bin賓 – K. 389a: *pi̯ĕn / pi̯ĕn; EMC: pjin.
There is a discussion inCICA p.104, n. 203, on the various phonetic interpretations of the name, none of whichI find convincing. There are two main theories regarding the location of Jibin:
1. Several scholars maintain thatJibin referred to (the Valley of) Kashmir. This was partly on linguisticgrounds – see, for example, Pulleyblank (1963), pp. 218-219, (1999), p.75 and the discussion in Bailey (1985), pp. 44-46, and partly because Jibin was,in later centuries, in a few Buddhist texts, used to refer to the KashmirValley.
The Vale or Valley ofKashmir was most unlikely to have been on the route used by the Chinese toreach Kandahar and points west. In ancient times, the only easy access to itwas from the southwest – the Gandhāran plains – via the lowBaramula Pass, with its plentiful water and fodder. This did mean that theruler of Taxila (east of the Indus, near modern Rawalpindi), when strongenough, frequently controlled Kashmir as well, and it was commonly used as asummer residence for such rulers due to its pleasant climate and surrounds.
Travel was verydifficult from all other directions – the northwest, east and south. Forpractical purposes, the Vale of Kashmir formed a cul-de-sac, with only onemajor opening and thus was rarely used for through traffic, as the followingpassage from the 16th centuryTarikh-i-Rashidi, chap. XCIX,makes plain:
“There are three principal highways into Kashmir. The one leading toKhorásán [“a – country which at that time spreadeastward to beyond Herat and Ghazni, and southward to Mekrán.” SeeVol. I, p. *30] is such a difficult route, that it is impossible for beasts ofburden with loads to be driven along it ; so the inhabitants, who areaccustomed to such work, carry the loads upon their own shoulders for severaldays, until they reach a spot where it is possible to load a horse. The road toIndia offers the same difficulty. The road which leads to Tibet is easier than thesetwo, but during several days one finds nothing but poisonous herbs, which makethe transit inconvenient for travellers on horseback, since the horsesperish.” Elias (1895), p. 432.
During the Han and the Tang dynasties, atleast, the identification of Jibin with Kashmir is highly improbable. Mostpeople nowadays (including many scholars) think of “Kashmir” asconsisting of the mainly of Kashmir Valley itself or, at most, the Indian stateof Jammu and Kashmir including Ladakh to the east.
From the mid-19thcentury the Maharaja’s power over the princely state of Jammu-Kashmirextended at least as far as the Karakoram range to the north, but the disputedboundary beyond that was never demarcated. He also controlled Ladakh andGilgit, until this latter was set up as a special agency by the British in 1889for strategic reasons (which became part of Pakistan after Partition in 1947along with the upper Indus Valley past Skardu). He controlled the territorywest past Gupis to the easy Shandur Pass (3,725 metres; 12,221 feet), which isonly about 20 kilometres from Mastuj.
Mastuj, on the YarkhunRiver, is the main centre in the upper reaches of the Chitral/Kunar valley,from where there is relatively easy, year-round access to the region of Jalalabadon the Kabul River. It also controls access to the strategically importantBaroghil Pass (3,798 metres; 12,460 feet) to the north. See, for example, thefoldout map of Kashmir in Younghusband and Molyneux (1909). It is only in thisvery extended sense of ‘Kashmir’ that there could be anypossibility of Jibin standing for ‘Kashmir’ during the first fewcenturiesCE
2.
There is a route fromGilgit to the Kashmir Valley itself which was in use until 1947, but, politicalconsiderations aside, the shortest route from the Tarim Basin for someoneheaded to the north Indian plains, remain the ones over the Kilik or MintakaPasses, and then through Hunza and Gilgit and on to the Chitral/Kunar Valley.Further east one could cross the Baroghil Pass with pack animals during summer,leading down to Mastuj and Chitral as described below.
The only alternativeroutes for laden animals were much further east over the difficult KarakoramPass and then across Ladakh to Kashmir.
From Ladakh heading south,there are a couple of difficult alternative routes over very high passes, bothconverging, finally, on the unpredictable and dangerous Rohtang Pass(3,980 metres or 13,058 ft) leading into the Kulu Valley and the northernIndian plains. The Rohtang Pass is only open from June to September each yearand is notorious for its deadly “icy winds and sudden blizzards at anytime of the day even during the summer.” Chetwode (1972): p. 184 –which see for graphic accounts of such disasters.
However,the route through the Kullu Valley and Manali over the Rohtang Pass to Lahaul,and then on to Ladakh and the Tarim Basin always retained a certain importancein spite of its dangers and difficulties. It was not only a conduit for thefamous cottons and wools of the north Indian plains. There were importantsilver mines (now exhausted) past Manikaran in the Parvati River Valley whichjoins the Kullu Valley from the east, and also some of the finest quality
Looking at the routes from the oppositedirection, Sir Aurel Stein records:
“After leaving behind Misgar, the northernmost hamlet of Hunza, thenatural difficulties of the route decrease. The valley widens as we approachthe watershed which separates the headwaters of the Hunza river from those ofthe Oxus on the one side and the Tāghdumbāsh Pāmīr on theother. Lord Curzon, in his exhaustive Memoir on the Pāmīrs, has dulyemphasized the important geographical fact that the water-parting in this partof the Hindukush lies considerably to the north of the axial range and is alsofar lower. This helps to account for the relative ease with which the Kilik andMintaka passes, giving final access to the Tāghdumbāsh Pāmīr,can be crossed, even with laden animals, during the greater part of theyear.” Stein (1907), p. 21.
By far the easiest route, though, at leastduring summer (it was closed by snow in the winter), went over the BaroghilPass to Mastuj and, from there, either east towards Gilgit, southwest down theChitral/Kunar Valley towards Jalalabad.
There is a viable butmore difficult route south from Chitral, (presently in use because of theartificial border between Pakistan and Afghanistan), over the dangerous LowariPass (3,118 metres or 10,230 ft), through Dir and Malakand to the region ofPeshawar.
“FromSarhad starts the well-known route which leads southwards over the Barōghilpass to the headwaters of the Mastūj river, to this day representing theeasiest line of access from the Upper Oxus to Chitrăl as well as toGilgit.” Stein (1907), p. 8.
“Alldetails recorded of it [the passage of Ko Hsien-chih’s troops in 747
From the foot of thepass at Darkōt a march of about twenty-five miles [40 km] brings us to thevillage of Yasīn, the political centre of the valley. . . . ” Stein(1907), pp. 9-10.
As mentioned, from Chitral one couldtravel either through Swat to the region of Peshawar in Gandhāra, or viaJalalabad and from there southwest to Kandahar (this latter being the easiestand most direct route to Kandahar). To travel to Kandahar via the KashmirValley would entail making a very long and unnecessary detour.
In addition, theHouHanshu’s discussion of Gaofu (which most authorities agree referredto the region of modern Kabul, known later as Kabulistan), it is stated thatJibin, at times, controlled it – see Section 4 of this text. That alonewould seem to eliminate the Kashmir Valley as a possible location.
Any power thatcontrolled the region of Jalalabad in the Kabul River Valley would normallyhave included the key strategic fortifications at Kapisha near present Begramto the north and, often, Kabul, and usually Peshawar and Pushkalāvatīor Chārsaddā (the ancient capital – some 18 miles or 29 kmnortheast of Peshawar), plus some of the Gandhāran plains to the east andnortheast.
“. . .can only be Nagarahāra near Jalalabad, the frontier town towards India,which appears in Ptolemy as ‘Nagara, also called Dionysopolis’.4Very few places east of the Hindu Kush have a Greek name, so the town must havebeen important; the form of the name Dionysopolis shows that a Greek militarycolony had been planted there . . , one of the usual methods of hellenising anexisting Oriental town . . ; whether, like Susa, the place had become, or everdid become, a Greekpolis cannot be said. The settlers were devoted insome especial way to the worship of Dionysus; hence the panther, probably thecity type.
4 VII,I, 42; Foucher,Afghanistan p. 279. Ptolemy assigns it to Gandhāra,but it was the frontier town and may have been governed from either capital atdifferent times.”
Tarn (1984), p.159 and n. 4.
“But, unlike Taxila, Pushkalāvatī became a Greekpolis (doubtlesssomewhat of the type of Susa, p. 27), as is shown by the Fortune of the city onkings’ coins; the solitary coin of the city itself which exists to provethat it was once for a time completely independent… shows, besideSiva’s bull, the Fortune of the ‘city of lotuses’ with hermural crown, holding in her hand the lotus of Lakshmī. Evidently Pushkalāvatī,when a Greekpolis, was no less proud of her alien deities than wasEphesus of her alien Artemis, and Siva’s bull is a parallel toArtemis’ bee on the coins of the Ionian city. Pushkalāvatīstood at what was probably then the junction of the Swat and Kabul rivers, andas it and not Purushapura (Peshawur) became the Greek capital, the regularGreek line of communication westward probably did not run through the Khyberpass but by the route which Alexander had followed more to the northward; itseems unlikely that the Khyber was inregular use until the Kushans madePeshawur their capital.” Tarn (1984), p. 136.
“TheKhaibar route is a late one in the route-system of the frontier regions. Withthe emergence of Kabul as an important town in the eighth century this routecame into prominence and started functioning most frequently from the sixteenthcentury onwards. Hephaestion’s route went along the north bank of theKabul river and passed through the Michni fort and Hotimardān, where acommon route to Hund [a major ancient crossing of the Indus] proceeded.According to Aurel Stein, the route of Hephaestion bifurcated from that ofAlexander somewhat near the eastern side of the Kunar river and far to thenorth of Kama. It proceeded in the southeasterly direction through Bohai, Dāg,Gandāb, Doābā, Michni Pass, Utmanzai, Chārsaddā andfinally to Hund via Hotimardān. Chārsaddā or Puṣkalāvatīwas the ancient capital of Gandhārā and was 18 miles [29 km]northeast of Peshawar. Aurel Stein,OnAlexander’s Track to the Indus (London, 1929), p. 124 ; Olaf Caroe,
“We aretold by Alexander’s historians (M’Crindle MDCCCDVI) that while themain body of his troop moved along the most direct route to Taxila, Alexanderdecided to move along a northern route with the intention of subduing certaintribes in that region. Major details about this route are available inHoldich’sThe Gates of India(189:96ff;also see Smith 1904). Briefly, from Kabul, Alexander went along the Kabul riveron to the valley of Kunar (Choaspes)which ‘is a link in the oldest and probably the best trodden route fromKabul to the Punjab, and it has no part with the Khaibar. It links togetherthese northern valleys of Laaghman, Kunar and Lundai (i.e., the Panjkora andSwat united) by a road north of Kabul, finally passing southwards into theplains chequered by the river network above Peshawar.’ After crossing thePanjkora (Gourajos), AlexandersubduedMassaga which,M’Crindle argues, seconding Rennell, was the same as the Mashanagarmentioned in Babur’s memoirs, situated on the Swat river, two marchesfrom Bajaur. His next objective were the cities ofOraandBazira. Goingtowards the Indus, Alexander received the submission ofPeukelaotis, the capital of the then Peshawar region ie., Charsada.From Charsada, Taxila was reached. After leaving behind the dominions of Porus,around the Jhelum, he went down the river, fighting tribes along the way toreach the confluence of the rivers of the Punjab with the Indus. His campaignin the Sind region is dealt with very vaguely. It is sufficient to mention thatthe march followed mainly the line of the river towards the sea and towardsGedrosia.” Lahiri (1992), pp. 379-380.
It was only natural for a state such asthe Kushan (and later the British) Empire to wish to control the trade andpossible invasion routes to the northeast, and so would extend their power upthe Kunar/Chitral valley and across to the easily defended gorges of Yasin,Gilgit and Hunza, thus controlling trade while, at the same time, preventingsurprise attacks from the north.
Shughnān was famousfor its good climate, water and wine. It was also the source of the widelycelebrated “Balas rubies” (actually spinel, not true rubies) of theancient world. Although, apparently no longer mined today, they were beingmined at least until the 19th century:
“I have failedto find out how old the balas ruby is. The earliest I have met with are thoseon the Bimarān casket, which was found with coins of Azes I and isprobably noearlier thanc. 30 B.C.; some ruby beads from Taxilaare also not earlier than Azes,ASI 1915–16 p. 5. For Roman timessee Warmington, p. 249, who tells me he has not met with the balas ruby inHellenistic or Greek times. Yet it is hard to believe that the mine was firstopened by the Yueh-chi.” Tarn (1984), p. 103, n. 4.
“Theruler of Shignan claims the title of Shah. The present Shah, Eusuf Ali, rulesover both Shighnan and Roshan. . . . The country of Shignan and Roshan is sometimes called Zujan (two-lived),its climate and water being so good that a man entering it is said to have comeinto the possession of two lives. Bar Panja, the capital of Shignan, containingabout 1500 houses, stands on the left bank, and Wamur, the capital of Roshan,on the right bank of the Oxus ; but the greater portion of both countries is onthe right [i.e. the eastern] bank. . . . Much wine is made and drunk in the country. It is a red sweet liquorproduced from the cherry. There are now about 4700 houses or families inShighnan and Roshan together, but the population is said to have been muchgreater in former times. Shighnan and Roshan used to receive from the Chinese,during their occupation of Eastern Turkistan, a yearly payment similar to thatmade to Sirikol, Kunjut, and Wakhan, for the protection of the frontier and thetrade routes. The ruby mines of Gharan are now worked under the orders of SherAli, the Amir of Kabul. It was said that one large ruby the size of apigeon’s egg, as well as some smaller ones, were found lately and sent tothe Amir. The working of these mines appears to be attended with considerablerisk and great hardship.” Gordon (1876), pp. 139-141.
The region was also rich in metals whichmay have been mined in Kushan times, and would have greatly increased itsimportance:
“Badakshanto-day produces some copper and iron, and may always have done so; but Bactriain Greek times was seemingly poor in precious metals. In Arab times there wererich mines of silver at Anderab and also mines in Wakhan, but it seemsimprobable that they were worked or much worked in the Greek period, for thereare signs that Euthydemus was short of silver; many of his tetradrachms werestruck on old coins already in circulation, and he attempted at the end of hislife to import nickel from China. East of the Hindu Kush, however, the silvermines on the Panjshir river, which were to supply the mint atAlexandria–Kapisha, were doubtless working to some extent – one ofthe things which made that city such a desirable acquisition.” Tarn(1984), pp. 103-104.
It is possible that Shuangmi, at times,may have controlled the region of the upper Kokcha river in Badakhshāncontaining the important ancient lapis lazuli mines, which were usuallycontrolled by whoever was in power in Badakhshān. Certainly, inc.658CE
It is often stated thatthe mines in Badhakshan were the only source of lapis lazuli in the ancientworld. While it is true that they were the major source – particularlyfor Mesopotamia and Egypt, other sources are known which have possibly beenutilised since ancient times. For example, one such source is near the town of Ghiamda(modern Gyimda), about 200 km as the crow flies northeast of Lhasa:
“Thelapis lazuli, stag’s horn, and rhubarb, are also materials of a greatcommercial intercourse with Lha-Ssa and the neighbouring provinces. They affirmhere, that it is the mountains about Ghiamda that the best rhubarbgrows.” Huc (undated), p. 98.
The Da Yuezhi also conquered the fertileSwat Valley, which not only provided the main route south to the Gandhāranplains but was an ancient source of emeralds. Questions were answered recentlyas to whether emeralds were mined here in ancient times when an emerald fromthis region has been recently proven to be the gem in a Gallo-Roman earring– see Giuliani et al (2000), pp. 631-633.
Whoever was in power inthe Kapisha/Begram area would quite possibly have been exploiting the richdeposits of emeralds just to the north of Kapisha/Begram, in the lower PanjshirValley – see Giuliani et al (2000), pp. 631–633.
These emeralds, alongwith lapis lazuli from Badakshan, formed an important source of income for thefamous guerrilla leader, Ahmad Shah Massoud (the ‘Lion ofPanjshir’), in his campaigns against the Soviets during the 1980s. See:Kremmer (2002), pp. 24-25. It is likely they were of similar importance inantiquity.
It seems almost certainthat this is the route through Jibin that theHou Hanshu and theWeiluerefer to, especially as we know this whole section of the route was underKushan control after they conquered it during 1st century
TheHanshu says that Jibin:
“...isflat and the climate is temperate. There is lucerne, with a variety ofvegetation and rare trees. . . . [The inhabitants] grow the five field crops,grapes and various sorts of fruit, and they manure their orchards and arableland. The land is low and damp, producing rice, and fresh vegetables are eatenin winter. . . . The [state] produces humped cattle, water-buffalo, elephant,large dogs, monkeys, peacocks....”CICA, pp. 105-106.
It is difficult to imagine anywhere otherthan Gandhāra that would fit the information given above. However, theextent of the territory it included or controlled undoubtedly varied from timeto time.
“From theclimate, the geographical features, and the produce, the central area in Hantimes must have been in Gandhāra, including Taxila. Kaspeiria andParopamisadae were possibly subject to Jibin, but cannot be regarded as part ofthe metropolitan territory of Jibin.
. . . .
There are many indications that theterritory along the Kabul River Valley through Jalalabad to Kapisha (modernBegram) often formed a political unit with the Gandhāran plains. TheHanshu(CICA, p. 103), mentions that Nandou (the Chitral/Kunar Valley) was alsosubject to Jibin at that time.
“Chitral,unlike Gilgit, is not blocked for eight months in the year by Nature. If therewere no such things as states, frontiers, and feuds, Chitral could be reachedwith ease from Peshawar any day in the year. It could be reached viaJallalabad. For, at Jallalabad, the Kabul River is joined by the Kunar River;and Chitral is simply another name for the upper Kunar valley. Unseal thesealed frontier that cuts this valley in two like a travel-proof bulk-head, andthat grim annual toll of deaths on the Lowari Pass could be remitted.”Toynbee (1961), p. 143.
TheHistory of the Northern Weiprovides valuable additional information on Jibin; stating that it was to thesouthwest of Bolu (Bolor or Gilgit) and that it was 800li west to eastand 300li north to south. This description cannot possibly be appliedto Kashmir but it fits very well with the territory stretching along the KabulRiver valley from Kapisha (modern Begram – north of Kabul) throughPeshawar and across the Gandhāran plains to ancient Taxila:
“TheHistory of the Northern Wei [covering the period 386-534 AD] mentions anembassy from Jibin in the 1st Zhengpingyear of Taiwu Di (451 AD). The notice on the Peoples of the West inserted inthis history reproduces that of the Han, but adds a few precise details. Thecapital of Jibin is SW of Bolu, 14,200li from the capital of the Beiwei(Northern Wei); the country is surrounded by four chains of mountains. It is800li [333 km] in length from west to east, 300 [125 km] from north tosouth.” Translated from the French version by: Lévi and Chavannes(1895), p. 374. [Notethat Lévi and Chavannes put the embassy in 452 AD, but this is amistake. The 1stZhengping yearof Nanan Wang was 452/3, and he only reigned briefly during 452. Also note thatI have converted theli here according to the value of the Hanli.It may not have had exactly this value during the period of the Northern Wei,but this does not affect the main thrust of my argument.
The Chinese pilgrim Wu Kong who, aftertravelling through Swat to the Indus River, entered Gandhāra in 753
“On the21st day of the second month of the 12th
The king lives in winterin this place; in summer, he lives inJibin; he seeks out the warmth orcoolness to promote his health.” Translated from Lévi andChavannes (1895), p. 349.
For three excellent and detailed studieson the location of Jibin, see Lévi and Chavannes’ essay (pp.371-384) at the end of their article, “L’itineraire d’Ou-k’ong(751-790).”JA (1895) Sept.-Oct.; Petech’s essay at the endof his article, “Northern India according to the Shu-ching-shu”(1950), pp. 63-80; and Yu (1998), Chapter 8, “The State of Jibin”,pp. 147-166.
Also worth checking are:Stein (1900): Vol. II, Chap. II, especially, pp. 351-362; Daffinà(1982), pp. 317-318; Molè (1970), p. 97, n. 105; Rapson, ed., (1922), p.501; Keay (1977), pp. 130, 146, 222, 224; Toynbee (1961), pp. 1, 48, 51-52 130,125-126; and Pugachenkova, et al., (1994), p. 356.
Assuming the order ofthe conquests of Kujula Kadphises in the text is chronological, it is probablethat Jibin came under Kushan rule not long after he conquered Puda (Parthuaia)in 55CE
“Qiujiuque[Kujula Kadphises] invaded Anxi with the result that he took the country ofGaofu, which shows he took Paropamisadae from the Gondophares family. He thendestroyed Jibin, of course, in order to put an end to the rule of the family inGandhāra and Taxila. As mentioned above, the last year of Gondophares wasat latest A.D. 45 and it is generally believed that the family of Gondophareshad also at least one ruler, Pocores, and their reign in the valley of theKabul River ended in A.D. 60-65. After that, Jibin was subject toGuishuang.” Yu (1999), p. 160.
It is known that the region was still under Indo-Parthian rule until at least44CE
I believe there is nowoverwhelming evidence for the second theory: Jibin, at the time of the LaterHan, probably included Gandhāra, particularly the regions of Peshawar andthe Kabul River valley through to Jalalabad, and then along the Kabul RiverValley to the junction with the Panjshir River, then northwest to thestrategically-placed fortress at Kapisha-Kanish, near modern Begram. Tarnremarks on what he considers “Gandhāra” included:
“Gandhāra,1 the country between the Kunar river and theIndus, comprising the modern Bajaur, Swat, Buner, the Yusufzai country, and thecountry south of the Kabul river about Peshawur, was to become one of thestrongholds of Greek Power; it has been called a kind of new Hellas.”
1 IntheJātakas Gandhāra includes Taxila; but in this book I usethe term in its strict sense. On Gandhāra see Foucher,Gandhāra;R. Grousset,Sur les traces de Bouddha, 1929, chap. VI.”
Tarn (1984), p.135 and n. 1.
L. The Introduction of Silk Cultivationto Khotan in the 1st Century
The legend of the introduction of silk toKhotan by a Chinese princess is given in some detail in Xuanzang. Aurel Steingives a good summary of this legend according to Xuanzang:
“In oldtimes the country knew nothing of either mulberry trees or silkworms. Hearingthat China possessed them, the king of Khotan sent an envoy to procure them ;but at that time the ruler of China was determined not to let others sharetheir possession, and he had strictly prohibited seeds of the mulberry tree orsilkworms’ eggs being carried outside his frontiers. The king of Khotanthen with due submission prayed for the hand of a Chinese princess. When thisrequest had been acceded to, he dispatched an envoy to escort the princess fromChina, taking care to let the future queen know through him that, in order toassure to herself fine silk robes when in Khotan, she had better bring somemulberry seeds and silkworms with her.
The princess thusadvised secretly procured mulberry seeds and silkworms’ eggs, and byconcealing them in the lining of her headdress, which the chief of the frontierguards did not dare to examine, managed to remove them safely to Khotan. On herfirst arrival and before her solemn entry into the royal palace, she stopped atthe site where subsequently the Lu-shê convent was built, and there sheleft the silkworms and the mulberry seeds. From the latter grew up the firstmulberry trees, with the leaves of which the silkworms were fed when their timehad come. Then the queen issued an edict engraved on stone, prohibiting theworking up of the cocoons until the moths of the silkworms had escaped. Thenshe founded this Sanghārāma on the spot where the first silkwormswere bred; and there are about here many old mulberry tree trunks which theysay are the remains of the trees first planted. From old time till now thiskingdom has possessed silkworms which nobody is allowed to kill, with a view totake away the silk stealthily. Those who do so are not allowed to rear theworms for a succession of years.
That the legend hererelated about the origin of one of Khotan’s most important industriesenjoyed widespread popularity is proved by the painted panel (D. iv. 5)discovered by me in one of the Dandān-Uliq shrines, which presents us, asmy detailed analysis will show, with a spirited picture of the Chinese princessin the act of offering protection to a basketful of unpierced cocoons. Anattendant pointing to the princess’s headdress recalls her beneficentsmuggling by which Khotan was supposed to have obtained its first silkworms,while another attendant engaged at a loom or silk-weaving implement symbolizesthe industry which the princess’s initiative had founded. A divine figureseated in the background may represent the genius presiding over thesilkworms.” Stein (1907) I, pp. 229-230. See also: Stein (1921), pp.1278-1279; Watters (1904-1905), pp. 287, 302
The story of the Chinese princess bringingsilk to Khotan is retold in theLi yul lu
The legend is set in the reign ofKing Vijaya Jaya, who is said to have married the Chinese princess who first broughtsilkworms to Khotan. King Vijaya Dharma was the youngest of three sons ofVijaya Jaya and appears to be identical with a “high official”named Dumo in theHou Hanshu, and who is mentioned later on in the textas reigning in 60CE
The name of this “highofficial,” 都末
Du – K.45e’: *to / tuo; EMC: to / tuo.
mo – K. 277a: *mwât / muât; EMC: mat.
Furthermore, King Vijaya Jaya is recordedas being four generations before King Vijaya Kīrti, who is said to, alongwith the king of Gu-zan or Kucha assisted Kanika (= Kanishka) in his conquestof So-ked (= Saketa).
Now, we know that thisconquest apparently took place just prior to, or during the first year, ofKanishka’s era, which Harry Falk (2001) has recently identified as 127
Althoughthe evidence is not totally beyond question, there are now, I believe,sufficient grounds for asserting that that silk technology arrived in Khotansometime in the first half of the 1st centuryCE.
This is supported by F.W. Thomas in his translation of “The Annals of the Li Country,” inTibetanLiterary Texts and Documents Concerning Chinese Turkestan (1935) on page110, note 9, where he says: “The introduction of silk-culture into Khotanprobably took place early, perhaps about the beginning of the Christianera.” For further information see: Emmerick (1967), pp. 33-47 and Thomas(1935), pp. 110-119.
M.The Canals andRoadsfrom the Red Sea to the Nile.
I have already discussed in some detailthe significance of the two canals – the Red Sea to the Nile, and theButic – which, together, connected Alexandria and the other delta citieswith the Red Sea. See note 11.8. Here, I propose to look at the variousaccounts dealing with the long history of the Red Sea to the Nile canal.
“Darius(520 B.C.) continued the work of Necho, rendering navigable the channel of theHeroopolite Gulf, which had become blocked. Up to this time there appears tohave been no connexion between the waters of the Red Sea and those of theBubastis-Heroopolis canal; vessels coming from the Mediterranean ascended thePelusaic arm of the Nile to Bubastis and then sailed along the canal toHeroopolis, where their merchandise had to be transferred to the Red Sea ships.Ptolemy Philadelphus (285 B.C.) connected the canal with the waters of the sea,and at the spot where the junction was effected he built the town of Arsinoe.The dwindling of the Pelusaic branch of the Nile rendered this means ofcommunication impossible by the time of Cleopatra (31 B.C.). Trajan (A.D. 98)is said to have repaired the canal, and, as the Pelusaic branch was no longeravailable for navigation, to have built a new canal between Bubastis andBabylon (Old Cairo), this new canal being known traditionally as AmnisTrajanaus or Amnis Augustus. According to H. R. Hall, however, it is verydoubtful if any work of this kind, beyond repairs, was undertaken in the timeof the Romans; and it is more probable that the new canal was the work of Amr(the Arab conqueror of Egypt in the 7th century). The canal wascertainly in use in the early years of the Moslem rule in Egypt; it is said tohave been closedc. A.D. 770 by order of Abu Jafar (Mansur), the secondAbbasid caliph and founder of Bagdad, who wished to prevent supplies reachinghis enemies in Arabia by this means.” Encyclopædia Britannica(1911). Downloaded from:http://76. 1911encyclopedia.org/S/SU/SUEZ.htmon 11 Nov. 2003.
“In Egypt both land and water communications were looked after; the oldcanal from Memphis to the lake of Ismailia was brought back into commission bydint of so much labour that it subsequently bore Trajan’s name; as forthe roads, milestones recording Trajan’s work have been found as farsouth as Nubia.” Garzetti (1976), p. 336.
“Now, the surveys recently made by Lieutenant-colonel Ardagh, MajorSpaight, and Lieutenant Burton, of the Royal Engineers, have rendered itcertain that the Wady Tûmilât was at some very distant timetraversed by a branch of the Nile which discharged its waters into the Red Sea– the majority of geographers being now of the opinion that the head ofthe Gulf of Suez formerly extended as far northward as the modern town ofIsmaïlia. Whether that branch of the Nile was ever navigable, we know not;but we do know that it was already canalized in the reign of Seti I, secondPharaoh of the Nineteenth Dynasty, and father of Rameses II.
This ancient canalstarted, like the present Sweetwater Canal, from the neighbourhood of Bubastis,the modern Zagazig; threaded the Wady Tûmilât; and emptied itselfinto that basin which is now known as Lake Timsah. When Mr. De Lesseps laid downthe line of the Sweetwater Canal, he, in fact, followed the course of the oldcanal of the Pharaohs, the bed of which is still traceable. When I last saw it,several blocks of masonry of the old embankment were yetin situ, amongthe reeds and weeds by which that ancient water-way is now choked.”Edwards (1891), p. 280.
“Psammetichusleft a son called Necos, who succeeded him upon the throne. This prince was thefirst to attempt the construction of the canal to the Red Sea – a workcompleted afterwards by Darius the Persian – the length of which is fourdays’ journey, and the width is such as to admit of two triremes beingrowed along it abreast. The water is derived from the Nile, which the canalleaves a little above the city of Bubastis,293 near Patumus, theArabian town,294 being continued thence until it joins the Red Sea.At first it is carried along the Arabian side of the Egyptian plain, a far asthe chain of hills opposite Memphis, whereby the plain is bounded, and in whichlie the great stone quarries; here it skirts the base of the hills running in adirection from west to east; after which it turns, and enters a narrow pass,trending southwards from this point, until it enters the Arabian Gulf. From thenorthern sea to that which is called the southern or Erythraean, the shortestand quickest passage, which is from Mount Casius, the boundary between Egyptand Syria, to the Gulf of Arabia, is a distance of exactly one thousandfurlongs. But the way by the canal is very much longer, on account of thecrookedness of its course. A hundred and twenty thousand of the Egyptians,employed upon the work in the reign of Necos, lost their lives in making theexcavation. He at length desisted from his undertakings in consequence of anoracle which warned him ‘that he was labouring for the barbarian’.295The Egyptians call by the name of barbarian all such as speak a languagedifferent from their own.”
293The commencement of the Red Sea canal was in different places at variousperiods. In the time of Herodotus it left the Pelusiac branch a little aboveBubastis.
294Patumus was not near the Red Sea, but at the commencement of the canal, and wasthe Pithom mentioned in Exod. 1, 11.
295This was owing to the increasing power of the Asiatic nations.
Herodotus (1996edition), pp. 185, 219.
“Now theNile, when it overflows, floods not only the Delta, but also the tracts ofcountry on both sides of the stream which are thought to belong to Libya andArabia, in some places reaching to the extent of two days’ journey fromits banks, in some even exceeding the distance, but in others falling short ofit.” Herodotus (5th cent.BCE): 124(II.19).
“When theNile overflows, the country is converted into a sea, and nothing appears butthe cities, which look like islands in the Aegean.205 At this seasonboats no longer keep the course of the river, but sail right across the plain.On the voyage from Naucratis to Memphis at this season, you pass close to thepyramids, whereas the usual course is by the apex of the Delta, and the city ofCercasorus. You can sail also from the maritime town of Canobus across the flatto Naucratis, passing by the cities of Anthylla and Archandropolis.”
Note205 by George Rawlinson;ibid., on p. 212, says: “This stillhappens in those years when the inundation is very high.”
Herodotus(II.97), (1996), p. 155.
“As earlyas the Middle Kingdom, a canal had been dug from Phacussa on the Pelusiacbranch of the Nile to irrigate the fertile wadi Tumilat to the east, where laterthe Hebrews were to settle in Goshen. Necho vainly attempted to extend itthrough the Bitter Lakes to the Gulf of Suez as one phase of that policy ofexploration which resulted in the Phoenician circumnavigation of Africa. Afterhis passage across the Arabian desert in 518, Darius would have continuedthrough the wadi Tumilat and thus would have noticed this uncompleted canal.His interest quickened by hopes of a cheaper and more direct route to India, heresolved to complete the task.
Necho’s line ofexcavation had been sanded up and must first be cleared. Wells had to be dugfor the workmen. When finally opened [about 497BCE], thecanal was a hundred and fifty feet wide and deep enough for merchantmen. Thispredecessor of the present-day Suez Canal could be traversed in four days.
Five huge red-granitestelae to commemorate this vast project greeted the eyes of the traveler atintervals along the banks. On one side the twice-repeated Darius holds withinan Egyptian cartouche his cuneiform name under the protection of the Ahuramazdasymbol. In the three cuneiform languages he declares: “I am a Persian.From Parsa I seized Egypt. I commanded this canal to be dug from the river,Nile by name, which flows in Egypt, to the sea which goes from Parsa. Afterwardthis canal was dug as I commanded, and ships passed from Egypt through thiscanal to Parsa as was my will.”
. . . .
“This[the canal from the Nile to the Red Sea] was begun by Necho II, and completedby Darius I, who set up stelaec. 490 [BCE]..,and later restored by Ptolemy II Philadelphus, Trajan and Hadrian, and Amr ibnel-‘Asi, the Muslim conqueror of Egypt. Its length from Tell el-Maskhutato Suez was about 85 km.” Baines and Málek (1984), p. 48.
The original canal was in three sections.the first joined the head of the Gulf of Suez with the Great Bitter Lake; thesecond was then connected with Lake Timsah to the north by another canal. Thethird section ran from Lake Timsah west, along the Wadi Tumilat to an ancientbranch of the Nile which flowed into the Mediterranean just west of thefrontier post of Pelusium.
“Therulers of ancient Egypt saw little advantage in linking the two seas, but theyconsidered that much could be gained if the ships plying up and down the Nilewere able to sail directly into the Red Sea and so reach the markets of Arabiaand the Horn of Africa. So at the beginning of the sixth century BC, thePharaoh Necho II started to excavate a linking channel. At that time, a branchof the Lower Nile ran eastwards from where the city of Cairo now stands, toempty into the Mediterranean at the town of Pelusium at the easternmost cornerof the delta. Necho’s plan was to dig a canal from half-way along thisbranch, due east of Lake Timsah, and then south through the Bitter Lakes toreach the most northerly tip of the Red Sea at Suez. The labour involved wasimmense. The Greek historian, Herodotus, stated that one hundred thousandpeople were killed as the work proceeded [sic. Herodotus says a hundred andtwenty thousand – see above]. Eventually, the Pharaoh was warned by anoracle that the human cost was too high, and accordingly he ordered the work tobe halted.
In 520 BC, however,Darius, King of the Persians, invaded Egypt and he commanded that the workshould be started again. He apparently saw it not merely as a useful traderoute but also a monument to his own glory, for he set up at least four stonetablets along its course, declaring that he, as the conqueror of Egypt, haddecreed that the canal should be dug. It was, certainly, a spectacularachievement. Strabo, the Greek geographer who lived at the beginning of theChristian era, described the completed waterway as being wide enough toaccommodate abreast two triremes – war galleys with three tiers of oarson each side – so it was probably at least a hundred feet across. Thejourney from the Nile to the Red Sea took, he says, about four days. The canalwas, however, very difficult to maintain. Sand continually drifted into it,silting it up. It was cleaned out and repaired several times by the Romansduring their rule of the country, and again by the Arabs when they annexedEgypt in the eighth century AD. Eventually, the Arabs decided it was moretrouble than it was worth, and they filled it in altogether.”Attenborough (1987), pp. 177-178.
Ptolemy II Philadelphus (king of Egypt285-246BCE
“Variouspublic works may also have been connected with the India trade. The road from Bostrato Aila was built immediately after the annexation of Arabia to the RomanEmpire. The speed with which the project was undertaken suggests an urgentstrategic need rather than long term commercial considerations. A secondproject on a grander scale was the clearing of the silted-up Ptolemaic‘Suez Canal’ by Trajan. It is hard to perceive of this canal inother than commercial terms. Trajan had a fondness for such projects and wascertainly well aware of the economic advantages of water-borne commerce. Thecanal was maintained throughout the imperial period, but in the first threecenturies of its existence we possess only one reference to its use in theIndia trade.” Raschke (1976), p. 649.
“Later, on the other side of the Nile, Hadrian built Antinoöpolis inmemory of his young friend Antinous, and laid down the Via Hadriana, the onlyformal Roman road in all of Egypt. An inscription found at Antinoöpolisstates that by an order of Hadrian a road was built from that city on the Nileacross the desert to the Red Sea and along it southward to the port-city ofBerenice at 36 degrees south latitude. Berenice was theentrepot forshipping from India and by the Arabias. There are today, however, few traces ofthe hydreumata, stations and garrisons mentioned in the inscriptions. Nomilestones have been found to confirm the road. A few sections of cleared trackor way have been seen, but nowhere is the surface paved. The conclusionrecorded in theTabula Imperii Romani is that the formal Via Hadriana hasvanished. Yet there is evidence of its use in early Christian and Nabataeangraffiti carved on rocks at Berenice, and in the remains of a Romantemple.” Von Hagen (1967), p. 109.
“On theEgyptian side [of the Red Sea], Trajan cleared out the old canal which hadsilted up again since Ptolemaic days, and dug a new section at its western end,to bring it to the Nile at the Egyptian Babylon, on the site of Old Cairo; thiswould afford a better connection with the western or Canopic arm of the Niledelta, leading to Alexandria. Where Trajan’s canal joined the Red Seathere now grew up the port of Clysma.” Hourani (1995), p. 34.
“By 31B.C. the Pelusiac branch of the Nile had dwindled and no communication waspossible. In A.D. 98 Trajan is said to have built theAmnis Trajanus, anew canal from Bubastis to Old Babylon (Cairo), though this may have been donelater by ‘Amr. For the Arabians had rediscovered the old bed, silted upafter centuries of neglect, and used it down to 770 when Caliph Mansur, thefounder of Bagdat, closed it. The terminus of ‘Amr’s canal was nearSuez (Kolzum). Parts of it were used until Mehemet Ali closed them in 1811, andwere even utilized by the French in constructing the present Suez canal.”Hyde (1947), p. 193, n. 15.
“At theperiod of these texts (AD 183/4), the Arabian nome would appear to have covereda roughly crescent-shaped area, reaching from the eastern bank of the Bubastite(Pelusiac) branch of the Nile (at the mouth of the Wadi Tumilat in the southwest, as far as Phacusae in the north) via the Wadi Tumilat (i.e. alongTrajan’s Canal) to at least Thaubasthis (4067 8)as its maximum north-eastextent, and then perhaps curving south to the Gulf of Suez. This is a largearea for one nome and its administration must have been difficult, but much ofit of course was probably only thinly populated, and in terms simply ofpopulation the whole area may not have differed so much from other nomes. Someof this area belonged to other nomes at different periods. . . .
The capital of theArabian nome at this time was Phacusae, εΦακoυcιτ¢v πόλι [ephakousiton polis](4063 21-22, 4064 5), which agrees with what we know fromPtolemy,Geogr.. IV 5.24 (for other occurrences and variants of thename, see 4063 21-2n.). Despite divergent opinion going back to Naville,Goshenand the shrine of Saft el-Henneth (Mem. Eg. Expl. Fund 6: London,1887), and still echoed in recent works, e.g.A Guide to the Zenon ArchiveII (= P. Lugd.-Bat. XXI/B) 500, according to which the city occupied the site ofmodern Saft el-Henna, Phacusae should be identifiable with modernFâqûs, even though the identification cannot be archaeologicallydocumented and is based on phonetic similarity combined with the difficulty offinding a satisfactory Arabic etymology (J. de Rougé,Géographieancienne de la Basse Égypte (Paris, 1891) 131-9). If we locatePhacusae at Fâqûs, we are forced to conclude that there had been achange in the location of the metropolis of the nome. In Pharonic times andstill in the Ptolemaic period, as the Edfu temple list shows (Edfou I335), the 20th nome of Lower Egypt (I3bt, ‘theEast’), i.e. Arabia, had as its capital Pr-Spdw, located with certaintyby Naville’s 1885 excavations at Saft el-Henna, around 30 km south westof Fâqûs, in the plain between Zagazig (Bubastis) and the westernend of the Wadi Tumilat (cf. P. Montet,Géographie 206 ff.).Besides, Strabo mentions Phacusae as a κώμη [kome](17.I.26; C805), although one should perhaps not expect precise administrativeterminology from Strabo, see P. Pédech, La géographie urbainechez Strabon’, inAncient Society 2 (1971) 241. Of Pr-Spdw/Saftel-Henna we know neither the Greek nor the Latin name. The identification ofSaft el-Henna with Άραβία [Arabia] in A.Calderini,Diz. geogr. I 2.180 is the product of confusion. Cf. H. Kees,RE XIX.2 1611.53 ff.; S. Timm,Das christlich-koptische Ägyptenin arabischer Zeit ii (Weisbaden, 1984) 924.
The greater part of Trajan’s Canallay within the Arabian nome; thus it is not surprising that contracts forworking on it (4070 below) come within the competence of the strategus of thenome. 4070 indicates that the metropolis Phacusae lay close to (περί)- [peri] the canal. Modern Fâqûs lies some 30 km from where thenearest point of the canal would have been on its route north-eastwards turninginto the Adi Tumilat. We are inclined to propose that at the point where thecanal bent eastwards there was a branch which continued north-eastwards,passing Phacusae [Zagazig/Bubastis] and giving access to the north-easternDelta, and that this branch was also known as Trajan’s Canal: cf. 40708n. Bastianini and Coles (1994), pp. 145-146. Thisproposed branch of the canal would probably have followed the old Pelusaicbranch of the Nile as far Phacusae, from where it was only a short run toTanis, which may have still bordered the sea at this period.
Fromthe Pelusaic branch of the Nile it was possible to travel to Tanis by the firstleg of the ancient Butic canal which led on to Alexandria. See Uphill (1988),pp. 163-170; andibid., (2000) pp. 186-187.
“Afterthe river to Pi-Ramses silted up in the 11th century B.C. Tanisbecame a national capital, attracting merchant boats and fishermen. . . .
Memories of Ramses theGreat live on, thanks to the many megaliths he built of himself, including afew stockpiled in Tanis. . . .
In the 11thcentury B.C. the city of Tanis, on the eastern perimeter of the delta, grew upas a national capital and military stronghold. From here Egypt maintained abuffer zone against the rising powers of Assyria and Babylonia.
“It’s thehighest point in the delta,” Phillippe Brissaud, an archaeologist, saidas he pointed to a gentle slope rising over a plain scattered with brokenstatues, a decapitated obelisk, and the deserted temples of once grand Tanis.
“Look at this halfstatue of Ramses II,” my guide Yahya Emaara said as we walked down anavenue strewn with diorite and granite remnants. “Have you ever seen morebeautiful shins or kneecaps?” Aswan provided the granite for thesedimpled royal knees, via a now extinct branch of the Nile. The statue itselfwas hauled here from the former delta capital of Pi-Ramses. . . .
The walls of Tanis werealmost 50 feet thick!” Theroux (1977), pp. 14, 18, 20.
“It was,then, in 1884 that Mr. Petrie worked for the Egypt Exploration Fund on the siteof that famous city called in Egyptian Ta-an, or Tsàn; transcribed as“Tanis” by the Greeks, and rendered in Hebrew as“Zoan.” It yet preserves an echo of these ancient names as the Arabvillage of “Sàn.” This site, historically and Biblically themost interesting in Egypt, is the least known to visitors. It enjoys an evilreputation for rain, east winds, and fever; it is very difficult of access; andit is entirely without resources for the accommodation of travellers. Not manytourists care to encounter a dreary railway trip followed by eight or ten hoursin a small row-boat, with no inn and no prospect of anything but salt fish toeat at the end of the journey. The daring few take tents and provisions withthem ; and those few are mostly sportsmen, attracted less by the antiquities ofSân-el-Hagar than by the aquatic birds which frequent the adjacentlake.” Edwards (1891), pp. 50-51.
It was thus possible to sail from Daphnaein the east, right across the delta to Marea in the west, near Alexandria, viathe Butic canal:
“Thisartificial waterway had an estimated length of 180 kilometres, and startingfrom Tell Defenneh [Daphnae], connected eleven Lower Egyptian nomes on or nearits route [including Tanis]. Inscriptional evidence suggests it was created by,or else completed under King Psamtek I (664-610BCE).Among its varied uses, it could have served to transport grain and commoditiesby boat, and help irrigate lands on either side of it. In addition it couldalso have been used for moving troops as was done by the Emperor Titus. At atime of military threat by the world power Assyria, a major canal protected byand communicating with Greek and Egyptian troops at Marea in the west [nearAlexandria] and Daphnae in the east would also clearly serve as a first line ofdefence for the Saitie rulers.” Uphill (2000), p. 186.
The junction of the two canals – theone joining the Red Sea and the Nile, and the Butic canal linking up withAlexandria, meant that goods could be transported all the way from Alexandriato the Red Sea. It was likely that most of this traffic would have beenone-way, as it was, due to the prevailing winds, notoriously difficult to sailnorthwards in the upper part of the Red Sea. Significant cargoes from the Eastdestined for Alexandria were normally unloaded at one of the Red Sea ports,such as Berenice or Myos Hormos, transported overland to the Nile and thentaken via the Nile and the Butic canal to Alexandria. However, it would havebeen cheaper and easier to use the waterways for the return voyage. Quitepossibly cargoes were taken by smaller vessels from Alexandria to a port suchas Myos Hormos, and then loaded on to one of the large merchant ships that madethe long journeys to India or beyond.
This route involvedcrossing two major branches of the Nile, the ‘Sebannitus’ and the‘Canopis’ which are probably the two river crossings mentioned intheWeilue.
“... theNile divides Egypt in two from the Cataracts to the sea, running as far as thecity of Cercasorus in a single stream, but at that point separating into threebranches, whereof the one which bends eastward is called the Pelusiac mouth,and that which slants to the west, the Canobic. Meanwhile the straight courseof the stream, which comes down from the upper country and meets the apex ofthe Delta [a little above modern Bubastis], continues on, dividing the Deltadown the middle, and empties itself into the sea by a mouth, which is as celebrated,and carries as large a body of water, as most of the others, the mouth calledSebennytic. Besides these there are two other mouths which run out of theSebennytic called respectively the Saitic and the Mendesian. The Bolbitinemouth, and the Bucolic, are not natural branches, but channels made byexcavation” Herodotus, (1996 edition), pp. 123-124 (II.17).
“Twobranches of the Nile divide to the right and left, forming the boundaries ofLower Egypt: the Canopic mouth separates it from Africa, and the Pelusiac mouthseparates it from Asia, with a space of 170 miles [252 km] between thetwo.” Pliny the Elder,NH V.47-8; (1991), p. 58.
N. Kanishka’s hostage in Historyand Legend.
TheHou Hanshu says:
“DuringtheYuanchu period [114-120
“Anguohad no son. The men of his mother’s family are young and weak. I amYifu’s paternal uncle; it is I who should be king.”
The Yuezhi(Kushans) then sent soldiers to escort him back to Shule (Kashgar). The peoplehad previously respected and been fond of Chenpan. Besides, they dreaded theYuezhi (Kushans). They immediately took the seal and ribbon from Yifu and wentto Chenpan, and made him king. Yifu was given the title of Marquis of the townof Pangao [90li or 37 km from Shule].
ThenSuoju (Yarkand) continued to resist (Khotan), and put themselves under Shule(Kashgar). Thus Shule (Kashgar), because of its power, became a rival to Qiuci(Kucha) and Yutian (Khotan).” FromTWR, Section 20.
This all fits very well with story that aKushan king (according to Xuanzang, Kanishka himself) received a prince as ahostage during theYuanchuperiod (114-120CE
In addition, a story in the 8th century Khotanese Buddhist history,theLi yul lung-btsan-pa, says:
“AfterwardsKing Vijaya Kīrti, for whom a manifestation of the ĀryaMañjuśrī, the Arhat called Spyi-pri who was propagating thereligion (dharma) in Kam-śen was acting as pious friend, throughbeing inspired by faith, built thevihāra of Sru-ño.Originally, King Kanika and the king of Gu-zan and the Li [Khotan] ruler, KingVijaya Kīrti, and others led an army into India, and when they capturedthe city called So-ked, King Vijaya Kīrti obtained many relics and putthem in thestūpa of Sru-ño.” Emmerick (1967), p. 47.
The Tibetan name So-ked has beenidentified with Śāketa, and King Kanika with Kanishka. See: Thomas(1935-1963), Vol. I, (1935), p. 119, n. 2.
Thus, the Buddhist‘Prophecy of the Li Country’ which includes the legend of theKhotanese King helping Kanishka conquer Sāketa finds much support from theinformation given above. A Khotanese king called Vijaya Simha, defeats the kingof the Ga-hjag (the name of a people living in the region of Kashgar andYarkand). He was presumably the king called Guangde in the Chinese accounts whocaptured the King of Yarkand in 86CE. The kingfollowing Vijaya Simha in the Buddhist account is King Vijaya Kīrti (who, aswe have seen above, was the Khotanese king who, along with the king of Kucha,is said to have helped Kanishka in his attack on Sāketa).
TheHou Hanshu provides some dates and information which help support thistheory:
“When(the Khotanese king) Xiumoba died, Guangde, son of his elder brother, assumedpower and subsequently destroyed Suoju (Yarkand, in
TheHou Hanshu says that in 73
“Previouslythe Yuezhi (Kushans) had helped the Chinese attack Jushi (Turfan/Jimasa) andhad carried out some important services (for the Chinese). In this year (88
This quote does not give a date for whenthe Yuezhi helped the Chinese against Jushi (Turfan/ Jimasa), but we know theChinese attacked and defeated Jushi inCE 74. Chavannes(1905), p. 222, and again inCE 76 (Ibid, p. 230).Presumably, it was one of these occasions that is referred to in the text.
In 84
In 86
In 90
King Vijaya Kīrti,who is said to have assisted Kanishka in this conquest, is listed in the‘Prophecy of the Li Country’ as the king who took the throneimmediately following Vijaya Simha. I have identified King Vijaya Simha withKing Guangde who reigned until at least 86CE, according tothe Chinese accounts. This makes it quite possible that Vijaya Kīrti couldhave accompanied Kanishkacirca 127.
In addition, Kīrtiis listed in theLi yul lung-btsan-pa as being 30 generations beforeKing Vijaya Sangrāma IV, identified with King Fudu Xiong [Fu-tu Hsiung]who fled to China with his family and followers in 674
We also havearchaeological and numismatic evidence pointing to strong Kushan influence, ifnot control, of both Kashgar and Khotan during the period of 107-127
“107-127
In 107 Khotanand the other cities of Turkestan threw off the yoke of Chinese rule. There isno reference to events in Khotan during this period in the Chinese records, butarchaeological evidence suggests that for most of this period the Kushansexercised political control over the city. None of the names of the kings ofKhotan during this period are known. No coins were issued locally, but thecoins of the Kushans were current.
127-9
In 127 theChinese army led by Ban Chao’s son Ban Yong re-entered the area andKhotan placed itself under Chinese rule again. The name of the king of Khotan,Fang Qian [= Vijaya Kīrti of the “Prophecy of Khotan”], isnoted in the Chinese sources, but he is unlikely to have issued coins whileunder Chinese control.
129-132
In 129 FangQian rebelled against the Chinese and attacked a neighbouring state. Hiscoinage probably dates from this period. In 131 he attempted to re-subjecthimself to Chinese rule, but without success. In 132 he was conquered byKashgar at the request of the Chinese.
132
After 132Khotan was again under Chinese control, and no local coins have been foundwhich can be shown to have been issued after that date. ” Cribb (1985),p. 143.
Christopher Beckwith identifies the kingof Gu-zan of theLi yul lung-btsan-pa or ‘Prophecy of the LiCountry’ who went on campaign with Kanishka in the company of the king ofKucha (= Kūči, Kūčā, Kushâ, Kūsān,Kučinaṅ
“Hereagain, theYuanshi is not very detailed; at least it supplies us withseveral precise references (chap. 1, fol. 5b): “Yilaha (that is Sanggum[son of Ong Khan and contemporary of Genghis Khan]) fled to the
We have thussimultaneously a certain identification of the country of which Rashid-ud-Dinspeaks and of which Mr. Marquart has read the names Kūshān andKusaqu-Chār-Kusha. For the reasons that until now have escaped us, thecountry known today as Kucha (Kūchā, locally pronounced Kuchar), andfor which the ancient transcriptions of the Han or the Tang infer an originalform *Küchï, had been called during the Mongol period and under theMing Kǖsǟn, generally transcribed曲先 Quxian(1)..The form Kūsān (=Kǖsǟn) is also attested by theTarikh-i-Rashidi(2).It is evident that this is the کژ
(1)Cf. for example BRETSCHNEIDER,Med. Res., I, 163; II, 315, 330. And addto itYuanshi, chap. 12, fol 5a, 7a. One has
(2)Cf. ELIAS and ROSS,Tarikh-i-Rashidi, in the index,s. v. KucharandKusan.
Pelliot (1920),p. 181 and nn. 1-2.
“Tibetantroops were also frequently reported in the lands to the north and west.Tun-huang annals note that in 675 and 676 a Tibetan minister had gone to lTang-yoin Dru-gu-yul, the Western Turkish lands. These visits were apparentlyconnected to efforts by the T’ang empire to regain the Silk Route. TheT’ang annals remark in an entry of 676 that a battle was waged with theTibetan-Turkish alliance for the four garrisons along the Silk Route. Againbetween 687 and 689 the minister mGar Khri-’bring led troops to Dru-guGu-zan, which may be the Kucha region or perhaps old Ku
Exactly how far westbeyond Kucha and Khotan Tibetan troops reached is not clear, for lTang-yo andGu-zan have not been identified with certainty. It seems possible that Tibetanarmies entered Sogdia, for the Tun-huang annals note that in 694 the Tibetanminister mGar sTag-bu was captured by the Sogdians. But nothing else is knownof this event, which may have taken place in Sogdia or in one of the manySogdian merchant outposts along the Silk Route.
Sogdia lay to the westof Khotan and was inhabited by peoples who spoke an Indo-European languagerelated to Khotanese. As early as 627 the Sogdians had begun building the fourgreat cities of Lop Nor north of Tibet between Tun-huang and Khotan. Eventuallythey spread east into Ordos under the large loop of the Huang Ho east of KokoNor. Later Sogdian inscriptions, probably from the ninth century, have beenfound at Drang-tse near Pang-gong, and Sogdian texts have been found atTun-huang. But the extent of the contact between Sogdia and Tibet will requirefurther research.”AT, p. 234.
There can be no doubt that Ban Chao, andthe Chinese Emperor, were familiar with the name of the Kushan ruler at thisperiod. They had intensive diplomatic relations with him over a number ofyears, and even a request from him for marriage with a Han princess in 84
The fact that his nameis not mentioned in the Han histories may have been a deliberate omissionbecause he had insulted the Chinese Emperor by asking to marry a Chineseprincess, and afterwards attacked the Chinese when they refused. It might bedue to a simple omission by a copyist.
At this point we do notknow. Nor does it add weight either for or against any theory of dating forKanishka. It does not make it any less likely that the unnamed king wasKanishka!
The “Tachuang-yen lun ching (or –ching lun),Kalpanāla
“FormerlyI have heard that among the Chü-sha (Kushan?) race there was a king namedChen-t’an Chia-ni-cha who (once) made a punitive expedition againsteastern India (T’ien-chu). When (that country) had been pacified, hismajestic power made (the world) tremble and his success was complete, and hereturned to his native country. . . .” Zürcher (1968), p. 385.
In addition, theFufazangyin zhuan, translated into Chinese by Jijiaye and TanyaoaboutCE