The Silk Road: A New History (47 page)

34.
Étienne de la Vaissière, “The Triple System of Orography in Ptolemy’s Xinjiang,” in
Exegisti Monumenta: Festschrift in Honour of Nicholas Sims-Williams,
ed. Werner Sundermann, Almut Hintze, and François de Blois (Wiesbaden, Germany: Harrassowitz, 2009), 527–35.

35.
I visited the Hangzhou Silk Museum on June 12, 2006, and saw this fragment of silk from Yingyang Qingtai village in Henan province.

36.
The most thorough study of Chinese textiles in English is Joseph Needham, ed.,
Science and Civilisation in China,
vol. 5, part 9,
Textile Technology: Spinning and Reeling,
by Dieter Kuhn (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 272.

37.
Pliny the Elder,
The Natural History of Pliny,
trans. John Bostock and H. T. Riley (London: H. G. Bohn, 1855–57), 6.20 (Seres and Roman women wearing silk and opposition to various imported goods); 6.26 (export of coins to India); 11.26–27 (Coan silk). Available online at
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3atext%3a1999.02.0137

38.
I. L. Good, J. M. Kenoyer, and R. H. Meadow, “New Evidence for Early Silk in the Indus Civilization,”
Archaeometry
51, no. 3 (2009): 457–66.

39.
Irene Good, “On the Question of Silk in Pre-Han Eurasia,”
Antiquity
69 (1995): 959–68.

40.
Lothar von Falkenhausen, “Die Seiden mit Chinesischen Inschriften,” in
Die Textilien aus Palmyra: Neue und alte Funde,
ed. Andreas Schmidt-Colinet, Annemarie Stauffer, and Khaled Al-As’ad (Mainz, Germany: Philipp von Zabern, 2000); reviewed by Victor H. Mair,
Bibliotheca Orientalis
58, nos. 3–4 (2001): 467–70. On the basis of parallels with excavated Chinese textiles, von Falkenhausen dates catalog item no. 521 to between 50 and 150
CE.
Catalog item no. 521 was found in a tomb dated to 40
CE,
making it one of the earliest dated silks found in the West. Both textiles must have been made before 273, when Palmyra fell to the Sasanians. See also von Falkenhausen’s “Inconsequential Incomprehensions: Some Instances of Chinese Writing in Alien Contexts,”
Res
35 (1999): 42–69, esp. 44–52.

41.
Anna Maria Muthesius, “The Impact of the Mediterranean Silk Trade on Western Europe Before 1200 A.D.,” in
Textiles in Trade: Proceedings of the Textile Society of America Biennial Symposium, September 14–16, 1990, Washington, D.C.
(Los Angeles: Textile Society of America, 1990), 126–35, with the mention of a single Chinese textile from a reliquary in the Basilica of Saint Servatius, Maastricht, the Netherlands, 129; Xinru Liu,
Silk and Religion: An Exploration of Material Life and the Thought of People, AD 600–1200
(Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1996), 8.

42.
Pliny,
Natural History,
6.20.

43.
Trevor Murphy,
Pliny the Elder’s Natural History: The Empire in the Encyclopedia
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 96–99 (luxuries), 108–10 (Seres).

44.
Luo Feng,
Hu Han zhi jian—“Sichou zhi lu” yu Xibei lishi kaogu
[Between non-Chinese and Chinese—“The Silk Road” and the archeology and history of the Northwest] (Beijing: Wenwu Chubanshe, 2004), chart of gold coins found in China on pp. 117–20.

45.
Vimala Begley, “Arikamedu Reconsidered,”
American Journal of Archaeology
87, no. 4 (1983): 461–81, esp. n82.

46.
Raschke doubts that anyone in Rome collected this type of statistic; he believes Pliny is exaggerating on moralistic grounds (“New Studies in Roman Commerce,” 634–35): “Thus, both Roman bureaucratic practice and the surviving records from Egypt itself indicate that it would have been impossible for the Elder Pliny to obtain any accurate figures for the annual quantity of the balance of payments deficit in Rome’s trade with the East” (p. 636). See also Hsing I-tien’s review of Raschke’s book in
Hanxue Yanjiu
3, no. 1 (1985): 331–41, and of its sequel in
Hanxue Yanjiu
15, no. 1 (1997): 1–31, where Hsing expresses deep skepticism about the extent of Roman-Chinese trade.

47.
Qi Dongfang, personal communication, June 2006. One important exception has been studied by Anthony J. Barbieri-Low, “Roman Themes in a Group of Eastern Han Lacquer Vessels,”
Orientations
32, no. 5 (2001): 52–58.

48.
Wu Zhen, “‘Hu’ Non-Chinese as They Appear in the Materials from the Astana Graveyard at Turfan,”
Sino-Platonic Papers
119 (Summer 2002): 1–21.

CHAPTER 1

I have previously published two papers on Niya: “Religious Life in a Silk Road Community: Niya During the Third and Fourth Centuries,” in
Religion and Chinese Society,
ed. John Lagerwey (Hong Kong: Chinese University Press, 2004), 1:279–315; “The Place of Coins and Their Alternatives in the Silk Road Trade,” in
Sichou zhilu guguo qianbi ji silu wenhua guoji xueshu taolunhui wenji
[Collected papers from the international conference on the Silk Road: Ancient Chinese money and the culture of the Silk Road], ed. Shanghai Bowuguan (Shanghai: Shanghai Shuhua Chubanshe, 2011), 83–113.

1.
My discussion of the Stein excavation at Niya throughout this chapter draws on M. Aurel Stein,
Ancient Khotan: Detailed Report of Archaeological Explorations in Chinese Turkestan
(Oxford: Clarendon, 1907), 1:310–15; 2:316–85.

2.
Aurel Stein,
On Central-Asian Tracks: Brief Narrative of Three Expeditions in Innermost Asia and North-Western China
(London: Macmillan, 1933), 1–2; Valéria Escauriaza-Lopez, “Aurel Stein’s Methods and Aims in Archaeology on the Silk Road,” in
Sir Aurel Stein, Colleagues and Collections,
ed. Helen Wang, British Museum Research Publication 184 (London: British Museum, forthcoming).

3.
This river is also known as the Konche-daria or Qum-darya.

4.
The Sino-Japanese expedition has published two reports: the first,
Zhong Ri Ri Zhong gongtong Niya yiji xueshu diaocha baogao shu
[The report of the Sino-Japanese Japanese-Chinese joint scholarly investigation into the Niya site] (Urumqi, China: Weiwuer Zhizhiqu Wenwuju, 1996), covers the excavations of 1988–1993, while the years 1994–1997 are covered by the three volumes of second report, with the same title, published in 1999. I am grateful to Lin Meicun for carrying a set of these books to New Haven.

Earlier expeditions to the Lop Nor region include those led by the Russian Prejavalsky in 1876–77, the American geography professor from Yale Ellsworth Huntington in 1906, the Japanese Count Ōtani in 1908–11, Aurel Stein in 1914, Huang Wenbi in 1930 and 1934, the Xinjiang Archaeological Institute in 1959 and again in 1980–81, and the joint Sino-Japanese team who excavated from 1988 to 1997. For a historical survey, see Wang Binghua, “Niya kaogu bainian” [One hundred years of Niya archeology], in
Xiyu kaocha yu yanjiu xubian
[Continuation of investigations and researches about the western regions] (Urumqi, China: Xinjiang Renmin Chubanshe, 1998), 161–86.

5.
Jean Bowie Shor,
After You, Marco Polo
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1955), 172; John R. Shroder, Jr., Rebecca A. Scheppy, and Michael P. Bishop, “Denudation of Small Alpine Basins, Nanga Parbat Himalaya, Pakistan,”
Arctic, Antarctic, and Alpine Research
31, no. 2 (1999): 121–27.

6.
Jason Neelis, “
La Vieille Route
Reconsidered: Alternative Paths for Early Transmission of Buddhism Beyond the Borderlands of South Asia,”
Bulletin of the Asia Institute
16 (2002): 143–64.

7.
Antiquities of Northern Pakistan: Reports and Studies,
vol. 1,
Rock Inscriptions in the Indus Valley,
ed. Karl Jettmar (Mainz, Germany: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 1989).

8.
Richard Salomon,
Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1998), 42–56.

9.
Richard Salomon, “New Manuscript Sources for the Study of Gandhāran Buddhism,” in
Gandhāran Buddhism: Archaeology, Art, and Texts.
ed. Pia Brancaccio and Kurt Behrendt (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2006), 135–47. For more about the early history of Buddhist schools in this region, see Charles Willemen, Bart Dessein, and Collett Cox, eds.,
Sarvāstivāda Buddhist Scholasticism
(Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 1998).

10.
See charts of formulae in Neelis, “Long-Distance Trade,” 323–26.

11.
Jettmar,
Antiquities of Northern Pakistan,
1:407.

12.
Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum,
part 2,
Inscriptions of the Seleucid and Parthian Periods and of Eastern Iran and Central Asia,
vol. 3,
Sogdian,
section 2,
Sogdian and Other Iranian Inscriptions of the Upper Indus.
by Nicholas Sims-Williams (London: Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum and School of Oriental and African Studies, 1989), 23, Shatial I inscription 254, with parentheses dropped to improve clarity of reading. The original translation of Nicholas Sims-Williams has been changed to reflect Yoshida Yutaka’s emendation of the text to mention Tashkurgan. See Étienne de la Vaissière,
Sogdian Traders: A History,
trans. James Ward (Boston: Brill, 2005), 81n42.

13.
Karl Jettmar, “Hebrew Inscriptions in the Western Himalayas,” in
Orientalia: Iosephi Tucci Memoriae Dicata,
ed. G. Gnoli and L. Lanciotti, vol. 2 (Rome: Istituto Italiano per il Medio ed Estremo Oriente, 1987), 667–70, Plate 1.

14.
C. P. Skrine gives a vivid description of his own journey over the pass in 1922. See his
Chinese Central Asia
(London: Methuen, 1926), 4–6.

15.
On the basis of the Rabatak inscription in Afghanistan, Joe Cribb and Nicholas Sims-Williams proposed a new chronology for the Kushans in which Kanishka’s reign started either in 100 or 120
CE.
“A New Bactrian Inscription of Kanishka the Great,”
Silk Road Art and Archaeology
4 (1995–96): 75–142. Analyzing an astronomical manual, Harry Falk proposed the specific date of 127 as the start date for Kanishka’s reign: “The Yuga of Sphujiddhvaja and the Era of the Kuṣāṇas,”
Silk Road Art and Archaeology
7 (2001): 121–36. While Falk’s dating has not received universal acceptance, many in the field concur that Kanishka’s reign probably started between 120 and 125. Osmund Bopearachchi proposes a start date for Kushan rule circa 40
CE
in “New Numismatic Evidence on the Chronology of Late Indo-Greeks and Early Kushans,” in Shanghai Bowuguan,
Sichou zhilu guguo qianbi,
259–83.

16.
See the chart of the standard histories, their compilers, and dates of compilation or publication in Endymion Wilkinson,
Chinese History: A Manual,
rev. ed. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2000), 503–5.

17.
Lin Meicun, “Kharoṣṭhī Bibliography: The Collections from China (1897–1993),”
Central Asiatic Journal
40 (1996): 189. Prof. Lin translates the biography of Zhi Qian from the
Chu sanzang jiji
, in
Taishōshinshū Daizōkyō
(Tokyo: Taishō Shinshū Daizōkyō Kankōkai, 1962–90), text 2145, 55:97b.

18.
Erik Zürcher, “The Yüeh-chih and Kaniṣka in Chinese Sources,” in
Papers on the Date of Kaniska
, ed. A .L. Basham (Leiden: E .J. Brill, 1968), 370; Fan,
Hou Han shu
, 47:1580; Yu Taishan,
Liang Han Wei Jin Nanbei chao zhengshi Xiyu zhuan yaozhu
[Annotated selections from the treatise on the Western Regions in the official histories of the Han, Wei, Jin, and Southern and Northern dynasties] (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 2005), 281n221. Because Yu’s book provides a valuable supplement to the Zhonghua Shuju edition of the dynastic histories, the notes will often cite it as well.

19.
One group, the so-called Greater Yuezhi, moved to northwest India, the official histories in Chinese maintain, while a smaller group, the Lesser Yuezhi, settled in southern Xinjiang, near Niya. Scholars in the field are sharply divided about the reliability and accuracy of this report. As the late John Brough noted,

The story may well be based on real happenings; but there is no independent evidence to enable us to judge how much of it is factual. As in later times, there must have been numerous ethnic groups in Central Asia, many of them nomadic; and it would obviously have been difficult, even a single generation later, to obtain trustworthy information. We should at least be ready to admit that the traditional story may, to a greater or lesser extent, be a theoretical construct, designed to explain the continuing presence of Yuezhi (distinguished as ‘Lesser Yuezhi’) in regions to the east of the Pamir.

“Comments on Third-Century Shan-shan and the History of Buddhism,”
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies
28 (1965): 585.

Earlier the Japanese historian Shiratori Kurakichi had noted in his history of the Sogdians: “It has been noticed how the old Chinese authors seem to have been addicted to the practice of tracing the origin of a foreign country to something native to their own country or some name found in their own literature.” Shiratori gives several telling examples: the Chinese ascribed Chinese homelands for the Xiongnu, the Japanese, and even the people of the Great Qin, the realm on the western edge of the world, possibly corresponding to Rome. “A Study on Su-t’ê, or Sogdiana,”
Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko
2 (1928): 103.

Others, though, think the authors of the dynastic histories must have had some basis (now lost) for reaching these conclusions. François Thierry, “Yuezhi et Kouchans: Pièges et dangers des sources chinoises,” in
Afghanistan: Ancien carrefour entre l’est et l’ouest,
ed. Osmund Bopearachchi and Marie-Françoise Boussac (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2005), 421–539.