In his book "The Craddle of the East", professor Ping Ti Ho argued that China's early cultural achievements in areas such as agriculture, language and metallurgy were developed with little or no influence from other cultures. This idea has developed into the popular Chinese historical theory, "China is an island", which states that China and all of China have always been populated by East Asian ethnic types. And any historical findings that show otherwise will be dismissed as "foreign merchants", "Persian merchants" or similar transient phenomena.
The Yuezhi is interesting because they were certainly caucasian types, whose original home, where they had lived "always", was within the borders of modern China.
No one knows what happened to the Sogdians, Yuezhi and Xianbei peoples in China after the Tang Dynasty. We can only guess. I believe that they lost their ethnic and national identity and their language and were mixed with all the other Chinese - those of them, who had not been persecuted and exterminated as devils.
1. Yuezhi
Both Sima Qian's Shiji of 85 BC and Han Shu of 111 AD, the last one being a kind of continuation of the Shiji, and Hou Hanshu tell of a people whom the Chinese called Yuezhi, who lived on the steppe "between Dunhuang and the Qilian Mountains" in the modern Chinese province of Gansu.
Hanshu and Hou Hanshu are different documents. Han Shu is the oldest and covers the early Han Dynasty, 206 BC - 8 AD and was written by Ban Gu based on his father's work and was completed by his sister Ban Zhao. Hou Hanshu was written 400 years later by Fan Ye. It includes the earlier historical accounts, including Shiji and Hanshu.
Gold coin depicting the Kushan king Kanishka I. He had a deformed skull, a strong jaw, large deep-set eyes, and a royal ponytail. The Kushans were descendants of the Yuezhi. The reverse of the coin has the inscription Buddha. Photo Classical Numismatic Group, Inc Wikipedia.
The Shiji records that after a disastrous defeat by their arch-enemy, the Xiongnu, in 176 BC, the Yuezhi migrated in different directions.
The "Da Yuezhi" group, meaning "Great Yuezhi", traveled west and settled in the Sogdian cities as well as on the Oxus River and founded there the Kushan Empire, the latter mainly in modern Afghanistan.
The "Xiao Yuezhi" group, meaning "Little Yuezhi", retreated into the mountains that border the Tibetan Plateau.
In their new homeland to the west, they issued coins with portraits of their kings, which showed Indo-European types with large noses and large, deep-set eyes. Later Chinese travelers, who visited them in their new homeland described them as having reddish-white skin. From this it can be concluded that their ancestors in the area "between Dunhuang and the Qilian Mountains" must have had this as well.
Chinese archaeologists searched for objects or signs of the Yuezhi in the area defined by Sima Qian, namely southeast of Dunhuang to the Qilian Mountains, but found nothing.
The original Yuezhi area between the Tianshan Mountains and Dunhuang. This definition makes it likely that the cities of Turfan, Hami and Dunhuang were Yuezhi settlements in the distant past.
Today the area is mainly a barren desert. It was also here that the pilgrim Xuanzang nearly died on his way through the desert from Hami to Turfan in 630 AD.
It is easy to imagine that the aridity had already started in 176 BC and that it was not only the fear of the Xiongnu that motivated the Yuezhi to find other and greener pastures. Own work on Nasa photo Wikipedia.
However, inspired by a comment by a Tang Dynasty writer named Yan Shigu that "Qilian" is a Xiongnu word meaning "Heaven", archaeologists turned their attention to the area between the Tianshan Mountains and Dunhuang, Tianshan meaning "Heaven Mountains" in Chinese, and here they have had much greater success. .
These are the Chinese characters for Yuezhi. The first character means "moon". The second character means "zhi", which means something like "member of" or "follower of". In the old days, the daughters of a Chinese family were often not given a name, they were only girls, they were given a number. When a girl married into another family, such as the one called "Wang", this character was used, and the girl came to be called "Wang Zhi". If you take the characters by their meaning, the Yuezhi people worshipped the Moon. However, it is more likely that the characters were used as a kind of alphabet, so that the words for these characters sounded like the Yuezhi name, as they called themselves. Own work.
The spelling "Yuezhi" is a regular alphabetization of modern Chinese pronunciation according to the Pinyin system. With the older Wade Giles alphabetization system it would be called "Yüeh-Chih". However, if it is alphabetized according to simple European pronunciation rules with the consonants as in English and the vowels as in Italian, it would be "Jushei" or perhaps "Jüshei".
In Professor Daniel C. Waugh's "Selections from the Han Narrative Histories" he writes "Yue-te". The present author does not know why. But since we know that a prefixed "Y" in many languages corresponds to "J", this latter can also be written "Jue-te" after a simple alphabetization.
2. Yuezhi in ancient China
Archaeological findings show that already during the Shang Dynasty. 1600 - 1046 BC. emperors were buried with jade, which originated from Khotan, probably brought to China by the Yuezhi merchants.
The oldest mention of the Yuezhi is a passage in "Yi Zhou Shu" 1046 - 771 BC. in "The Lost Chapters of the Book of Zhou", which the French Jesuit and sinologist, Thierry, discovered. According to this, the Yuezhi lived on the northwestern outskirts of Zhou territory. It is said of the peoples, who brought tribute to the Zhou king: "West of these peoples are the Fanyu with their tribute, white tigers, the Yuezhi with their tribute, toutao horses."
The classical Chinese text "Shan Hai Jing", which is at least 2,200 years old, contains fabulous accounts of mythology, geography, and culture in and around China from the time before the Qin dynasty. Under the section on the Bai people in "Shan Hai Jing" is a description of "white people with long hair" beyond the northwestern border.
It has been proven that almost all jade in Shang and Zhou Dynasty China came from the Tarim Basin. All the jade pieces excavated from the Fu Hao of Shang Dynasty tomb from around 1200 BC were from Khotan. There were more than 750 pieces.
The photographs show jade from the Shang Dynasty of China in the Bronze Age - before 1000 BC. Photos Chinese Internet.
In the novel "Mu Tianzi Zhuan", which means "Mu, the Son of Heaven, Travels", written between 403 and 350 BC, King Mu meets a people called "Yuezhi" on "the Great Plain" after traveling for seven days, starting from the Yu Pass.
Thierry identified the Yu Pass with the Yanmenguan Gate of the Great Wall in Shanxi. He calculated that the "great plain" where the Yuezhi lived may have been located between the Helanshan Mountains and the Yellow River in Ningxia or in Inner Mongolia on the right bank of the Yellow River - not far from the original Qin homeland of Tianshui in southern Gansu.
"Guanzi" is a unique collection of texts on political economy and philosophy, compiled in the early Han dynasty around 200 BC. Many of the texts are believed to date from the latter part of the Warring States Period.
Several places in "Guanzi" mention the Yuezhi, who also called Niuzhi, "who lived near the jade-producing mountains".
Gold coin with the Kushan king Kujula Kadphises, who considered himself a descendant of the Yuezhi. On the reverse is the god Shiva. Photo Classical Numismatic Group Wikipedia.
It reads: "Jade comes from Yuezhi, gold from the Ru and Han rivers, and pearls from Chiye."
The Yuezhi are described as cunning creatures: "What can be carried unseen in the bosom or held unseen under the arm, and which is comparable in value to a thousand gold pieces, is a white jade bi. Once one has used a white jade bi as money, the Yuezhi who live eight thousand li from here can be brought to court."
Sima Qian tells in Shiji that the Chinese during the Qin Dynasty, 221-206 BC bought jade and horses for the military from a people they called "Wuzhi" - with pinyin alphabetization. It means something like Crow people, so it is clearly not something they called themselves. "Wuzhi" was led by a man named Luo.
"Wuzhi" is probably also an early reference to the Yuezhi as the traders who created the connection between China and the West that would later be called the Silk Road.
In all likelihood, "Yuezhi" and "Wuzhi" obtained jade in Khotan and horses from the Yuezhi themselves. They exchanged these goods for Chinese silk, which they then brought back to the west, where they sold them.
The Hou Hanshu tells us that around 0 AD the Chinese found Turfan and Hami inhabited by a people, whom the Chinese called "Jushi", which is probably a straightforward alphabetization based on English consonants and Italian vowels. In addition, a nomadic branch of the "Jushi" people lived on the steppe 200 km north of Turfan.
Yuezhi are the most famous of the Indo-European peoples, who originated within the borders of modern China. They lived between Dunhuang and the mountains to the north. The Jushi lived a little further to the northwest and were probably also a kind of Yuezhi, who had lived there "always". The Jesuit and sinologist Thierry believed that King Mu met the Yuezhi on the "great plain" of the Yellow River near the Helanshan Mountains. The original Qin people were probably an Indo-European people who lived in southern Gansu. They bred horses, as did the Yuezhi, Wuzhi and all the others. Own work on blank map from wikipedia.
The present author does not know the Chinese characters for "Jushi", but the word is very similar to Yuezhi, and they lived in the area that the Yuezhi lived in only a hundred years earlier, so it must be obvious that the Jushi were some Yuezhi, who did not participate in the migration westward.
Archaeologist Xie Yao Hua from Turfan tells of a tomb found in Turfan from around 0 AD. "The ancient tombs of the Jushi aristocrats were discovered north of the Yanaiz area in August 1994. After more than three months of archaeological excavation, 27 satellite tombs with sacrificed horses and camels were found connected to Tomb No. 2, and 26 satellite tombs connected to Tomb No. 3. After careful examination and discussion, the specialists came to the conclusion that the optimal way to protect the tombs was to cover them with concrete."
Hanshu describes the Yuezhi as typical steppe nomads: "Da Yuezhi were a nomadic horde. They moved around following their cattle and had the same customs as the Xiongnu people. As their soldiers numbered more than a hundred thousand, they were strong and despised the Xiongnu. Previously, they lived in the region between Dunhuang and Qilian."
Unlike the Xiongnu, the Yuezhi rarely engaged in war against imperial China. They preferred to become rich through trade rather than plunder. Only the Jushi of Turfan joined the Xiongnu in attacking Chinese forces during the Han dynasty's expansion into the Tarim Basin around the turn of the millennium.
3. Yuezhi and Xiongnu
The Yuezhi's archenemy was the Xiongnu people, who originally lived on the Ordos Plain.
During the Han Dynasty, perhaps around 200 BC, the king or overlord of the Xiongnu was called T'ou-man and bore the title "chanyu", "Son of Heaven, the Magnificent, born of Heaven and Earth and created by the Sun and Moon."
The Yellow River springs on the Tibetan Plateau, like several other major rivers of Central Asia. After a short course across the Hexi Corridor, it makes a major bend to the north and returns south at Xian before flowing into the Bohai or Yellow Sea. The area within this major bend is called Ordos.
Many historians believe that the Ordos Plateau was the original home of the Xiongnu, and it was quite certainly the home of T'ou-man's Xiongnu during the Han Dynasty. The southern part of Ordos is fertile loess plain while the northern part is rather dry grassland, although it was certainly greener two thousand years ago. As early as the Warring States Period, the Qin state had established irrigation along the Wei River to the south.
The Yuezhi lived between the Tianshan Mountains and Dunhuang, and the "Donghu" lived mainly in Inner Mongolia. "Dong" means east and "hu" denotes people of Caucasian type with strong beards, large noses, deep eye sockets, etc.
Photo own work on Shannon1 - Created using Natural Earth and NASA SRTM data, both public domain. Wikipedia map.
T'ou-man's eldest son, the heir apparent to his position, was named Modun, but he also had a younger son by another wife, whom he had later taken and whom he loved very much. He decided that he wanted to get rid of his eldest son, and so he sent him to the Yuezhi as a hostage. After Modun arrived in the Yuezhi, he made a surprise attack on them. The Yuezhi wanted to kill their hostage, but Modun managed to steal a good horse and escape to the Xiongnu camp.
A typical deformed skull from the Stavropol Museum in southern Russia - probably from a Goth, Hun or Alan.
The Yuezhi used skull deformation of selected male babies. It was a very common practice in Central Asia at this time and had probably been so for centuries. It was carried out by squeezing the head of the newborn male baby between two pieces of wood or tying it up tightly. The skull of a newborn is very soft and can be deformed quite easily. Huns, Savas, Alans and Goths also used skull deformation. Photo Stavropol Museum.
Some time later, Modun killed his father during a hunting trip and became Chanyu himself. He immediately had his stepmother and her son executed.
Under Chanyu Modun, the Xiongnu defeated their rivals on the eastern steppe, who were called Donghu, i.e. the "eastern Hu", which probably included the Di and Xianbei peoples in modern Inner Mongolia, who then recognized Modun as their overlord and leader.
Shiji further reports that "later Modun subdued the states of Hunyu, Quyi, Dingling, Likun, and Xinli to the north".
Modun then turned against the Yuezhi on the western plains. Sima Qin tells of the Yuezhi: "Formerly they were very powerful and despised the Hsiung-nu, but later, when Modun became the leader of the Hsiung-nu nation, he attacked and defeated the Yüeh-chih." - "The Yüeh-chih originally lived in the area between the Ch'i-lien Mountains and Tun-huang, but after they were defeated by the Hsiung-nu, they moved far west, past Ta-yüan (the Greeks of Fergana), where they attacked and conquered the people of Ta-hsia (Bactria - also a Greek area) and established their king's court on the north bank of the Kuei River (Oxus). A small number of their people, unable to travel west, sought refuge among the Ch'iang barbarians (Qiang) in the southern mountains, where they are known as Little Yüeh-chih."
4. Yuezhi's migration to the west
It is said that the Yuezhi suffered a disastrous defeat at the hands of the Xiongnu.
According to Sima Qian, perhaps around 180 BC, Shanyu sent a letter to the Han court, which reads:
"The great Shanyu, whom heaven has appointed, respectfully inquires on the health of the emperor. Previously, the emperor raised the question of a peace alliance, and I was very happy to comply with the intention expressed in his letter. However, some of the Han officials offended the Wise King of the Right Wing, and as a result, he followed the advice of Hou-i, Luhou, Nan-chih and other of his generals and - without asking my permission - began military operations against the Han officials, thus breaking the pact between the rulers of our two nations and broke the bonds of brotherhood that united us. The Emperor has twice sent letters regretting this situation, and I have in return sent an envoy with my reply, but my envoy has not been allowed to return, nor has any envoy arrived from Han. As a result, Han has broken off peaceful relations, and our two neighboring countries are no longer bound in alliance."
Statue of the Kushan king Kanisha 100-146 AD with sword and war club. It is a statue from India. Note his sturdy boots, it must have been hot in the Indian climate. Perhaps the Yuezhi were a conservative people who sticked to their original customs from their homeland. The Kushans considered themselves descendants of the Yuezhi. Photo Wikiwand.
"Because of this breach of the covenant, I have punished the Wise King of the right Wing by sending him west to seek out the Yeh-chih and attack them. With the help of Heaven, the excellence of his warriors, and the strength of his horses, he has succeeded in annihilating the Yeh-chieh and slaughtering or forcing every member of the people into submission. In addition, he has conquered the Loulan, Wusun, and Hu-chieh tribes, as well as 26 nations nearby. All the people who live by drawing the bow are now united into one family, and the entire region in the north is at peace."
Sima Qian relates that around 140 - 135 BC, the emperor's men interrogated various Xiongnu warriors, who had surrendered to the Han people, and all reported that "The Hsiung-nu had defeated the king of the Yeh-chih people and made his skull into a drinking cup. As a result, the Yeh-chih had fled and bore a constant grudge against the Hsiung-nu, although they had so far been unable to find anyone who would join them in an attack on their enemy."
It was later known that large parts of the Yuezhi had migrated westward. This is believed to have happened around 176 BC. In the account of the great traveler, Zhang Qian, in "Hanshu", it is said that after the death of the Yuezhi king, his queen led the journey westward.
We should not imagine that the entire Yuezhi people, who probably numbered several hundred thousand individuals, traveled in a long column with all their wagons, camels, and numerous horses. Then they would not have been able to find grass for their animals. They must have traveled in many groups along several different routes.
The migration of the Yuezhi. As Sima Qian says: "The Yüeh-chih originally lived in the area between the Ch'i-lien Mountains and Tun-huang, but after they were defeated by the Hsiung-nu, they moved far west, past Ta-yüan (the Greeks of Fergana), where they attacked and conquered the people of Ta-hsia (the Greeks of Bactria). He does not mention in this connection the Yuezhi's settlement on the Ili River, but it is mentioned elsewhere. Photo Wikimedia Commons.
It is easy to imagine that some Yuezhi used the pass over the Tian Shan Mountains between Kucha and Aksu, which Xuanzhang used half a millennium later. This would have brought them directly to the Ili Plain between the salt lake of Issyk Kul and Balkhash, perhaps surprising the original inhabitants. It is said that the Yuezhi drove out the Saka steppe nomads, who lived there before them. Hanshu relates: "Yeh-chih attacked the king of Sai, who moved a considerable distance south, and Yeh-chih then occupied his lands."
But just 25 years later, the Yuezhi in their new home on the Ili River were attacked by a combined force of Xiongnu and Wusun, perhaps around 133–132 BC.
But who were the Wusun?
Sima Qian relates that "The Wusun live two thousand li northeast of Ta-yüan,(Fergana) moving from place to place in the region with their herds of animals. Their customs are much like the Hsiung-nus. They have twenty or thirty thousand skilled archers and they are very brave in battle. They were originally subjects of the Hsiung-nu, but later, when they had become stronger, they refused to appear at the gatherings of the Hsiung-nu court, although they still consider themselves part of the Hsiung-nu nation."
The great traveler Zhang Qian leaves Emperor Han Wudi around 130 BC and begins his expedition to Central Asia. Wall painting in Cave 323, Mogao Caves, Tang Dynasty.
Zhang Qian was a Han Dynasty official, who traveled from China to Central Asia, thereby laying the foundation for the Silk Road, which opened China to trade and cultural exchange with the West. In 138 BC, Zhang Qian was sent out with about 100 men to contact the Yuezhi people of Bactria to form an alliance against the Xiongnu. During his journey through Xiongnu territory, he was captured and held prison for over ten years. During this period, he got a Xiongnu wife and fathered a son with her. He eventually managed to escape through the Tarim Basin with only his wife and servant and finally reached the Yuezhi, where he presented his message. However, the Yuezhi had "found a valley rich and fertile and rarely troubled by invasions" and they were not interested in war with the Xiongnu. On the journey back to China he was once again captured by the Xiongnu, but during an internal rebellion among them he managed to escape once more. Some years later he made another journey, this time to Wusun. He wrote a report on all the nations he traveled through, which is mainly found in the Shiji. He reported on the "horses that sweat blood" of Fergana, which were supposed to have been of great importance to the Han Dynasty's struggle against the Xiongnu. His return occurred only 40 years before the completion of the Shiji, and Sima Qian may well have known Zhang Qian personally. Zhang Qian is often called the founder of the Silk Road. Photo Rong Xinjiang (2013). Eighteen Lectures on Dunhuang. PHG Wikipedia.
Sima Qian lets the great traveler, Zhang Qian, tell about Wusun: "When I lived with the Hsiung-nu, I heard about the king of the Wusun people, whose name was K'un-mo. K'un-mo's father was the ruler of a small state on the western border of the Hsiung-nu territory. The Hsiung-nu attacked and killed his father, and K'un-mo, who was only an infant, was thrown into the wilderness to die. But the birds came and flew over the place where he was, with meat in their beaks, and the wolves suckled him, so that he was able to survive. When Shan-y' heard about this, he thought that K'un-mo was a god and took him to himself and made him a great general."
However, to extract the essence in this connection, "a small state on the western border of the Hsiung-nu territory", is a very imprecise location.
Russian archaeologists have shown that finds from the Wusun area around the Ili River are very similar to Xiongnu finds from Tuva. Characteristic Wusun burials have been found at Lake Zaisan in the Altai Mountains, which resemble those from the area around the Ili River. Therefore, we can believe that the Wusun were a people closely related to the Xiongnu.
Sogdiana in relation to modern political map. The archaeological sites of the Sogdian city-states are found today in Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Sogdiana was located north of Bactria and the later Kushan Empire and due west of Fergana. The cities were never united into a political unit, and this was probably their weakness, when the newly converted Muslims attacked in 712 AD. Own work.
As mentioned above, the Yuezhi were driven from the Ili Plain by the Xiongnu and Wusun in conjunction. The Wusun probably lived there for many years, but when the pilgrim Xuanzang met the Western Turks on the shores of the salt lake Issyk Kul half a millennium later, the Wusun were not mentioned at all.
The Yuezhi must have passed the Ta-yan people of the Fergana Valley on their way to Bactria, but apparently without showing any interest. when we do know about Ta-y'an, it is because the great traveler, Zhang Qian, visited the place and was given a hospitable reception by the king, who provided him with an interpreter and guide for his further journey towards the Yuezhi in Bactria, which also is called "Daxia" or "Da Xia" by the Chinese.
Group from the Kushan excavation Hadda near the Khyber Pass near Jalabad in Afghanistan. The Kushans were descendants of the Yuezhi, so the Yuezhi must have looked something like this. It also seems as if he was lucky enough to have a Chinese princess.
Zhang Qian wrote in his report that "the people of Da-yüan are settled in the country. They plow the fields and grow rice and wheat. They also make wine from grapes. The region has many fine horses that sweat blood. Their ancestors are supposed to be the Heavenly Horses. West of Ta-yüan all the rivers flow westward and flow into the Western Sea, and east of Ta-yüan all the rivers flow eastward and flow into the salt marsh." (Lop Nor)
"Hou Han Shu" tells that when the Yuezhi arrived in their new home in Bactria, they divided into five groups. The name of one of the groups was "Guisehuang." This group later gained power over the other four groups, it is said, and in the West they became known as "Kushans", establishing the famous Kushan Empire.
The panels at the south end of the Apadana Staircase in Persepolis, from about 450 BC, show 23 delegations bringing their tributes to the Persian king. They range from the Ethiopians at the bottom left to the Arabs, Thracians, Indians, Parthians, Elamites, and Medes at the top right. According to Donald N. Wilber's book "Persepolis, The Archaeology of Parsa, Seat of the Persian Kings", this panel shows the Suguda, who are the Sogdians, offering beakers, a piece of cloth, an animal skin, and a pair of rams. Photo Sogdian Tribute Bearers on the Apadana Staircase 16. Marcus Cyron, A. Davey from Portland, Oregon, Wikipedia.
According to the document "Xin Tangshu", Sogdiana was divided into at least nine clans, which lived in distinct Sogdian cities. They were: Kang (Samarkand), An (Bukhara), Cao, Shi2 (Tashkent), Mi, He, Huoxun, Wudi and Shi4 (Kesh). There are two Shi with different numbers attached to them. The numbers denote tones in the Chinese language according to the Wade-Giles alphabetization system. The name "Kang" can still be recognized in the last part of the name of the city of Samarkand.
A Sogdian king on a coin. Photo Chinese internet.
All that is said in the "Xin Tangshu" about the distant origin of the Yuezhi "between Dunhuang and the Qilian Mountains" is that the king of Samarkand was descended from the Yuezhi, and that his ancestors had lived in a city called Zhaowu north of the Qilian Mountains before they were defeated by the "Tujue"(?) and forced to migrate over the Pamirs. The other eight Sogdian clans were led by princes from Kang.
Now, it is true that the Sogdians existed before the Yuezhi came. They are mentioned in the third book of Herodotus's "Histories" from about 430 BC, as a people paying tribute to the Persian kings.
Alexander the Great married the Sogdian princess, Roxana, in 327 BC.
Sogdiana never became a unified nation, but remained a loose confederation of rival cities. They were conquered by newly converted Muslims from the Middle East in 705 AD.
With the support of the Sogdian ruler of Balkh, who had converted to Islam, the newly converted Arabs began the conquest of Sogdiana. Flexible as allways, many leading Sogdians converted - probably in the hope of gaining peace to continue their trade. But after the conquest, the Arabs issued a new law that stated that proof of circumcision and the ability to read the Quran in Arabic was required for new converts, and therefore they were no longer exempt from the tax on non-Muslims, the jizya.
The four-armed Sogdian goddess, Nana, with the sun in one hand and the moon in the other - sitting on a lion. For the Sogdians, Nana was a very important goddess. In the Scandinavian pantheon, she has a more withdrawn role as Balder's wife. Drawing from excavations in Uzbekistan.
It seemed that the Aesirs once practiced the same Aryan religion as the Sogdians. But that they have rejected it as some soft superstition. They have degraded the Sogdian Paradise to a dark and sinister underworld. Perhaps they have changed faith, forced by the harsh necessity of the times. Photo Chinese internet.
Only then did the Sogdian nobles rebel against the conquerors, but too late, the entire Sogdian nobility was exterminated.
In 1220 AC, the majority of the population was further killed by Genghis Khan's Mongol-Turkic armies.
Nevertheless, the Japanese-Chinese Silk Road Expedition in the early 1980s managed to find an old man in Tajikistan, who still spoke Sogdian.
How the newly arrived Yuezhi were integrated into the Sogdian cities, and their princes became Sogdian kings, is not known.
Bactria placed on a modern political map. Own work.
In the fifth century AD, the monk Kumarajiva translated some texts into Chinese, and in doing so he translated the name Tochar with the characters of Yuezhi.
In Justin's prologue to Pompey Trogus' book XLII it says: "Reges Tocharorum Asiani interitusque Saraucarum", "The Asians became kings of the Tochari and then destroyed the king of Saka" (Bactria). Which may mean that the Yuezhi took the Asiis as kings and then conquered Bactria from the Greeks. There they adopted Greek culture, and with a base in Bactria they created their Kushan empire in present-day Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.
This is the first time we hear of the Aesirs.
The Yuezhi - or at least the part of them who called themselves Guishuang - settled on the north bank of the Oxus River in northern Bactria in modern Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. At first they did not conquer all of Bactria.
On Zhang Qian's first journey, after many hardships, he did indeed reach the Yuezhi in their new home in the West in 128 BC. and presented his message, namely a proposal of an alliance between the emperor's China and the Yuezhi in a war against the Xiongnu. But the Yuezhi were not interested. They replied: "We have found a valley, rich and fertile and rarely bothered by invasions."
Shiji describes Zhang Qian's second journey to Wusun in 116 BC. It states: "Zhang Qian therefore sent his deputy envoys on separate missions to the states of Dayuan, Kangju, Da Yuezhi, Daxia, Anxi, Shendu, Yutian, Wumi and the neighboring states". Here a distinction is made between Da Yuezhi and Daxia (Bactria), which shows that the Yuezhi had not yet taken over all of Bactria.
Kushan prince from Kalchayan in en face and profile. Note the artificial skull deformation. Kalchayan is an archaeological site in southern Uzbekistan, known for its Kushan-period palace, terracotta sculptures and wall paintings - excavated by Galina Pugachenkova 1959-1963. Photo ALFGREN - Wikipedia.
Hanshu writes about Bactria: "Ta-hsia(Bactria) lies over two thousand li southwest of Ta-yuan (Fergana), south of the Kuei River. (Oxus) The people cultivate the land and own towns and houses. Their customs are like those of Ta-yuan. The region has no great ruler, but only a number of petty chiefs, who govern the various towns. The people are bad in the use of weapons and afraid of battle, but they are clever in trade. After Great Yüeh-chih moved westward and attacked and conquered Ta-hsia, the whole country came under their rule. The population of the country is large, numbering several million or more people. The capital is called the city of Lan-shih and has a market, where all kinds of goods are bought and sold."
The great traveler Zhang Qian reported of the Yuezhi descendants in the West: "They are skilled in trade and will haggle over a fraction of a penny. Women are held in great respect, and the men make decisions on the advice of their women."
During the first century AD, united under King Kujula Kadphises, the Yuezhi created the Kushan Empire, which stretched from northern India to parts of Central Asia. At its peak under King Kanishka, the empire included northern India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and parts of present-day Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. These were very much the former Greek areas where Alexander the Great had built cities and left Greek colonies almost 400 years earlier.
The Kushan Empire at its greatest extent under King Kanishka. Most historians believe that the empire extended eastwards to Varanasi on the middle reaches of the Ganges, and perhaps even Pataliputra. Photo Created from DEMIS Mapserver, which is public domain Koba-chan. Reference Schwartzberg Atlas p. 145 Map g - Wikipedia.
Under King Kanishka, the Yuezhi became prominent patrons of Buddhism, promoting the spread of Buddhist literature and art to Central Asia and China. The Kushan Empire adopted Hellenistic artistic styles, leading to the Greco-Buddhist art known as Gandhara, known for sculptures of Buddha and bodhisattvas.
The Kushan kings issued their own coins, often depicting the emperor alongside deities from several faiths. As seen on the coins, they used an alphabet based on the Greek alphabet to write their native Bactrian language, but added a new letter to represent the "sh" sound, for example in Kushan. Greek was their original administrative language.
Names of people and geographical places in connection with the Yuezhi migration to the West. Wusun were a short-skulled Caucasian people who lived on the Ili Plain north of the Tien Shan Mountains at the lake now known by the Turkish name Issyk Kul. Bactria was founded by Alexander the Great during his great conquest of the Persian Empire. The Chinese call it Daxia Fergana Valley was also among Alexander's conquests. Sogdiana between the rivers Jaxartes and Oxus (now called Syr Darya and Amu Darya) also called Transoxania, where some of the Da Yuezhi settled in the Sogdian cities of Sarmakand, Bukhara and several others.
The Tarim Basin with the dreaded Taklamakhan Desert is bounded to the north by the Tienshan mountains - as high as the Alps, to the south by the Kunlun Mountains, which lead up to the Tibetan Highland, to the west by the towering Pamir mountains. On the access road to the Tarim Basin from the east lies the now dried up salt marsh Lop Nor.
The city Loulan lies on the banks of Lop Nor.
In the Tarim Basin lie a number of independent kingdoms and cities. The Han Dynasty Chinese give the number as 40-50. Between Kucha and Aksu is a high pass to the north over the Tianshan Mountains. Own work.
A Tang Dynasty scholar who also commented Sima Qian's Shiji, quoting from a now lost document called "Yiwuzhi" by the 3rd century scholar Wan Zhen: "The Yuezhi are located about seven thousand li north of India. Their country is at a high altitude. The climate is arid. The region is remote. The king of the state calls himself the "Son of Heaven". There are so many riding horses in the country that the number often reaches several hundred thousand. The city plans and palaces are quite similar to those of Daqin (the Roman Empire). The people's skin is reddish white. They are skilled in archery from horseback. Local products, rare and valuable things, clothes and upholstery are very good and even India cannot compare to this."
In the 3rd century AD, the Kushan Empire disintegrated into smaller kingdoms.
5. Dunhuang
The city of Dunhuang became a Chinese city very early, when the Han Dynasty around 0 AD approached the threshold of the Tarim Basin. Before that time it was probably a Yuezhi settlement, large or small.
Dunhuang is not a standard Chinese city name, such as something with -zhou or -jing. It is a name where the elements are not recognizable from other cities.
Several of the early explorers have offered suggestions as to what they think the name means. Sir Aurel Stein thought he knew that the name meant something like "blazing beacons", i.e. burning beacons (the enemy is coming). But this does not seem likely, since a city must have a good name. What merchant would choose to settle in a city with such a name, with the prospect that barbarians would come every other year and steal his gold, burn his stock, and subject him to worse.
Map of the modern city of Dunhuang, flowed through by the Dang River. Photo China Maps.
Place names are very tenacious. Dunhuang is probably an ancient name, given to the city by those, who lived there before the present inhabitants came, as is often the case with place names.
We do not know, what language the Yuezhi spoke. It is commonly assumed that they spoke Tocharian, but there were indeed many Indo-European kingdoms that "spoke each its own barbarian language", as the Buddhist pilgrim Faxian wrote. Furthermore, there is a time gap of about five hundred years between the Yuezhi encountered by the Han Chinese and the Tocharian Buddhist documents found by Stein and Pelliot in the "Library Cave" at Magao near Dunhuang.
But because of their characteristic Caucasian appearance and the historical likelihood that the Yuezhi, along with the Tarim Basin kingdoms, descended from Indo-European mounted nomadic peoples on the Eurasian steppe, it is reasonable to assume that their language must have been an Indo-European language.
Indo-European nomads on the Pontic Steppe in southern Russia domesticated the horse and invented the casting of copper and bronze, and within a few hundred years they took possession of the practically uninhabited Eurasian steppe from west to east. With chariots, cavalry and sharp bronze weapons, they zealously defended their territories against Mongol, Tungusic and Turkic peoples, who wanted part of the cake.
But over time, thanks to the eternal battles between the many Indo-European kingdoms, royal marriages between nations and the charm of other ethnic women, Mongols, Tungusics and Turks gradually also gained access to riding horses and sharp metal weapons.
Pomponius Mela (c. 40 AD) writes about Codanus Sinus. It is quite likely that Codanus was the name of the inner Danish waters understood as a river or estuary in an original Indo-European language, just like Eridanos, Rodanos and all the other river names that can be traced back to the term "dana" for "river". The ending -us in Codanus is in all probability a gender and case ending. We recognize co- in many modern words that denote cooperation or collaboration between several agents, for example company, coordinate, corporation. Codanus may thus have meant something like "cooperating rivers", which is not a bad description of the three Danish estuaries that spew brackish water into the Western Ocean. Photo Wikimedia Commons.
With the Earth's falling temperature and the resulting drying of the steppe due to reduced monsoon rains, many of the Indo-European steppe nomads chose to migrate towards Western Europe, the Balkans, China, Iran, India, etc. over time, which gave more room for the newcomers.
Therefore, we must assume that as far as the Eurasian steppe is concerned - the further back in time the more Indo-European the language and civilization must have been.
Danu is an ancient Indo-European word for river. We find it in the European river names Danube, Dnieper, (which was originally called Danapris, Danastro or Danaper), Dniester, (Danastius, Danaprum or Danaster), Don (Tanais), Rhone (Rodanus), Po (Eridanos), in the Roman geographers' name for the Danish waters, Codanus, and Homer's designation for the Greeks, whom he called Dana'ans.
Therefore, one can think that the first part of the city name Dunhuang is Dun- Don- or Dan-, which represents river. And in contrast to the surrounding rather dry desert, Dunhuang is really also today flowed through by the Dang River, which was probably called Dan, Dun or something similar in the distant future, which receive its water from the mountains. Two thousand years ago the area must have been much more water-rich than today.
The city of Dunhuang is located in the northern part of Gansu province.
The last part of the city name is -huang, which is alphabetized with the pinyin system. After a more unformal alphabetization, with the consonants as in English and the vowels as in Italian, it will be something like "hwang", which is, as I said, an unusual ending for a Chinese city name.
This ending can be found by the present writer only in two other places.
"Hansu" mentions "Danhuan", as an insignificant place on the route north of the Tienshan Mountains. The place is described with different characters than Dunhuang and it is alphabetized without the final "g", but we should not be fooled by that.
Archaeologists Mallory and Mair believe that the place was located near Ürümchi. They write: "Along the routes of Eurasia, there are many other place names recorded in various Chinese forms, which are actually variations of Tuharan (Tokharian). A small settlement of supposedly 27 households named Danhuan, according to Hanshu, probably not far from the Qilian Mountains (Tianshan Mountains)".
That sounds extremely modest with 27 households for an entire kingdom. But as discussed in the previous section, we should not take Hanshu's quantity statements at face value. The present writer has a reasonable suspicion that the Han dynasty Chinese had a very poor relationship with numbers and quantities.
Greece is geographically similar to Denmark, consisting of a peninsula and countless islands, between which flow streams of brackish water from the many rivers that flow into the Black Sea. That is why Homer called the Greeks Danaans or Danai. When the Greeks had left the walls of Troy and left behind their Trojan horse, the priest Laocoon said: "I fear the Danaans, even those who bring gifts." Photo Wikimedia Commons.
Another place name or folk name with the ending "-huang" is "Guishuang", which is the name one of the five Yuezhi clans called themselves, when they settled in northern Bactria after their long journey. Some believe that the name "Guishuang" is the origin of the term "Kushan".
"Hwang" is reminiscent of the Old Danish "vang", which denotes a cultivated piece of land, or a meadow used for grazing. It is found in Danish place names such as Søvang (Lake Vang) and Vestervang (Western Vang). The present writer does not know, whether it also exists in other old Indo-European languages.
6. Xiao Yuezhi, Tuyuhun and Aza at Koko Nor
When the Yuezhi were defeated by the Xiongnu king Modun, the majority of them traveled west. The Chinese called them "Da Yuezhi" - which means "Great Yuezhi". However, a smaller group chose to stay close to their old land and retreated to the Nanshan Mountains - also called the Qilian Mountains - at the salt lake Koko Nor. The Chinese called them "Xiao Yuezhi" - which means "Little Yuezhi".
The modern Chinese province of Qinghai with the lake with the ancient name Koko Nor. Today, the Chinese government has chosen to downgrade the history and call it the prosaic name Qinghai Lake. The provinces of Qinghai, Tibet and parts of Sichuan and Xinjiang make up the Tibetan Plateau. The Qilian Mountains border the plateau to the northwest. On the plateau behind these mountains lies the city of Xining not far from Koko Nor. Photo Chinese Internet.
The Greek geographer Ptolemy, who lived in Egypt, knew of a country called "Tha-gouroi", which was located in the Nanshan Mountains at Koko Nor. Ptolemy lived from 90 to 168 AD and the Xianbei tribe Tuyuhun first established their kingdom at Koko Nor in 329 AD. Therefore, we can believe that this "Tha-gouroi" may have been a Xiao Yuezhi territory.
The Roman historian Pliny knew that a people called "Tagorae" had crossed the Tanais (Jaxartes) River from east to west together with "other Scythians" (Pliny VI, 22)
The Australian sinologist John E. Hill believes that the Greek "Tha-gouroi" describes a Chinese word, "Ta'guo", which has been "hellenized". The modern pronunciation of "guo" is clearly evident from the modern name for China, alphabetized with the Pinyin system, "Zhong Guo", where "Guo", alternatively alphabetized with consonants as in English and vowels as in Italian, becomes "Gjaar"
It is well seen that the word contains a -"guo" or "-gjaar". However, it is not necessary to take the detour via Chinese, because it is an Indo-European name, which it was quite natural for the Xiao Yuezhi to call their homeland. Chinese is not an Indo-European language, although many words can be identified in the language that are due to Indo-European influence far back in history.
"Guo" or "Gjaar" correspond etymologically to Old English "geard", Old Saxon "gard", Old Icelandic "gardhr", Gothic "gards", Old Slavic "gradu", English "garden, Danish "gård" and Welsh "garth".
Tha-gouroi written in Greek letters. Photo unknown origin.
Sinologist Rafe de Crespigny writes about the Xiao Yuezhi that "At the end of the Han Dynasty period, they could apparently muster about nine thousand armed men in the area, their main centers being the Xining Valley and the Lianju Area" and further "and in Wuwei, with a few groups in northern Zhangye". Lianju, Wuwei and Zhangye are areas in northern Gansu.
Another sinologist, Beckwith, confirms that the Xiao Yuezhi were based at Koko Nor. He mentions that the Han Dynasty sent an expedition against the area in 217 AD. to defeat the part of the Xiao Yuezhi who were there: "Hsia-hou's lieutenant, Chang Ho, crossed the Huang-ho (a river in Gansu) and reached the Little Huang-chung's territory east of Koko Nor, the home of the Yüeh-chih tribe who had been leading the rebellion."
Satellite photo of the Tibetan Plateau with Koko Nor, Qaidam Basin, Tarim Basin and the Himalaya, Pamir, Tienshan, Kunlun and Nanshan mountain ranges, the latter being the mountains to the east and north of Koko Nor around the city of Xining, which is near Koko Nor. Nanshan is the modern prosaic name, meaning the Southern Mountains, formerly they were called the Qilian Mountains. Photo Own work on NASA photo wikipedia.
However, it is also known that in 329 AD the Tuyuhun Xianbei people established a kingdom centered around the salt lake Koko Nor and in the Qaidam depression in the northeastern part of the modern Chinese province of Qinghai.
What became of the Xiao Yuezhi people, and how the land was taken over by the Tuyuhun, I do not know.
Perhaps they had already left the high plains and sought new land to the west, as many other peoples during the Migration Period did. Perhaps the Xiao Yuezhi were displaced by the invading enemies, or they found some form of coexistence with the Tuyuhun. Perhaps they were integrated into the Tuyuhun; no one knows.
The Tibetan Highlands in Qinghai. Cold and treeless, it reminds me of Iceland. Photo Chinese internet.
In appearance, the Tuyuhun and the Yuezhi were probably not very different. The appearance of the Xianbei tribes was commented on by the scholar Yan Shigu, who served at the court of the first Tang ruler, Li Shimi. He wrote in a commentary in Sima Qian's historical work Shi Ji: "Nowadays, these "Hu" people have green eyes, red beards, their appearance is like bearded monkeys, and they are originally of this kind." Since the Xianbei in Yan Shigu's time were the dominant steppe barbarians, it must have been them, he was talking about.
We can say very little about the language of the Tuyuhun, but unfortunately nothing about the Xiao Yuezhis, except that we believe they were a kind of Tocharian.
Ancient burial mounds in the Qaidam depression in Qinghai. Photo Chinese internet.
A branch of the Silk Road passed through the Qaidam Basin, and this seems to have made the Tuyuhun people quite wealthy. Persian and Eastern Roman coins and hundreds of silk remnants have been found.
Around Koko Nor and in the Qaidam Basin in northeastern Qinghai, hundreds of traces of ancient burial mounds have been found, which are believed to be of Tuyuhun origin.
Sinologist John E. Hill believes that the Tuyuhun were identical with the Zilu tribe - who are mentioned in the document, Weilu. He writes: "They gradually grew into a powerful state centered around Koko Nor. They were later known to the Chinese as Tuyuhun, and to the Tibetans as "A-zha". After many years of war they were finally defeated by the Tibetans in 663 AD and never regained their independence. Some of them fled to the Chinese, others remained and were gradually absorbed among the Tibetans."
This is partly confirmed by Alex Mcay in his book "The History of Tibet" (page 46) where he writes that it was the royal family who called themselves "A-cha'i", (found in Tibetan literature as "A-sha") while the people were called "T'u-Yu-Hun", Tibetan "Thogon" or "Tho-Yu-Gon".
Stone lion near Dulan in Qinghai, probably made by the Tuyuhun people. Photo Chinese internet.
Some of the old documents that Stein and Pelliot brought back from Dunhuang tell of a "Aza" people who were still around Koko Nor around 800 to 900 AD. They made raids into the Chinese Dunhuang area, where they abducted children and young people as slaves. In modern Tibetan, slave is called "tralpas", which is a bit like the Scandinavian "træl".
The Chinese nationwide CCTV 1 in cooperation with Japanese TV showed a series of broadcasts about the Silk Road a few years ago. Among them was a broadcast about Qinghai, the northern part of the Tibetan Plateau, where Xiao Yuezhi, Tuyuhun and Aza once lived.
The broadcast showed Qinghai as a plateau at an altitude of around 3000 m. Today the landscape is somewhat reminiscent of Iceland, as far as I could see. Completely barren, quite cold, even in summer it can snow.
On the plain are a number of burial mounds, all of which were opened and everything was removed. Large quantities of wood had been used to construct these mounds. They are built up in layers of logs and soil.
Cypress logs used in Tuyuhun burial mound. Photo Chinese internet.
So, large parts of this part of Qinghai have apparently been covered by cypress forests in the past. It can be shown that for the older tombs, thicker logs were used than for the younger tombs. This suggests that larger trees were becoming increasingly difficult to find. This is consistent with the fact that cypresses grow extremely slowly. Today, the area is completely treeless.
Some Tuyuhun tombs from the Tang Dynasty are very similar to tombs on the northern plains of China.
Tomb from the Tang Dynasty in the Qaidam depression on the Tibetan plateau. Photo Chinese Internet.
Despite the fact that the tombs have been looted, some items have been found in Qinghai.
The most interesting are some silk carpets made with the same technique used in the West and the Middle East. The reconstructed silk carpet motifs showed an apparently dark-haired people with European appearance, large noses, deep set eyes, etc. The motifs on the carpets show people, who live an active and cheerful life, they go hunting, drink and have some good dinners. In one place, someone is shown vomiting as if he has had too much to eat and drink. Many other finds indicate that they had good connections with the West and the Greeks in Fergana and Bactria.
7. Sogdians in China
When the Da Yuezhi migrated to Sogdiana and Bactria, and the Xiao Yuezhi retreated to the Tibetan highlands. As we have discussed, many Sogdian cities adopted Yuezhi nobles as kings, perhaps hoping that they had good connections among their compatriots in China that could be exploited for trade. Some Yuezhi lived in the Chinese communities and made a living from trade, as they had always done.
The east waal of the Sogdian Wirkak'sand his wife Wiyusi's sarcophagus in Xian from 580 AD. His Chinese name was Shi Jun. The tomb is a sarcophagus shaped like a house, richly decorated on all sides with carved reliefs. Foto kinesisk internet.
The French historian Etienne de la Vaissiere records that as early as 227 AD, when a conquering army approached the city of Liangzhou in Gansu "the various kings of Liangzhou sent twenty men, including Zhi Fu and Kang Zhi, the noble leaders of the Yuezhi and Kangju-Hu, to receive the military commander, and when the great army advanced northward, they competed to be the first to receive us". This is according to the document "Sanguo zhi". Kangju-Hu was from the Sogdian city of Kangju.
La Vaissiere believes that the fifth and sixth centuries were a heyday of Sogdian migration into China. Many Sui and Tang texts and epitaphs of Sogdian families describe how their great-grandfathers came to China under Wei as caravan leaders. These families first established themselves in Gansu, the next generation moved to the major Chinese cities, and some Sogdians managed to reach the court. For example, An Tugen's biography in "Bei shi" describes how An Tugen's great-grandfather came to China from Anxi in western Sogdiana and established himself in Jiuquan in western Gansu. In the mid-sixth century, An Tugen was promoted to minister of Northern Qi.
Sogdian musicians and servants depicted as stone reliefs on two sides of the Sogdian Wirkak's sacofag in Xian. Photo Gary Todd Wikipedia.
La Vaissiere further describes how another Sogdian family is integrated into Chinese society but still retains Sogdian ties and marries other Sogdians.
According to the name Shi, the family originates from the Sogdian city of Kesh, and the texts on the tombs actually describe how the family migrated from the Western countries. The great-grandfather, Miaoni, and the grandfather, Boboni, "served their country in the capacity of sabao", who are caravan leaders. The father, Renchou, "wasted his life without accomplishing anything in his official career." A member of the fourth generation, Shi Shewu, was the great man of the family, and through him the family was integrated into Chinese society. He was a military officer of the Sui, and his tomb and epitaph are Chinese. His eldest son, Shi Hedan, was an interpreter in the Tang imperial secretariat. Another son, Shi Daoluo, was a soldier. A grandson, Shi Tiebang, was in charge of a horse breeding farm belonging to the army near Guyuan. Shi Daode from another branch of the Shi clan, and his uncle, Shi Suoyan, who is buried in the same cemetery, were also members of the military and civil service. After Many generations in China, some of the family members still married into the Sogdian milieu, among them Shi Hedan, great-great-grandson of Shi Miaoni, who married a Kang, who according to the name came from Smarkand, and Shi Suoyan, who married an An from Bukhara.
Drawing of the øeast wallæggen on the sarcophagus of the Sogdian Wirkak and his wife Wiyusi in Xian. Wirkak died at an advanced age, after a long life filled with peaceful deeds, trade trips and important negotiations. On his sarcophagus there is no hint of battle or strife. And that is why they came to Paradise, one can assume.
Wirkak and his wife Wiyusi are on their way over the Cinvat Bridge to the Sogdian Paradise. Top right you see them feasting in Paradise, above them the Sogdian God Wesparkar is seen greeting the dead.
Top left the sun god Mithra floats over the world together with some "apsaras", which are a kind of angels, and winged horses. A sinner seemed to have been rejected on the bridge and is in free fall towards the water.
Under the bridge, monsters lurk for the sinners who will be rejected by the bridge's guardians. On the bridge, the dead are believed to meet a young, fair woman who will be the personification of their life's deeds.
The motif is reminiscent of the Scandinavian god Hermod's passage over the Gjallar Bridge on his way to the underworld to retrieve Balder from the realm of the dead. After Balder's death, Hermod undertook to ride to the realm of the dead, "Hel", in order to ensure that Balder could return to the world of the living. Hermod came to the Gjallar Bridge, which the dead must pass to reach the underworld of the dead. Here he was called upon by the virgin Modgun, who guards the bridge. Hermod negotiated that if everyone and everything in the whole world would weep over Balder's death, he would be released from the underworld. Photo Chinese Internet.
Several Sogdians in China appear to have been very wealthy.
In 2000, the richly decorated tomb of An Qie was discovered in a southern suburb of Taiyuan, Shanxi. Yu Hong's tomb contained a burial bed shaped like a Chinese house, adorned with 53 carved marble panels, originally painted and gilded. Yu Hong died in 593 AC at the age of 58.
Sogdian Yu Hong and his wife's tomb in Shanxi Muaeum. So far, nine Sogdian tombs have been found in China, each more magnificently decorated than the last. Photo 123_456 Wikipedia.
The Sogdians in China met their end in the middle of the Tang Dynasty during the so-called An Lushan Revolution, which took place from 755 to 763 AD. Since then there is no information about Sogdians in China.
An Lushan was the most important military governor in northeastern China on the border with Korea and Qi Dan. His father was a Sogdian, and his mother was Turkish. Some sources say that he was adopted by these parents.
The first part of his name indicates that the family came from Bukhara and the second part is a direct translation into Chinese of the Sogdian name Rokhshan, meaning "shining", which was the same name as Roxane, the wife of Alexander the Great, had. He settled as a young boy in northeastern China, worked as an interpreter in the markets, became a soldier, and advanced from a private to the top of the army hierarchy.
The situation came to a head in the spring of 755 AD. An Lushan submitted a petition to Emperor Xuanzong to replace 32 Han generals under his command with non-Han generals, which the emperor accepted despite the protests of Chancellor Yang, but which he subsequently delayed.
A Sogdian god performs the cosmic dance on the coffin in the tomb of Wirkak in Xian. The dancing god's four arms radiate from his head, and seem to form a swastika-like figure, as we know it from history. The little man at the bottom seems to be holding the god up. Photo Chinese Internet.
Chancellor Yang then secretly arrested some of An Lushan's men and executed those, who included one of his most close friends. This caused considerable concern to An Lushan, who then refused to attend the funeral of an imperial prince in the summer of 755 AD and did not offer to send horses to Chang'an that fall, as was customary.
In the winter of 755 AD, An Lushan advanced on the capital Chang'an, claiming to have received a secret message from Emperor Xuanzong to advance into the capital and remove Chancellor Yang.
However, the emperor mobilized troops to defeat An Lushan. He had An Lushan's adult sons and executed and forced his wives to commit suicide.
An Lushan then captured Chang'an and proclaimed himself emperor of the new Yan dynasty. Ultimately, the emperor had to flee to the distant province of Shu, which was modern-day Sichuan
The Tang court portrayed the war as a conflict between rebellious Hu barbarians and the real Chinese represented by the Tang dynasty
The term "hu" was a general term for all ethnic types with large noses, large deep-set eyes, and strong beards.
Etienne de la Vaissiere believes that the Tang court's view was not entirely unjustified. Many texts describe the civil war as a Sogdian rebellion and list how Sogdian traders supported An Lushan. Moreover, he writes, some new discoveries suggest that this idea was something that the rebels themselves claimed:
Vaissiere says that Shi Seming, An Lushan's second successor, himself a Sogdian, put the Sogdian royal title Zhaowu, which means jewel translated from the Sogdian Jamuk, on a par with Huangdi on his newly discovered ceremonial jades. The rebel troops were named by the Chinese word Zhejie, a reasonable translation of the Sogdian Chakar, which means "professional soldier".
A figurine found in India, believed to represent the Yuezhi. They are well dressed for Indian conditions. Perhaps they were a conservative people - who sticked on to their old customs. Photo Wikimedia Commons.
One might object to this by saying that new rulers always change their titles, coats of arms, etc. to signal that something completely new and better is coming. Furthermore, Shi Seming used Chinese words that one can only suspect to be translated from Sogdian. Furthermore, Sogdian was the lingua franca of the time, as English is today.
In 760 AD, the former rebel general Gao Juren, now on the emperor's side, ordered a mass killing of all Sogdians in Fanyang, which is modern-day Beijing.
The Sogdians were identified by their large noses. However, Gao Juren's soldiers did not know the finer nuances between Sogdians, Yuezhi, Xiongnu and other Caucasian types. The Sogdians were often wealthy, and it is said that Gao Juren collected their silver and gold, which he presented to the emperor to obtain forgiveness for his former association with An Lushan.
The emperor apparently accepted his gift, and thus the stage was set for the battle against the devils.
8. Fragments of the classic novel - Three Kingdoms
There is no information in historical documents about Sogdians or Yuezhi in China after the so-called An Lushan Revolution.
First volume of the classic novel - Three Kingdoms. Photo Chinese Internet.
It was not until the Ming Dynasty around the 1500 hundred AC that accounts of people other than the Han Chinese appeared. The classic Chinese novel "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", a historical novel attributed to Luo Guanzhong, tells of devils and robbers in the western mountains and high plains.
The novel takes place in the turbulent years towards the end of the Han Dynasty during the Three Kingdoms period of Chinese history, which began in 184 AD and ended with the unification of China under the Western Jin Dynasty in 280 AD. The novel is primarily based on the document "Records of the Three Kingdoms", written by Chen Shou in the 3rd century AD.
"Romance of the Three Kingdoms" is no easy feat, the English edition is 2,172 pages long. But it is world literature, captivating and exciting. The challenge for a Westerner is to keep track of the Chinese names, which for us do not offer many points of reference for memory.
The classical Chinese novels probably have the same truth value as the Icelandic sagas. Personal descriptions and information about the deeds of individual people are definitely fiction, while the descriptions of the underlying environment and society are probably taken from the reality of the time.
The detailed information from the underlying environment is the "infinitely small" that is supposed to make us believe that the plot itself and the main characters are also true.
It should be noted that historical Chinese writers were not very analytical about other ethnic peoples who lived near China.
Qiang defensive towers in Danba, Sichuan. Photo Chinese internet.
During the Ming Dynasty, when the novel was written, the people of the western region were mostly referred to as Qiang.
The classic novel provides a very detailed description of the strategy and tactics of the political intrigues and warfare in China during the historical period of the same name, as imagined during the Ming Dynasty.
As mentioned, the novel is a long epic work, reminiscent of the Icelandic sagas, but the present writer has come to recognize a fundamental difference in the basic mood.
The Icelandic sagas describe the inevitable course of fate, there is nothing that the individual can do to change his fate. He can only seek to create a good reputation and a good legacy. Before a battle, the Norns have already decided, who will fall, and who will live. No one can escape their fate. The only thing that an individual can do is to fight bravely.
But in "Romance of the Three Kingdoms", individuals can greatly influence their fate. Basically, it describes a game with three agents, and as we know in game theory, there is no predetermined outcome. An agent acts out and does this and that, the other agents respond with an appropriate counterplay, the first agent responds to the other agents' counterplay, and so on.
"Romance of the Three Kingdoms" was Mao Zedong's favorite reading. Here he received a lot of inspiration for how to overcome his enemies with cunning plans. It was usually something like: "Let the hand of one enemy strike the hand of the other enemy"
A novel is not, by its very nature, a scholarly ethnographic treatise, but it still gives an indication of who lived in the western mountains during the Ming Dynasty.
King Cheliji of Western Qiang and his minister, Ya Dan, had been persuaded by the King of Wei to join the war in China. The King sent thousands of Qiang warriors under the command of General Yu Eji against the Kingdom of Shu. They were armed with bows and arrows, crossbows, spears and swords, iron scepters with spikes, and flying hammers.
"Flying hammers" were intended to be thrown into the face of an unprepared enemy at close range.
The Qiang had chariots covered with iron plates, pulled by camels or mules. When they camped for the night, the armored chariots were driven together in a ring and chained together.
At first, the Shu troops were defeated: "Suddenly the Qiang ranks opened, and their iron chariots came rushing like a tide, and their crossbowmen filled the air with bolts." Their leader stepped forward armed with a steel hammer and shouted: "I am Marshal Yu Eji, advance no further, little general." (page 1669).
"The Qiang rely on raw strength and courage alone. What do they care about intelligent tactics?", said one of the Shu generals.
Ultimately, the civilized Chinese defeated the natives with a cunning plan.
A Qiang king, Ma Teng, was the son of a Qiang father and a Chinese mother. He was "8 spans tall with a heroic physique and striking features." (A "span" is a little less than ten inches, which is about 0.24 m, and thus the king was close to 1.9 m. tall) (page 998 and page 545).
Ma Teng was ambushed and killed by the King of Wei.
Xu Chu fights Ma Chao. Painting in the long corridor of the Summer Palace in Beijing. Photo Chinese internet.
His son Ma Chao attacked the kingdom of Wei to avenge his father. The king of Wei described Ma Chao as follows: "He was fair and white, as if he had been dipped in powder, lips as red as if they had been dipped in vermillion, broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted, with a powerful voice and a muscular physique, clad in white mail and helmet." (page 1001). Ma Chao wore a lion emblem on his helmet. (page 1173)
In the notes to the "Three Kingdoms" one can read that the Qiang had a religious relationship with white horses, which they sacrificed to their god. (note pages 547,551)
This suggests that their god may have been the "Great White King" - the God of the West.
9. Fragments of the classic novel Journey to the West
Brother Monkey in battle against one of the red-headed devils of the West. A theme from the classic novel Journey to the West. Photo Chinese internet.
Another classic novel is "Journey to the West".
It was created by generations of Chinese storytellers, but collected and told by Wu Cheng'en in the 1500-hundreds during the Ming Dynasty. It is no lightweight either. The English version is 2,317 pages.
The story is inspired by the Buddhist monk Xuanzang's journey to India in 630 AD to retrieve sacred Buddhist scriptures. However, it has very little to do with Xuanzang's actual journey. The novel is a fairy tale, or should we say a collection of fantastic fairy tales, which nevertheless gives an idea of the kind of people that the Chinese of the Ming dynasty thought one could expect to meet in the western mountains.
Xuanzang has lived a virtuous life for several generations, he is supremely good and completely unworldly and therefore constantly gets into trouble. One monster after another wants to catch him and eat him, because if they consume his noble flesh, they will have eternal life.
A Taoist devil recognition tablet from Aba county in Sichuan. The battle against devils is an old and pervasive theme in Chinese culture, and it cannot have been plucked completely out of thin air.
The tablet shows a typical devil surrounded by his junior devils. Devils are most often characterized by having hair, red as flames, large eyes, a nose like a heaving trough, and body hair.
The eternal fight against devils is a fixed part of Chinese culture, and we can believe that it has been so since the Tang dynasty. They are probably called foreign devils because they resemble the more domestic devils they already have.
Note the head with yellow hair just above the devilish main figure. Also note the small devils at the bottom right that have brown hair.
The Taiping rebels believed that the foreign devils that came from the sea were the same as the domestic devils that they already had on earth. In their prayers they said: "Those, who travel to heaven by the eastern road, like Hong in his dream, they see God in his majesty, still wearing a black dragon cloak, a broad-brimmed hat, and with golden hair, just as Hong also saw him. They see the leader of the devilish demons, with a square head and red eyes, and learn that he is truly the same as the devilish demon in the eastern sea and the devil king on earth, whom they call Yan Luo." Hong Xiuquan was the Chinese son of God, leader of the Taiping Rebellion. Photo Blue Sky Aviation.
However, Xuanzang is accompanied by his more down-to-earth and energetic disciples, who each time save him from being eaten. The various episodes on the road to the west are entirely fictional and have no direct historical relevance. The disciples are Brother Monkey, Brother Pig, and Brother Sand.
As Xuanzang and his disciples travel along the Qilian Mountains, they are stopped by robbers. A poem describes, what the robbers look like:
"The pale face of one and the prominent eyebrows
were worse than the eyes of an evil god
The protruding eyes of the others were like the stars of death
The red hair at their temples seemed in flames
Their brownish (body) hair was sharp as needles
etc". (page 1277)
This must be the professional storytellers' dramatized version of the contemporary perception of what kind of robbers, one could expect to encounter in the Western Mountains during the Ming Dynasty.
