Foreign Devils on the Silk Road

by Peter Hopkirk

  The northern of these two trails struck out across the desert towards Hami, nearly three weeks distant. Then hugging the foothills of the T’ien Shan, or ‘celestial mountains’, it followed the line of oases dotted along the northern rim of the Taklamakan, passing through Turfan, Karashahr, Kucha, Aksu, Tumchuq and Kashgar. The southern route threaded its way between the northern ramparts of Tibet and the desert edge, again following the oases, including Miran, Endere, Niya, Keriya, Khotan and Yarkand. From there it turned northwards around the far end of the Taklamakan to rejoin the northern route at Kashgar. From Kashgar the Silk Road continued westwards, starting with a long and perilous ascent of the High Pamir, the ‘Roof of the World’. Here it passed out of Chinese territory into what is now Soviet Central Asia, continuing via Khokand, Samarkand, Bokhara, Merv, through Persia and Iraq, to the Mediterranean coast. From there ships carried the merchandise to Rome and Alexandria.

  Another branch left the southern route at the far end of the Taklamakan and took in Balkh, today in northern Afghanistan, rejoining the west-bound Silk Road at Merv. An important feeder road, this time to India, also left the southern route at Yarkand, climbed the hazardous Karakoram passes, the ‘Gates of India’, to the towns of Leh and Srinagar, before beginning the easy ride down to the markets of the Bombay coast. There was yet another branch at the eastern end of the trail known to the Chinese as ‘the road of the centre’. After leaving the Jade Gate, this skirted the northern shore of Hedin’s ‘wandering lake’ at Lop-nor and passed through the important oasis town of Lou-Ian before rejoining the main northern route.

  The Silk Road was entirely dependent for both its existence and survival upon the line of strategically situated oases, each no more than a few days’ march from the next, which hugged the perimeter of the Taklamakan. In turn, these depended for their survival upon the glacier-fed rivers flowing down from the vast mountain ranges which form a horse-shoe around three sides of the great desert. As the Silk Road traffic increased, these oases began to rank as important trading centres in their own right and no longer merely as staging and refuelling posts for the caravans passing through them. Over the centuries the larger and more prosperous oases gained sway over the surrounding regions and developed into independent feudal principalities or petty kingdoms.

  This made them an increasingly attractive target for Huns and others greedy for a share of the Silk Road profits. Because this trade was beginning to bring considerable wealth to Han China, a ceaseless struggle now ensued between the Chinese and those who threatened this economic artery. Periodically the Chinese would lose control of the Silk Road and it would temporarily fall into the hands of the barbarian tribes or to some independent feudal ruler. The new overlord would then demand tribute for allowing the safe-passage of goods in transit, or simply pillage the caravans, until the Chinese managed to regain control of the route by force of arms, treaty or savage reprisals. Even when the Silk Road was firmly under Chinese control, caravans rarely travelled unarmed or unescorted for there was also always the risk of being attacked by brigands (particularly Tibetans skulking in the Kun Lun) on one of the more lonely stretches of the trail. All this made the journey a costly one, ultimately encouraging the development of sea routes, but in the meantime adding greatly to the price of the goods. Nonetheless, despite these hazards and interruptions, the Silk Road continued to flourish.

  The Romans firmly believed that silk grew on trees. As Pliny wrote: ‘The Seres are famous for the wool of their forests. They remove the down from leaves with the help of water.…’ Virgil too described how the ‘Chinese comb off leaves their delicate down’. The Chinese, moreover, had no intention of dispelling such myths. Although willing enough to sell their silk, whose secret they themselves had discovered a thousand years before, they were determined to maintain their monopoly of the trade. This they managed to do for a further six centuries, until the first silkworm eggs were smuggled out of China to Byzantium, supposedly by Nestorian monks who, it is said, concealed them in a hollowed-out wooden staff.

  The first Romans to encounter this revolutionary new material were the seven legions of Marcus Licinius Crassus. It happened when they were pursuing the Parthians eastwards across the Euphrates in 53 BC. Suddenly, at Carrhae, the fleeing Parthians wheeled their horses, discharging backwards a deadly hail of arrows – the original Parthian shot. It broke the Roman formation, transfixing men two at a time and nailing the hands of others to their shields. Even so the steadfast legionaries might still have held their ground had it not been for what followed. Screeching their barbaric war-cries the Parthians suddenly unfurled great banners of silk in the blazing sunlight in the faces of their already demoralised foes. The Romans, who had never seen anything like it before, turned and fled, leaving some twenty thousand dead behind.

  The Parthians, the Romans knew, were a warlike and unsophisticated people, quite incapable of inventing or manufacturing this astonishing material which was ‘as light as a cloud’ and ‘translucent as ice’. But where had they got it from? Roman Intelligence soon found out. It had come from the ‘silk people’, a mysterious tribe living on the far side of Central Asia. For one of the Emperor Wu-ti’s early trade missions, following in the footsteps of Chang Ch’ien, had penetrated as far as Parthia where it had bartered a quantity of silk for an ostrich egg and some conjurers, both of which, according to Chinese annals, had delighted the Son of Heaven.

  In no time the Romans had managed to obtain samples of the new material, so alluring to the eye and delicate to the touch, and were eager for more. At the same time it dawned on the Parthians that there were fortunes to be made as middle-men in this new traffic. Before very long the wearing of silken garments by both sexes had become the rage in Rome – to such an extent that in AD 14, fearing that it was becoming an instrument of decadence, Tiberius banned men from wearing it. Pliny wrote disapprovingly of the new see-through garments which ‘render women naked’ and blamed Roman women for the drain on the nation’s economy that their thirst for silk imposed.

  But despite official disapproval the trade flourished, and by the year 380 a Roman historian reported that use of silk ‘once confined to the nobility, has now spread to all classes without distinction, even to the lowest’. It had become so expensive, however, that it is said to have changed hands for its exact weight in gold, although some scholars have questioned this. Anyway Rome had to pay for it in gold, and as the demand continued to grow this began to have increasingly serious consequences for the economy. Much of the profit was going into the pockets of the middle-men of the now flourishing Silk Road rather than to its weavers, the ‘Seres’, in far-off China. As early as the first century AD, some enterprising Roman merchants had tried to by-pass the avaricious Parthians by sending agents to explore new routes, and by the second century bales of silk were already beginning to reach Rome via the sea route from India, thus making considerable savings. To try to preserve their valuable monopoly, the Parthian merchants spread abroad terrifying tales of the dangers of the sea journey, and we know that at least one Chinese mission to the West was successfully deterred by these.

  But the Silk Road carried much else besides silk. The China-bound caravans were laden with gold and other valuable metals, woollen and linen textiles, ivory, coral, amber, precious stones, asbestos and glass which was not manufactured in China until the fifth century. Caravans leaving China bore furs, ceramics, iron, lacquer, cinnamon bark and rhubarb, and bronze objects such as belt buckles, weapons and mirrors. Not all these goods travelled the whole length of the Silk Road, many of the items being bartered or sold at the oases or towns on the way, where they were replaced with other goods, such as jade, on which a profit could be made further on. Indeed, few if any of the caravans ever travelled the whole way, some nine thousand miles there and back. Chinese merchants were never seen in Rome, nor Roman traders in Ch’ang-an. For a start, it would not have been in the Parthians’ interest to allow this. They had every reason for preventing the recipients of a co
mmodity which passed through their territory from discovering its original cost. Moreover, it is unlikely that any pack animal – and these included camels, horses, mules, donkeys, bullocks and (in the Pamir and Karakoram passes) yaks – could have lasted this distance. The system was for caravans to take on fresh animals at regular staging posts. Even so, thousands of beasts were lost every year on this gruelling trail.

  This great trans-Asian highway carried yet another commodity which was to prove far more significant than silk. It was to revolutionise art and thought not only in China but throughout the entire Far East. This was the gentle creed of Buddhism, which preached compassion to all living creatures, an idea born in north-east India in the sixth century BC. King Ashoka’s conversion in the third century BC had led to its adoption as the official religion of his empire which then comprised almost all of India. Buddhism first reached China, according to legend, as a result of a dream by the Han Emperor Ming-ti in the first century AD. In this he saw a golden figure floating across the room in a halo of light. Next morning he summoned his wise men and demanded an interpretation. After deliberating among themselves they decided that he must have seen the Buddha (for the new faith had already been heard of in China). An envoy was immediately dispatched to India to find out more about Buddhism and its teaching. After a long absence he returned to the Han court not only bearing sacred Buddhist texts and pictures, but also bringing with him Indian priests who had agreed to explain their religion to the Chinese emperor. Legend or not, it is certain that from about this time onwards missionaries and pilgrims began to travel between China, Central Asia and India. In addition to sacred books and texts they brought with them examples of the art of the new religion, never before seen in China, which was to astonish and delight the aesthetically conscious Chinese.

  The penetration of China by Buddhism not only gave the Chinese a new religion but, of central importance to this narrative, it gave to the world an entirely new style of art which has come to be known as Serindian. This term is coined from the two words Seres (China) and India. Logically it should have been simply a fusion of Indian Buddhist art and the art of contemporary Han China. It almost certainly would have been had it not been for the great Himalayan massif which so effectively isolated China from all direct contact with India. But faced by this impenetrable barrier, the gospel of Buddhism together with its art came to China by a roundabout route, gradually absorbing other influences on its way. Its real point of departure was not India proper but the Buddhist kingdom of Gandhara, situated in the Peshawar valley region of what is now north-western Pakistan. Here another artistic marriage had already taken place. This was between Indian Buddhist art, imported by the ruling Kushans (descendants of the Yueh-chih) in the first century AD, and Greek art, introduced to the region four hundred years earlier by Alexander the Great.

  The most revolutionary product of this Graeco-Buddhist, or Gandharan, school was the depiction of Buddha in human form, for it was the first time that artists anywhere had allowed themselves to show him thus. As a being who had ceased to exist, theologically speaking, by achieving Nirvana and thus escaping the endless cycle of rebirth, he had always been portrayed before by means of a mystical symbol such as a single footprint, a wheel, a tree, a stupa or Sanskrit characters. But the Gandharan Buddha is shown by sculptors with straight, sharply chiselled nose and brow, classical lips and wavy hair – all Hellenistic influences. Another obvious Mediterranean introduction is the diaphanous, toga-like robe he wears in place of the expected loin cloth. But his eyes are heavy-lidded and protruding, the lobes of the ears elongated, and the oval-shaped face fleshy – all characteristics of Indian iconography. The stretched ear lobes symbolise Buddha’s casting away of the heavy, jewelled and worldly earrings that he had worn as a wealthy prince before his conversion to a life of self-denial and teaching.

  The first western travellers to reach the Gandhara region from India during the nineteenth century were astonished at the sight of this art, so different from ‘the squat, contorted and grimacing forms’ of the Indian religious art they were used to. In the rush to obtain examples of it for museums and collections dreadful and irreparable damage was inflicted on temples and sites there. The climate, moreover, had expunged the wall-paintings. For this reason the genius of these Graeco-Buddhist artists is known to us almost entirely through their sculpture, cut from the grey schist of the region.

  It was this Gandharan art therefore which, instead of the original Buddhist art of India, travelled over the northern passes with the revolutionary message of Buddhism into Chinese Central Asia. From there it moved slowly eastwards along the newly founded Silk Road, following in the footsteps of missionaries, merchants and returning pilgrims, and gradually absorbing new influences, including those of China. The progress of the new religion through the oases around the Taklamakan desert resulted in a proliferation of monasteries, grottoes and stupas. These received rich patronage from the local ruling families and also from wealthy merchants anxious to invoke protection for their caravans or to give thanks for their safe return. Such gifts and donations were considered to be an act of merit which might enable the donor to escape further rebirth into this world. In many of the wall-paintings discovered in chapels and shrines along the Silk Road their donors or benefactors, both male and female, are depicted (as in Christian Renaissance works) in pious attitudes, and even by name.

  As the new faith gathered converts, pilgrims in search of its original sources, scriptures and holy sites set out westwards along the Silk Road. They crossed over the Karakoram and Pamir passes to Gandhara, by now a second Holy Land to the Buddhist faithful, and thence to India itself. Several of them left detailed descriptions of life in the by now flourishing oasis towns of the Taklamakan desert. One of the earliest of these travellers was Fa-hsien, who journeyed most of the way on foot. He left a vivid account of the Kingdom of Khotan, on the southern arm of the Silk Road, as he saw it in AD 399.

  Fa-hsien’s highly important travelogue, first translated into English in 1869, records: ‘This country is prosperous and happy; its people are well-to-do; they have all received the faith and find their amusement in religious music. The priests number several tens of thousand.’ He describes a monastery which deeply impressed him with its splendour, called the King’s New Monastery, which had taken eighty years and three reigns to build. ‘It is about two hundred and fifty feet in height, ornamentally carved and overlaid with gold and silver, suitably finished with all the seven preciosities. Behind the pagoda there is a Hall of Buddha which is most splendidly decorated. Its beams, pillars, folding doors and windows are all gilt. Besides this, there are apartments for priests, also fitly decorated beyond expression in words.’ The seven preciosities he refers to were gold, silver, lapis lazuli, crystal, ruby, emerald and coral.

  Fa-hsien, who stayed at Khotan for three months, records that there were fourteen large monasteries in the kingdom ‘without counting the smaller ones’. Before the door of every house stood a pagoda, ‘the smallest of which would be about twenty feet in height’. The inhabitants, he found, were generous and hospitable. ‘They prepare rooms for travelling priests, and place them at the disposal of priests who are their guests, together with anything else they may want.’

  He describes a Buddhist festival in which the royal court took part. ‘Beginning on the first day of the fourth moon, the main streets inside the city are swept and watered, and the side streets decorated. Over the city gate they stretch a large awning with all kinds of ornamentation, under which the king and queen and court ladies take their places.’ A procession followed, led by the priests of the monastery where the king had lodged Fa-hsien. A mile or so outside the city a float had been prepared ‘over thirty feet in height, looking like a movable Hall of Buddha, and adorned with the seven preciosities, with streaming pennants and embroidered canopies’. A figure of Buddha was placed on this ‘four-wheeled image car’, with two attendant Bodhisattvas and devas following behind. ‘These are all beautiful
ly carved in gold and silver and are suspended in the air,’ Fa-hsien notes. The ceremony proceeded, and when the images had approached to within one hundred paces of the city gate the king removed his cap of state and donned new clothes. ‘Walking barefoot and holding flowers and incense in his hands, with attendants on either side, he proceeds out of the gate,’ Fa-hsien records. ‘On meeting the images, he bows his head down to the ground, scatters the flowers and burns the incense.’ The whole ceremony was spread over fourteen days, as each of the major monasteries had its own day for the procession as well as its own Buddha-bearing float. At the end of it the king and queen returned to their palace, and Fa-hsien continued on his pilgrimage via the Kingdom of Kashgar, where the northern and southern branches of the Silk Road reunited.

  The Buddhist faith gave birth to a number of different sects or ‘schools’ in Central Asia. Two of these – the ‘Pure Land’ and Ch’an (or Zen) sects – eventually reached Japan where they still flourish today. It was ostensibly to search for the long-lost holy sites and relics of the ‘Pure Land’ sect that the Japanese Count Otani mounted his three expeditions to Chinese Central Asia. These were also to serve, some would maintain, as a cover for something altogether more secular.

  But Buddhism was not the only foreign-born religion to reach China via the Silk Road. Two others, together with their art and literature, also established themselves around the Taklamakan. These were Nestorian Christianity and Manichaeism. The Nestorians, who denied that Christ could be simultaneously human and divine, were in the year 432 outlawed in the West at the Council of Ephesus. Many adherents of this sect fled eastwards to the Sassanian empire in what is present-day Iran. From there its merchant-missionaries carried its beliefs, and also its art, into China where the first Nestorian church was consecrated at Ch’ang-an in 638. It reached there via the northern branch of the Silk Road and Nestorian communities grew up in many of the oases. Numerous Nestorian manuscripts were discovered in the early years of this century both at Turfan and also in the walled-up library at Tun-huang. Because so many Nestorians were both merchants as well as missionaries, the creed eventually took root along all the caravan trails of Chinese Central Asia, also reaching southwards into Tibet. Neither the banning of all foreign religions from China in the year 845 under the T’ang Dynasty nor the bloody conquest of Chinese Central Asia by the followers of Mohammed in the eleventh century managed to extinguish it completely. Marco Polo, the Venetian traveller, found many Nestorians at Kashgar and Khotan when he passed by there at the end of the thirteenth century.