The Human Journey, Volumes 1 - 2
Page 17
Hindu spiritualism, transcendent yet anchored in communities defined by birth, affinity, occupation, and association, still pervades modern India. The law of the land has long superseded the dharma of caste, but Indians still define themselves by subcaste and religious community. India is a whirlwind of separate and independent cells of activity, an explosion of differences. No Indian government has the power to unite the people more than a weekly television production of the Mahabharata or Ramayana, which can empty the streets faster than a monsoon downpour.
The classical texts still shape our lives. In fact, the classical cultures we have surveyed actually influence a larger portion of the world’s population—and far more people—than they did 2,000 years ago. Since the end of the classical age, Chinese culture spread to Korea, Japan, Vietnam, and communities throughout the world. Indian Hinduism spread across Southeast Asia; Buddhism converted millions throughout Asia. In the past 500 years, Europeans spread their culture and peoples across the Western Hemisphere and to the four corners of the planet.
Still, nothing remains the same. As the great classical traditions traveled, they took on local dress and dialects. The story of the past 2,000 years is not only the story of three or four classical traditions. It is also the story of borrowing, adapting, and blending: the story of the earth becoming one. We turn next to that chapter in our history.
Suggested Readings
Adshead, S. A. M. China in World History. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000. Sophisticated comparisons, especially of Rome and China. Difficult but very rewarding.
Basham, A. L. The Wonder That Was India. 3rd. ed. London: South Asia Books, 2000. Rich interpretive survey of Indian culture. Joy to read.
Bhagavad Gita. Translated by Barbara Stoler Miller. New York: Bantam Books, 1986. An excellent translation of the classic.
Lloyd, G. E. R. The Ambitions of Curiosity: Understanding the World in Ancient Greece and China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. Challenging comparison of philosophical assumptions of Chinese and Greco-Roman cultural traditions.
Notes
1. Bhagavad Gita, trans. Barbara Stoler Miller (New York: Bantam Books, 1986), 33-34.
2. Setaketu Jataka, no. 377, cited in Romila Thapar, From Lineage to State (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1990), 108.
3. Setaketu Jataka, no. 377, 109.
4. The Persians. This English translation, by William Cranston Lawton, of “The Battle of Sa-lamis,” is reprinted from William Hyde Appleton, ed., Greek Poets in English Verse (Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1893). Fanes are ancestral protective spirits or their temples.
5. Herodotus, The Histories, trans. Aubrey de Selincourt (Baltimore: Penguin, 1954), 448-49.
6. Herodotus, The Histories, 521.
7. “Computing” may not be an exaggeration. On a second-century BCE Greek primitive computer to predict planetary motions and phases of the moon, see John Noble Wilford, “Early Astronomical ‘Computer’ Found to Be Technically Complex,” New York Times, November 30, 2006, A7.
8. G. E. R. Lloyd, The Ambitions of Curiosity: Understanding the World in Ancient Greece and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 65-66.
9. Cic.Q.fr.1.1.2. All of Cicero’s letters are available online at http://www.perseus.tufts.edu. The December 60 BCE letter to Quintus in Asia on provincial government runs from 1.1.1-1.1.16.
10. E. Badian, Roman Imperialism in the Late Republic (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1968), 87.
11. Res Gestae 34.
12. Tacitus, Annals 13.4.
13. Juvenal, Satires 16:10.
14. Nicholas Purcell, “The Arts of Government,” in The Roman World, ed. John Boardman, Jasper Griffin, and Oswyn Murray (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988), 180-81.
15. German for “loose,” pronounced “luss” (rhymes with “bus”).
16. S. A. M. Adshead, China in World History (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 16.
17. Michael Nylan, The Five “Confucian” Classics (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2001), 32.
18. Esson M. Gale, trans., Discourses on salt and iron: A debate on state control of commerce and industry in ancient China. Taipei: Ch’engwen, 1967.
The Spread of New Ways in Eurasia
200 CE-1000 CE
Cultural Encounters and Integration
The Silk Road
The Spread of Salvation Religions
Classical Collapse and Hard Times
Population Decline
Weather or Not?
Southernization
Southern Sanctuaries
Himalayas and Horses
Iran: Between Two Worlds
Iranian Society
Iranian Religions
India and Southeast Asia
The Kushan Prelude
Monsoon Winds
Malay Sails
Tropical Crops
Wet Rice
Gupta India
Hinduism in Southeast Asia
Buddhism beyond India
Mahayana Buddhism
Buddhism in Central Asia and China
The Way of the Way
The Uses of Magic
Monks, Missionaries, and Monarchs
Pilgrims and Writings
Temple and State
Christianity beyond Palestine
Hellenization
Paul versus Peter
Healing and Miracles
Jews and Christians
Conversion of the Roman Empire
The Eastern Roman Empire and Beyond
Soldiers and Emperors
The Tribes of Europe
Orthodoxy, Heresy, and Assimilation
Christianity in Europe and China
The Rise of Islam: The Making of a World Civilization
Salvation: Endings and Beginnings
The Prophet: Trade and Religion
Islam beyond Arabia
Islamic Expansion to 750
Islamic Expansion after 750
The First World Civilization
Abbasid Baghdad
A Cultural Empire
Conclusion
Cultural Encounters
and Integration
ZHANG QIAN (pronounced “jang chee-an”) must have known it was a mission impossible. Han Emperor Wu in 139 BCE needed someone to find the nomadic Yuezhi (“you-way-juh”) and try to negotiate an alliance between them and the Chinese Han dynasty. The emperor needed an ally against an even more troublesome nomadic people, the Xiongnu (“shee-ong-new”) also called Huns, a traditional enemy. It was the old Chinese policy of pitting “barbarians against barbarians.” Everyone at the Chinese court knew it would be an extremely dangerous journey since virtually nothing was known of the lands west of the Great Wall. Consequently, none of the high-ranking officials came forward. Zhang Qian was only a low-level official, but he volunteered, and so he was chosen.
Almost as soon as he left the protection of Chinese territory, he was captured by the Xiongnu. Unaware of his assignment but treating him like a captive, the Xiongnu forced Zhang Qian to join their campaigns against the Yuezhi. Zhang remained in Xiongnu custody for 10 years, eventually taking a Xiongnu wife and raising a family. He never lost sight of his mission, however. In 129 BCE, he escaped a Xiongnu camp and found his way to the Yuezhi court in Fergana (in modern-day Uzbekistan). During the 10 years of fighting, the Yuezhi had been dispersed, their chief lay dead, and the survivors had migrated west to Bactria (near modern Afghanistan), where Zhang finally found them and the chief’s son. Zhang spent the next year trying to convince the new Yuezhi chief to join China in an alliance against the Xiongnu, but he did not succeed and began his return trip empty handed. On the way home, he was again captured by the Xiongnu and held as prisoner for another year. Finally, when the Xiongnu chief died, a civil war broke out, and Zhang Qian was able to escape with his wife and family. He returned to China 13 years after he left to a warm reception by the emperor.
The Silk Road
Wh
en Zhang Qian finally made his way back to China in 126 BCE, he had a lot of stories to tell. Emperor Wu was particularly interested in Zhang’s tales of “blood-sweating horses.” For almost 1,000 years, Chinese prosperity depended on their ability to learn from and protect themselves from sudden storms of nomadic horseback-riding archers who could blight the countryside faster than a cloud of locusts. The earliest Chinese states protected themselves with high stone walls that horses could not jump, but an effective defense required the creation of Chinese horsemen to counter the nomads, an innovation begun by the king Wuling (325–299 BCE) of the early state of Zhou, who, in the process, revolutionized Chinese fashion by having his horsemen wear nomad’s trousers instead of Chinese robes. But when Zhang Qian told Emperor Wu of the large horses of Fergana, Chinese and nomad cavalries were pretty evenly matched on what we might today call ponies. The horses of Fergana were larger than those of the sparse central Asian grasslands, which shriveled on winter pasture, because Fergana horses were raised on alfalfa that was harvested for hay in the winter. Whether or not they actually sweated blood1 to do it, Fergana horses ate year-round. Emperor Wu wanted to know how he could get his hands on such animals.
Zhang Qian had another story that suggested an answer. When he followed the Yuezhi westward from Fergana to Bactria, he met many merchants who had traveled to India and the Mediterranean. One of their most prized commodities was a silk that Bactrian merchants thought to be Indian but Zhang recognized as Chinese.2 Zhang realized that Chinese silks doubled their value in India and then doubled it again when they reached Bactria. On hearing Zhang’s account, Emperor Wu resolved to take control of the silk trade and exchange silk for horses. He sent another envoy to the Yuezhi chief, who rebuffed the offer, then sent an army that was repelled and retreated. But Wu gave orders barring his defeated army from reentering China, forcing them to fight another day. This time they defeated the Yuezhi and brought back the first 3,000 of many Fergana horses.
The Silk Road may have begun as a trade of silk for horses, as this old story suggests; but it soon included many other commodities. In addition to silk, Chinese lacquerware, bronzes, and ceramics traveled west. In addition to horses, central Asian jade, the deep blue stone lapis lazuli from Afghanistan, and Mediterranean wools and glassware traveled to China. The northerly route from China to the Mediterranean ran north of the Himalayas and south of the deserts of Mongolia. Near Bactria, a southerly route crossed the Himalayas into India, introducing scented woods, spices, and tropical products. At every stop, traders added local products like the rock crystal and peaches of Samarkand, the date palms and tapestries of Persia, and the almonds and slaves of Mongolia. Yet the importance of silk cannot be overestimated. The luster and smoothness of silk clothing was an indulgence of the rich, sometimes forbidden to others. Rolls of silk were an economic measure of value, equal to so many slaves, paid as ransom or stipulated in treaties. Silk had been prized by women in ancient Egypt as early as 1000 BCE. A thousand years later, silk gowns were favored by Cleopatra. A Roman emperor was said to wear nothing but silk clothing. Roman senators complained that their wives’ preference for silk was bankrupting both personal fortunes and the public treasury.
The heyday of the ancient Silk Road lasted as long as China was able to maintain a monopoly on silk production and keep the secret of how the cocoons of silkworms, fed on mulberry leaves, could be fashioned into precious threads. In 550 BCE, two Nestorian Christian monks traveling from China to Byzantium smuggled the eggs of silkworms in bamboo shafts and the Byzantine government began to make its own silk, as did the Persians. The northern Silk Road lost its monopoly. Water “silk roads” in the southern oceans proved cheaper and safer as new generations of nomadic peoples moved across the northern steppe.
The Spread of Salvation Religions
The routes that carried precious commodities from one side of Eurasia to the other, by land and sea, also carried new ideas. At the end of the classical age (around 200 CE), religions swept over the walls that had separated the great classical civilizations. It was as if suddenly religion replaced older systems of identity and meaning. People who had been Greeks or Indians or Romans or Chinese became Christians and Buddhists. It was not as if religion itself was entirely new. All the classical civilizations had priests, temples, and religious festivals. All worshiped the appropriate deities, paid tribute to the gods, and celebrated their feast days. Chinese sons worshipped at the altars of their fathers, Indian Brahmins supervised age-old rites, and Greek and Roman priests made offerings and interpreted oracles. But during the classical age—in fact, during most of the previous thousands of years of urban civilization—religion was a matter for the specialists, and the role of the common person was limited. Further, most people rarely took their religions beyond their own clan or town.
The new religions leapt old boundaries and entered people’s hearts. And it was not just the hearts of officials and priests that turned toward the new gods but the hearts of people who had previously given little thought to such matters—poor people, lower castes, women, and merchants. The appeal of these new religions was so powerful that the followers established new networks. Monasteries sprouted over vast areas, connecting pilgrimage routes to holy sites but paying little regard to the boundaries of territorial states.
Governments ignored these new forces at their peril. Only those that seized the initiative and supported the new religions survived. Even then, their people often thought of themselves as Christians or Buddhists rather than Romans, Greeks, Indians, or Chinese. We call these new religions “universal” and “salvation” religions. Christianity and Buddhism offered salvation to anyone who chose to participate, regardless of caste, class, birth, or background. The ministers and monastics of these new religions counseled the sick, poor, and dispossessed. They nursed the suffering, gave alms to the needy, and offered an alternative to the world of sin and illusion. The Christian heaven and the Buddhist nirvana promised a more satisfying future than an ailing world could deliver.
Classical Collapse and Hard Times
Signs of an ailing world were abundant in the centuries after 200 CE. Nomadic tribes from the grasslands of central Asia toppled both the Chinese and Western Roman empires between 200 and 500 CE. Depleted cities were looted and left for dead. Epidemic diseases took their toll on the survivors.
Population Decline . World population had grown at a healthy pace during the classical era. A world of about 50 million people in 1000 BCE doubled to 100 million by 500 BCE and then at least doubled again to 200 million or more by the year 1 CE. But by 200 CE, global population numbered only about 250 million. After the collapse of the Han dynasty in 220, Chinese population declined precipitously. By 500, when the Western Roman Empire had also been overrun by nomadic tribes, world population had fallen back to fewer than 200 million. Despite the recovery of China after 600 and the continuation of the Eastern Roman, or Byzantine, Empire at Constantinople, world population recovered very slowly. Not until the 900 or perhaps even 1000 did world population surpass the level of 200. This 700- to 800-year period was the longest era of population stagnation since before the urban revolution. Nothing like it has happened since.3
Weather or Not? Was the decline of 200–900 part of a global environmental change or merely the impact of the nomads of central Asia? We do not know. Global temperatures seem to have cooled during this period after warming during the classical age, but the data are not complete enough for a conclusion. It is interesting that some areas of the Americas experienced prosperity in this period. In fact, the centuries between 200 and 800 were the golden age of the Maya in Mexico and Guatemala, decline setting in after 800. In addition, in Mexico during this period, the Toltec city of Teotihuacan prospered, becoming one of the largest cities in the world before its collapse in 750. Even in Eurasia, some civilizations prospered during these centuries. The Eurasian population gainers between 200 and 800, in addition to northerly Korea and Japan, were mainly in the south. Iran, India, Sou
th Asia, and Southeast Asia grew in size and prosperity, leading one historian to label the period as one of “Southernization.”4
Southernization
The nineteenth and twentieth centuries have sometimes been described as an age of “westernization.” The term refers to the impact of the many peoples, ideas, and institutions that were exported from western Europe to the rest of the world in this recent “age of Western expansion.” By analogy, we might define the period between 200 and 800 as an age of “southernization” since so many new ways of doing things spread from South Asia northward to the rest of Eurasia.
Southern Sanctuaries
Why did India, South Asia, and Southeast Asia grow and prosper between 200 and 800 while northern Europe and Asia were overrun by nomadic armies of Goths and Huns? One answer may be the relatively warmer weather of South Asia, but better answers would be “the Himalayas” and “large horses.”
Himalayas and Horses . The Himalayan Mountains shielded India and Southeast Asia from the nomadic “barbarians” who traveled east and west across the grasslands. Waves of nomadic archers swept through settled cities on the swift small horses that thrived in the grasslands. Just south of the central grasslands, in Iran, marauding tribes preyed on farmers and city dwellers until these settled people learned to raise larger horses on the richer diet of the grasses and grains of the agricultural belt. These horses were descended from the large animals that had been discovered by Zhang Qian in Fergana.
Iran: Between Two Worlds
Iran was the successor of classical Persia. The change in name signifies a shift in power from the classical empire centered on the city of Fars (or Pers) in the southwest near the Persian Gulf to the postclassical empire centered on the great Iranian plateau in the northeast that stretched to Fergana and Afghanistan. This northern empire combined characteristics of the grasslands that stretched in every direction but south and the older Persian empire that faced south toward the Persian Gulf, the Mediterranean Sea, and the Indian Ocean. Iran was a land in between.