The Silk Road: A New History

by Valerie Hansen

  49. Hu Pingsheng, Hu Pingsheng jiandu wenwu lunji [Collected essays on letters and artifacts by Hu Pingsheng] (Taibei: Lantai Chubanshe, 2000), 190–92.

  50. Hou Can and Yang Daixin, Loulan Hanwen jianzhi wenshu jicheng [Collected cut paper and documents in Chinese from Loulan] (Chengdu, China: Tiandi Chubanshe, 1999).

  51. Itō Toshio, “Gi-Shinki Rōran tonju ni okeru kōeki katsudōo megutte” [A look at trading activities occurring in the military colony at Loulan during the Wei and Jin periods], in Oda Yoshihisa hakushi kanreki kinen: Tōyōshi ronshū (Kyoto: Ryūkoku Daigaku Tōyōshigaku Kenkyūkai, 1995), 4, 7.

  52. Yü Ying-shih, “Han Foreign Relations,” in Twichett and Loewe, Cambridge History of China, 1:405–42; Meng Chi, “Cong Xinjiang lishi wenwu kan Handai zai Xiyu de zhengzhi cuoshi he jingji jianshe” [Looking at Han-dynasty political measures and economic policies in the Western Regions on the basis of historical artifacts from Xinjiang], Wenwu 1975, no. 5: 27–34.

  53. Itō Toshio, “Gi-Shinki Rōran tonju ni okeru suiri kaihatsu to nōgyō katsudō: Gi-Shinki Rōran tonju no kiso teki seiri (III)” [The development of irrigation and agricultural activity in the military colony at Loulan during the Wei and Jin periods: The basic running of the military colony at Loulan during the Wei and Jin periods, part 3], Rekishi Kenkyū 28 (1991): 20.

  54. Stein, Serindia, 373–74, 432, 701 plate XXXVII.

  55. Itō, “Gi-Shinki Rōran tonju,” presents a careful transcription and study of all these documents.

  56. “Sute hu Loulan,” literally “Sogdian non-Chinese at Loulan.” Chavannes, Documents chinois, 886; Hou Can and Yang Daixin, Loulan Hanwen jianzhi wenshu, 61–62.

  57. The word for the animals is missing, but the measure word is pi, suggesting that the transaction involved horses. The word for the person making the payment is missing, and the identity of the people who receive the payment (zhuren) is not clear. While Meng Fanren and Duan Qing think it refers to merchants, Itō argues that the zhuren are the long-term Chinese residents of the garrison: “Gi-Shinki Rōran tonju,” 4–5. The document has been published first by August Conrady in Die chinesischen Handschriften- und sonstigen Kleinfunde Sven Hedins in Lou-lan (Stockholm: Generalstabens Litografiska Anstalt, 1920), Document no. 46, 124–25; more recently by Hou and Yang, Loulan Hanwen jianzhi wenshu, 99.

  58. Vaissière, Sogdian Traders, 58; explication of Endere camel purchase, 58.

  59. See chart in Meng Fanren, “Loulan jiandu de niandai” [Dates of documents from Loulan], Xinjiang Wenwu 1 (1986): 33.

  60. Itō, “Gi-Shinki Rōran tonju,” 22–23.

  61. Brough, “Comments on Third-Century Shan-shan,” 596–602.

  62. The Sino-Japanese expedition found evidence of a king Tomgraka, who ruled before the five kings previously known, and a king Sulica, who ruled after them, from 336–359. Lin Meicun, “Niya xin faxian de Shanshan wang Tonggeluoqie jinian wenshu kao” [A study of a newly discovered Niya document dated to the reign of King Toṃgraka], in Xiyu kaocha yu yanjiu xubian (Urumqi, China: Xinjiang Renmin Chubanshe, 1998), 39. Various scholars have debated the dates proposed by Brough, with some arguing that the award of the shizhong title occurred in a different year. Meng Fanren, the leading Xinjiang archeologist at the Institute of Archaeology in the Chinese Academy of Sciences, provides a chart of the five kings’ reigns according to four different scholars (Brough, Enoki Kazuo, Nagasawa Kazutoshi, and Ma Yong). The earliest start date for the five reigns is 203; the latest 256. The earliest end date is 290; the latest is 343. Meng prefers 242–332. Xinjiang kaogu yu shidi lunji [Treatises on Xinjiang archeology, history, and geography] (Beijing: Kexue Chubanshe, 2000), 115, 117.

  63. Thomas Burrow, “Tokharian Elements in Kharoṣṭhī Documents from Chinese Turkestan,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 1935: 666–75.

  64. T. Burrow, A Translation of the Kharoṣṭhī Documents from Chinese Turkestan (London: The Royal Asiatic Society, 1940), no. 292, no. 358 (refugees as slaves). Burrow translates the Kharoshthi documents whose meaning he could discern; he omits fragments. Each document, including those not translated by Burrow, is transcribed in A. M. Boyer, E .J. Rapson, and E. Senart, Kharoṣṭhī Inscriptions Discovered by Sir Aurel Stein in Chinese Turkestan, 3 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1920–29). Boyer et al. provide both the original identification number assigned by Stein as well as the new sequence numbers (1–764) used by Burrow; they also give the relevant page citation from Stein’s site reports for the individual documents.

  Boyer et al. also included six documents found by Ellsworth Huntington. Since then, the Sino-Japanese expedition found twenty-three more. They are transcribed and translated into Japanese by Hasuike Toshitaka in Niya yiji xueshu diaocha 1:281–338 2:161–76. Many of these documents are fragmentary and await translation into English.

  65. Stein, Central Asian Tracks, 103–4.

  66. Stein describes the discovery in Serindia, 1:225–35. The documents from this room are nos. 516–92 in Burrow, Translation.

  67. Burrow no. 582. Akamatsu Akihiko, “Rōran Niya shutsudo Karoshuti bunsho ni tsuite” [On the Kharoṣṭhī Documents from Loulan and Niya], in Ryūsa shutsudo no moji shiryō: Rōran-Niya bunsho o chūshin ni, ed. Tomiya Itaru (Kyoto: Kyōto Daigaku Gakujutsu Shuppankai, 2001), 369–425, especially 391–93.

  68. Burrow no. 581.

  69. Pictured in Susan Whitfield and Ursula Sims-Williams, eds., Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War, and Faith (Chicago: Serindia, 2004), 150.

  70. Burrow no. 1.

  71. Cozbo is also spelled cojhbo. Because the Kroraina language does not have a letter for the Iranian “z,” the Kharoshthi script uses a “j” with a superscript (transcribed by the Boyer and colleagues as jh) to write the letter. Almost certainly an Iranian word, cozbo is the most common official title appearing in the Niya documents with some forty different people bearing this title. T. Burrow, The Language of the Kharoṣṭhī Documents from Chinese Turkestan (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1937), 90–91. Christopher Atwood, “Life in Third–Fourth Century Cadh’ota: A Survey of Information Gathered from the Prakrit Documents Found North of Minfeng (Niya),” Central Asiatic Journal 35 (1991): 195–96, provides a very useful list of the cozbo by name and the document numbers in which they appear. Atwood also points out that the title cozbo has three different meanings: “governor of a province,” “a specific subordinate officer,” and “a very vague sense meaning essentially official.”

  72. Akamatsu provides a very helpful description of five different types of documents (wedge-shaped [W], rectangular tablet [R], Takhti-shaped tablet [T], oblong tablet [O], document on leather [L], and other), photos of each type, and a persuasive analysis that links the terms used for various orders in the documents with actual surviving documents. He presents a wonderfully clear chart showing the document type for each Kharoshthi document found at Niya and Loulan and its findspot. “Karoshuti bunsho,” 410–12.

  73. Thomas R. Trautmann, Kauṭilya and the Arthaśāstra: A Statistical Investigation of the Authorship and Evolution of the Text (Leiden, the Netherlands: Brill, 1971).

  74. Kautilya, The Arthashastra, ed. and trans. L .N. Rangarajan (New Delhi: Penguin Books India, 1992), 213–14, 380.

  75. Hansen, “Religious Life in a Silk Road Community,” 290–91.

  76. Burrow no. 39, no. 45, no. 331, no. 415, no. 434, no. 592.

  77. Burrow no. 569, and also no. 19, 54, 415, among many others.

  78. Burrow no. 207; Atwood, “Life in Third–Fourth Century Cadh’ota,” 167–69.

  79. As Helen Wang explains, muli (from the Sanskrit mūlya “price” or “value”) meant “price,” and one muli was the equivalent of one milima, a unit of grain. See her detailed discussion of the different types of money used at Niya in Money on the Silk Road, 65–74.

  80. Helen Wang, Money on the Silk Road, 37–38, citing Jiang Qixiang’s articles in Zhoushan Qianbi 1990, no. 1: 6–11; 1990, no. 2: 3–10; 1990, no. 3: 8–13; 1990, no. 4: 3–11, calculates the world
total of Sino-Kharoshthi coins at 352, of which 256 are in the British Museum. François Thierry, “Entre Iran et Chine, la circulation monétaire en Sérinde de 1er au IXe siècle,” in La Serinde, terre d’échanges: Art, religion commerce du Ier au Xe siècle, ed. Jean-Pierre Drège (Paris: Documentation Française, 2000), 122–25, provides a very helpful overview of documents and coin finds in Khotan and Niya.

  81. Burrow nos. 431–32.

  82. Burrow no. 133. See also no. 177 and no. 494 for other transactions involving gold but not gold coins.

  83. Burrow no. 324. Paul Pelliot accepts the suggestion of F .W. Thomas that the Supiye and Supiya in the Kharoshthi documents were the same people as the Sumpa people mentioned in the Tibetan documents of the seventh and eighth centuries. Pelliot, Notes on Marco Polo, vol. 2 (Paris: Imprimerie National, 1963), 712–18; Thomas, trans., Tibetan Literary Texts and Documents Concerning Chinese (London: Royal Asiatic Society, 1935), 9–10, 42, 156–59.

  84. Burrow no. 494.

  85. Burrow no. 255: the speaker hears about the availability of land “from the mouth of this Chinaman.” Documents no. 686A and B record the receipt of runaway cows by Chinese.

  86. Burrow no. 35.

  87. Burrow no. 660.

  88. Burrow no. 14. This list of places has fascinated and perplexed scholars of historical geography for over a century, with almost everyone disagreeing about the location of Nina. See Heinrich Lüders, “Zu und aus den Kharoṣṭhī-Urkunden,” Acta Orientalia 18 (1940): 15–49, discussion of place-names on 36. The authors of the first Sino-Japanese site report identify Nina as Uzun Tati: Niya yiji xueshu diaocha, 1:235–36, while Yoshida Yutaka proposes that Nina was the ancient name for the archeological site of Niya: Kotan shutsudo no sezoku bunsho o megutte [Notes on the Khotanese documents of the 8th–9th century Khotan] (Kobe, Japan: Kobe City University of Foreign Studies, 2005), 20.

  89. See Burrow no. 136, no. 355, no. 358, no. 403, no. 471, no. 629, no. 632, no. 674. Translation emended following Stanley Insler, Edward E. Salisbury Professor Emeritus of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology, Yale University, personal communication, November 14, 2006: “The word in question is ‘palayamna-’ and is the participle to the verb palāyati ‘runs away, flees, escapes.’ … I see no problem with Burrow’s ‘fugitive,’ although ‘escapee,’ or ‘run-away’ might be better.”

  90. Burrow no. 149. Heinrich Lüders, “Textilien im alten Turkistan,” Abhandlungen des Preussischen Akademie des Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-Historische Klasse 3 (1936): 1–38, discusses the etymology of many of the textile terms appearing in the Kharoshthi documents. Unfortunately, the discussion on 21–24 does not define soṃstaṃni. The term māṣa has puzzled analysts, but Helen Wang, curator at the British Museum, makes the intriguing suggestion that it may denote Chinese wuzhu coins, which this runaway could have used for his travel expenses. See Money on the Silk Road, 68.

  91. Burrow no. 566. See also no. 318 for another robbery report that lists different textiles subsequently stolen and recovered.

  92. The word in the documents is vaniye (from the Sanskrit vaṇij). On August 17, 2008, Stefan Baums very kindly checked the database of the Early Buddhist Manuscripts Project (http://ebmp.org/p_abt.php) and found no other instances of the word.

  93. Burrow no. 489.

  94. Burrow no. 510, no. 511, no. 512, no. 523. Discussed in Hansen, “Religious Life in a Silk Road Community,” 296–300.

  95. Jonathan A. Silk, “What, if Anything, is Mahāyāna Buddhism? Problems of Definitions and Classifications,” Numen 49, no. 4 (2002): 355–405.

  96. Richard Salomon, “A Stone Inscription in Central Asian Gandhārī from Endere, Xinjiang,” Bulletin of the Asia Institute 13 (1999): 1–13.

  97. Corinne Debaine-Francfort and Abduressul Idriss, eds., Kériya, mémoire d’un fleuve: Archéologie et civilisation des oasis du Taklamakan (Suilly-la-Tour, France: Findakly, 2001).

  98. Stein, Serindia, 1:485–547.

  99. Wang Binghua, Jingjue chunqiu, 121.

  100. Faxian, Gaoseng Faxianzhuan, in Taishō shinshū Daizōkyō, 51:857a, text 2085. Compare Samuel Beal, trans., Si-yu-ki Buddhist Records of the Western World translated from the Chinese of Hiuen Tsiang (A.D. 629) (1884; repr., Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1981), xxiv. See Marylin Martin Rhie, Early Buddhist Art of China and Central Asia, vol. 1, Later Han, Three Kingdoms, and Western Chin in China and Bactria to Shan-shan in Central Asia (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 1999), 354, for a discussion of Faxian’s route.

  101. The Japanese scholar Kuwayama Shōshin has worked extensively on the changes in the route between India and China; see his Across the Hindukush of the First Millennium: A Collection of the Papers (Kyoto: Institute for Research in Humanities, Kyoto University 2002); Enoki Kazuo, “Location of the Capital of Lou-lan,” 125–71.

  CHAPTER 2

  Georges-Jean Pinault generously sent detailed comments on this chapter, and his doctoral student, Ching Chao-jung, very kindly critiqued an earlier version of this paper.

  1. These are the conventional dates for Kumarajiva’s life. In fact, the sources disagree so much that we do not know the year of his birth. See Yang Lu, “Narrative and Historicity in the Buddhist Biographies of Early Medieval China: The Case of Kumārajīva,” Asia Major, 3rd ser., 17, no. 2 (2004): 1–43, particularly 28–29n64. This helpful article analyzes the major incidents in Kumarajiva’s life as his three biographers recount them.

  2. Hedin, My Life as an Explorer, 250–51. Hedin gives an even more detailed account of his trip in Central Asia and Tibet: Towards the Holy City of Lassa (New York: Charles Scribner, 1903), 63–102.

  3. Hedin, My Life as an Explorer, 253, 261.

  4. The Germans counted 235 at the beginning of the twentieth century, but surveys in recent years have uncovered additional caves. Zhao Li, Qiuci shiku baiwen [One hundred questions about Kizil Caves] (Urumqi, China: Xinjiang Meishu Sheying Chubanshe, 2003), 12.

  5. Albert von Le Coq, Buried Treasures of Chinese Turkestan (1928; repr., Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1985), 129.

  6. Carbon-dated to 320 CE±80. Zhongguo shiku: Kezier shiku [The caves of China: The caves of Kizil] (Beijing: Wenwu Chubanshe, 1997), 1:210. Angela F. Howard provides a very helpful summary of the criteria the Peking University archeologist Su Bai developed to date the caves, which do not have dated inscriptions. See her “In Support of a New Chronology for the Kizil Mural Paintings,” Archives of Asian Art 44 (1991): 68–83.

  7. Xuanzang, Da Tang Xiyu ji jiaozhu [An annotated and punctuated edition of Records of the Western Region written during the Great Tang dynasty], ed. Ji Xianlin et al. (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1985), 61; Beal, Si-yu-ki, 21.

  8. Le Coq, Buried Treasures, 127.

  9. Paul Pelliot, the physician and cartographer Louis Vaillant, and the photographer Charles Nouette traveled from Kashgar to Xi’an in 1906–9. Louis Vaillant provides a detailed description of their trip, including the dates they stayed at each site and a map of their itinerary in his “Rapport sur les Travaux Géographiques faits par la Mission Archéologique d’Asie Centrale (Mission Paul Pelliot 1906–1909),” Bulletin de la Section de Geographie du Comité des Travaux Historiques et Scientifiques 68 (1955): 77–164.

  10. Yu Taishan, Xiyu zhuan, 29; Sima, Shiji 123:3168–69.

  11. Yu Taishan, Xiyu zhuan, 187–90; Ban, Han shu, 96B:3916–17.

  12. Yu Taishan, Xiyu zhuan, 180; Ban, Han shu 96B:3911.

  13. A stele dated 158 CE, found in the mountains near Baicheng, records the name and title of a Chinese general. Éric Trombert, with Ikeda On and Zhang Guangda, Les manuscrits chinois de Koutcha: Fonds Pelliot de la Bibliothèque Nationale de France (Paris: Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises du Collège de France, 2000), 10.

  14. See the list of monasteries in Mariko Namba Walter, “Tokharian Buddhism in Kucha: Buddhism of Indo-European Centum Speakers in Chinese Turkestan before the 10th Century C.E.,” Sino-Platonic Papers 85 (October 1998): 5–6. The Buddhist texts in Sanskrit found at Kucha are wr
itten in handwriting of the earliest period found in Central Asia and may date from even before the third century. Kuwayama Shōshin, ed., Echō ō Gotenjikukoku den kenkyū [Hyecho’s “Record of Travels in Five Indic Regions,” translation and commentary] (Kyoto: Kyōto Daigaku Jinbun Kagaku Kenkyūjo, 1992), 187n207.

  15. Buddhist scholars debate the relationship of two Buddhist schools: the Sarvāstivādins and the Mūlasarvāstivādins, with which many fewer texts from Kucha are associated. See Ogihara Hirotoshi, “Researches about Vinaya-texts in Tocharian A and B” (Ph.D. diss., École Pratique des Hautes Études, 2009).

  16. Chu sanzang jiji [Collected notes on the formation of the Tripiṭaka], text 2145, 79c–80a; Walter, “Tocharian Buddhism in Kucha,” 8–9.

  17. Silk, “What, if Anything, Is Mahāyāna Buddhism?” 355–405.

  18. This was the Korean monk Hyecho, whose Chinese name was Huichao. Wang Wutianzhu guo zhuan jianshi [An annotated edition of Record of travels to India] (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 2000), 159.

  19. Li Fang, Taiping yulan, 125:604, citing Shiliuguo chunqiu [The spring and autumn annals of the Sixteen Dynasties]; Trombert, Les manuscrits chinois de Koutcha, 11.

  20. Yang Lu, “Narrative and Historicity,” 23–31.

  21. John Kieschnick, The Eminent Monk: Buddhist Ideals in Medieval Chinese Hagiography (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1997), 19; Bernard Faure, The Red Thread: Buddhist Approaches to Sexuality (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998), 26–27.

  22. E. Zürcher, “Perspectives in the Study of Chinese Buddhism,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society 2 (1982): 161–76.

  23. The Essential Lotus: Selections from the Lotus Sutra, trans. Burton Watson (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002).

  24. Daniel Boucher, Bodhisattvas of the Forest and the Formation of the Mahāyāna: A Study and Translation of the Rāṣṭrapālaparipṛchhā-sūtra (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2008).

  25. Edwin G. Pulleyblank, Lexicon of Reconstructed Pronunciation in Early Middle Chinese, Late Middle Chinese and Early Mandarin (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1991), 160, 203, 217, 283.