The Silk Road: A New History

by Valerie Hansen

  20. Liu Xu, Jiu Tang shu (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1975), 198:5295.

  21. Li Jifu, Yuanhe junxian tuzhi [Maps and gazetteer of the provinces and counties in the Yuanhe period, 806–814] (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1983), 40:1030.

  22. Archeologists found some paper clothes for the dead in the northern district of the Dunhuang caves: a paper shoe (from cave B48) and a paper shirt. Peng Jinzhang and Wang Jianjun, Dunhuang Mogaoku beiqu shiku [Report from the caves in the northern district of Dunhuang Mogao caves] (Beijing: Wenwu Chubanshe, 2000–2004), 1:151–52; 1:177; 3:337.

  23. Tang Zhangru, ed., Tulufan chutu wenshu (Beijing: Wenwu Chubanshe, 1992–96), 1:10; Chen Guocan, personal communication, April 10, 2006. The notes cite the four-volume set of Turfan documents and photographs, which is more reliable than the earlier ten-volume set.

  24. Wang Su, “Changsha Zoumalou Sanguo Wujian yanjiu de huigu yu zhanwang” [Some remarks on the study of the slips of Wu of Three Kingdoms from Zoumalou in Changsha], Zhongguo Lishi Wenwu 2004, no. 1: 18–34, esp. 25; Zhou Shu, 50:915; Yu Taishan, Xiyu zhuan, 510–11.

  25. Stein, Innermost Asia, 2:646.

  26. Frank Dikötter, Mao’s Great Famine: The History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, 1958–1962 (New York: Walker, 2010), x.

  27. This account is based on a conversation I had with the late Wu Zhen of the Xinjiang Museum, March 29, 2006.

  28. The Xinjiang Museum published different brief excavation reports in Wenwu 1960, no. 6: 13–21; 1972, no. 1: 8–29; 1972, no. 2: 7–12; 1973, no. 10: 7–27; 1975, no. 7: 8–26; 1978, no. 6: 1–14. A fuller report of the Astana digs appeared in a special issue of Xinjiang Wenwu (2000, no. 3–4).

  29. Hansen, “Turfan as a Silk Road Community,” 1.

  30. Tang Zhangru, “Xinchu Tulufan wenshu jianjie” [Recently discovered Turfan manuscripts: Presentation of texts and reediting], Tōhō Gakuhō 54 (1982): 83–100. Most of the Turfan documents have been published in the four-volume set of Tang Zhangru, Tulufan chutu wenshu. See also Chen Guocan, Sitanyin suo huo Tulufan wenshu yanjiu [Studies in the Turfan documents obtained by Aurel Stein] (Wuchang, China: Wuhan Daxue Chubanshe, 1995); Chen Guocan, Riben Ningle meishuguan cang Tulufan wenshu [Turfan documents held in the Neiraku Museum, Japan] (Beijing: Wenwu Chubanshe, 1997); Liu Hongliang, Xinchu Tulufan wenshu ji qi yanjiu [Newly excavated Turfan documents and studies of them] (Urumqi, China: Xinjiang Renmin Chubanshe, 1997); Rong Xinjiang, Li Xiao, and Meng Xianshi, Xinhuo Tulufan chutu wenxian [Newly obtained excavated documents from Turfan] (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 2008).

  31. Rong Xinjiang, “Kanshi Gaochang wangguo yu Rouran, Xiyu de guanxi” [The relations of the Kan-family rulers of Gaochang with the Rouran and Western Regions], Lishi Yanjiu 2007, no. 2: 4–14; Rong et al., Xinhuo Tulufan chutu wenxian, 1:163.

  32. Jonathan Karam Skaff, “Sasanian and Arab-Sasanian Silver Coins from Turfan: Their Relationship to International Trade and the Local Economy,” Asia Major, 3rd ser., 11, no. 2 (1998): 67–115, esp. 68.

  33. Most of the coins from Gaochang City were found in three hoards of ten, twenty, and one hundred coins. See Skaff, “Sasanian and Arab-Sasanian Silver Coins,” 71–72.

  34. Tang, Tulufan chutu wenshu 1:143; discussed in Hansen, “The Path of Buddhism into China: The View from Turfan,” Asia Major, 3rd ser., 11, no. 2 (1998): 37–66, esp. 51–52.

  35. See the helpful chart in Skaff, “Sasanian and Arab-Sasanian Silver Coins,” 108–9.

  36. Yoshida, “Appendix: Translation of the Contract,” 159–61.

  37. Helen Wang, Money on the Silk Road, 34–36.

  38. Skaff, “Sasanian and Arab-Sasanian Silver Coins,” 68.

  39. Helen Wang, Money on the Silk Road, 35.

  40. Wang Binghua, personal communication, June 25, 2009; Li Yuchun, “Xinjiang Wuqia xian faxian jintiao he dapi Bosi yinbi” [Gold bars and a large deposit of Persian silver coins found in Wuqia county, Xinjiang], Kaogu 1959, no. 9: 482–83.

  41. In 2006 Stephen Album was able to examine about a hundred of the Wuqia coins held in the Xinjiang Museum; he estimated that over one quarter were “contemporary imitations” of Sasanian silver coins, or “Peroz-style coins from Hephtalite mints.” Stephen Album, conference paper presented at the International Symposium on Ancient Coins and the Culture of the Silk Road, Shanghai Museum, December 6, 2006. See also the photographs for each coin from the Wuqia find in Silk Roadology 19 (2003): 51–330.

  42. Valerie Hansen, “Why Bury Contracts in Tombs?” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 8 (1995): 59–66.

  43. Hansen, Negotiating Daily Life, 35, 43.

  44. Tang, Tulufan chutu wenshu, 3: 517.

  45. Luo Feng, Hu Han zhi jian—“Sichou zhi lu” yu xibei lishi kaogu [Between non-Chinese and Chinese: The Silk Road and historical archeology of China’s northwestern regions] (Beijing: Wenwu Chubanshe, 2004), 147.

  46. Luo Feng, Hu Han zhi jian, 117–120; François Thierry and Cecile Morrisson, “Sur les monnaies byzantines trouvées en Chine,” Revue Numismatique 36 (1994): 109–45.

  47. Helen Wang, Money on the Silk Road, 34.

  48. The chart in Luo Feng, Hu Han zhi jian, 146, lists thirty-two genuine and fifteen imitation gold coins found in China. The Chinese-language literature about these coins is too extensive to list here. See Luo Feng’s thorough notes instead.

  49. Lin Ying and Maitelixi [Michael Metlich], “Luoyang faxian de Li’ao yishi jinbi kaoshi” [The gold coin of Leo I found in Luoyang city], Zhongguo Qianbi 90, no. 3 (2005): 70–72.

  50. Five coins were found in the Northern Zhou tomb of Tian Hong; Luo Feng, Hu Han zhi jian, 118, items 21–24.

  51. Luo Feng, Hu Han zhi jian, 96.

  52. Wu Zhen, “‘Hu’ Non-Chinese as They Appear in the Materials from the Astana Graveyard at Turfan,” Sino-Platonic Papers 119 (Summer 2002): 7.

  53. Yoshida Yutaka, “On the Origin of the Sogdian Surname Zhaowu and Related Problems,” Journal Asiatique 291, nos. 1–2 (2003): 35–67.

  54. Yoshida Yutaka and Kageyama Etsuko, “Appendix I: Sogdian Names in Chinese Characters, Pinyin, Reconstructed Sogdian Pronunciation, and English Meanings,” in Vaissière and Trombert, Les Sogdiens en Chine, 305–6.

  55. In the sixth and seventh centuries, most of the Sogdians in Turfan were Zoroastrians, not Manichaeans. See Valerie Hansen, “The Impact of the Silk Road Trade on a Local Community: The Turfan Oasis, 500–800,” in Vaissière and Trombert, Les Sogdiens en Chine, 283–310, esp. 299.

  56. Kageyama Etsuko, “Higashi Torukisutan shutsudo no ossuari (Zoroasutā kyōto no nōkotsuki ni tsuite)” [The ossuaries (bone receptacles of Zoroastrians) unearthed in Chinese Turkestan], Oriento 40, no. 1 (1997): 73–89.

  57. Zhang Guangda, “Iranian Religious Evidence in Turfan Chinese Texts,” China Archaeology and Art Digest 4, no. 1 (2000): 193–206.

  58. Sabao is the Chinese transcription of the Sogdian word, s’rtp’w, which was borrowed (maybe via Bactrian) from the Sanskrit sārthavāha, “caravan leader.” Yoshida Yutaka, “Sogudogo zatsuroku, II” [Sogdian miscellany, II], Oriento 31, no. 2 (1988): 168–71.

  59. Hansen, “Impact of the Silk Road Trade,” 297–98.

  60. Tulufan diqu wenwuju, “Xinjiang Tulufan diqu Badamu mudi fajue jianbao” [Brief report of excavations at the Badamu graveyard in Turfan, Xinjiang], Kaogu 2006, no. 12: 47–72.

  61. Jonathan Karam Skaff, “Documenting Sogdian Society at Turfan in the Seventh and Eighth Centuries: Tang Dynasty Census Records as a Window on Cultural Distinction and Change,” in Vaissière and Trombert, Les Sogdiens en Chine, 311–41.

  62. The documents are not dated, but they contain the name of one man, Ju Buliu(lu)duo in Chinese, Parwēkht in Sogdian, whose name appears in another document that can be dated to 619. See Skaff, “Sasanian and Arab-Sasanian Silver Coins,” 90n71.

  63. Skaff, “Sasanian and Arab-Sasanian Silver Coins,” 93–95.

  64. Eight notations indicate that no tax was paid during the previous half month, meaning that no tax was paid for a total of fo
ur months during the course of the year.

  65. The weight of the Chinese pound (jin) during the Gaochang period is not known because no weights from the time have been excavated. The Jin dynasty used the older system, and the Gaochang Kingdom adopted many measures from the Jin dynasty, so it seems most likely that the value of the jin in these documents was around 200 grams. Chen Guocan, personal communication, May 18, 2006.

  66. Skaff, “Sasanian and Arab-Sasanian Silver Coins,” 93.

  67. Ronald M. Nowak, Walker’s Mammals of the World, 5th ed. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 2:1357.

  68. Discussed more fully in Valerie Hansen, “How Business Was Conducted on the Chinese Silk Road during the Tang Dynasty, 618–907,” in Origins of Value: The Financial Innovations That Created Modern Capital Markets, ed. William N. Goetzmann and K. Geert Rouwenhorst (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 43–64; Arakawa Masaharu, “Sogdian Merchants and Chinese Han Merchants during the Tang Dynasty,” in Vaissière and Trombert, Les Sogdiens en Chine, 231–42.

  69. Éric Trombert, “Textiles et tissus sur la route de la soie: Eléments pour une géographie de la production et des échanges,” in Drège, La Serinde, terre d’échanges, 107–20, esp. 108.

  70. Trombert, “Textiles et tissus”; Michel Cartier, “Sapèques et tissus à l’époque des T’ang (618–906),” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 19, no. 3 (1976): 323–44.

  71. Hansen, Negotiating Daily Life, 51–52.

  72. Arakawa Masaharu, “The Transit Permit System of the Tang Empire and the Passage of Merchants,” Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko 59 (2001): 1–21; Cheng Xilin, Tangdai guosuo yanjiu, 239–45.

  73. Arakawa, “Transit Permit System,” offers a full translation of the pass (8–10) and a sketch map of his route (11).

  74. Skaff, “Sasanian and Arab-Sasanian Silver Coins,” 97–98.

  75. Tang, Tulufan chutu wenshu, 4:281–97.

  76. Hansen, “Impact of the Silk Road Trade.”

  77. Wallace Johnson, trans., The T’ang Code, vol. 2, Specific Articles (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997), 482; Denis Twitchett, “The T’ang Market System,” Asia Major 12 (1963): 245. The Turfan register, cited below, gives prices set two weeks apart.

  78. Ikeda On ordered and transcribed the document in Chūgoku kodai sekichō kenkyū [Studies in ancient Chinese household registers] (Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku Tōyō Bunka Kenkyūjo, 1979), 447–62. Éric Trombert and Étienne de la Vaissière have provided extensive commentary as well as a full translation into French: “Le prix de denrées sur le marché de Turfan en 743,” in Études de Dunhuang et Turfan, ed. Jean-Pierre Drège (Geneva, Switzerland: Droz, 2007), 1–52.

  79. The second digit after the 20 is missing; it must be 7.

  80. Arakawa, “Transit Permit System,” 13.

  81. Wang Binghua, “Tulufan chutu Tangdai yongdiaobu yanjiu” [Studies in the yongdiao tax cloths of the Tang dynasty excavated at Turfan], Wenwu 1981, no. 1: 56–62. Helen Wang kindly provided a copy of her forthcoming translation of this article.

  82. Jonathan Karam Skaff, “Straddling Steppe and Sown: Tang China’s Relations with the Nomads of Inner Asia (640–756)” (Ph.D. diss., University of Michigan, 1998).

  83. Skaff, “Straddling Steppe and Sown,” 224, 82n147, chart on 86; Du You, Tongdian [Encyclopedic history of institutions] (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1988), 6:111. Skaff’s is the most recent and sustained effort in English, with detailed references to Chinese and Japanese works. See also Arakawa Masaharu, Oashisu kokka to kyaraban kōeki [The oasis countries and the caravan trade] (Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha, 2003).

  84. Skaff, “Straddling Steppe and Sown,” 86, 244; D. C. Twitchett, Financial Administration under the T’ang Dynasty, 2nd ed. (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1970), 86.

  85. Jonathan Karam Skaff, “Barbarians at the Gates? The Tang Frontier Military and the An Lushan Rebellion,” War and Society 18, no. 2 (2000): 23–35, esp. 28, 33.

  86. Twitchett, Financial Administration, 97–123.

  87. Larry Clark points out the difficulties of determining the exact year in which the kaghan converted; he could have converted in 755–56, 761, or 763. See his “The Conversion of Bügü Khan to Manichaeism,” in Emmerick, Studia Manichaica, 83–123.

  88. Hans-J. Klimkeit, “Manichaean Kingship: Gnosis at Home in the World,” Numen 29, no. 1 (1982): 17–32.

  89. Michael R. Drompp, Tang China and the Collapse of the Uighur Empire: A Documentary History (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2005), 36–38; Zhang and Rong, “Concise History of the Turfan Oasis,” 20–21; Moriyasu Takao, “Qui des Ouighours ou des Tibetains,” 193–205.

  90. Moriyasu Takao, “Notes on Uighur Documents,” Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko 53 (1995): 67–108.

  91. Nicholas Sims-Williams, “Sogdian and Turkish Christians in the Turfan and Tun-huang Manuscripts,” in Turfan and Tun-huang, the Texts: Encounter of Civilizations on the Silk Route, ed. Alfredo Cadonna (Florence, Italy: Leo S. Olschki Editore, 1992), 43–61; Nicholas Sims-Williams, “Christianity, iii. In Central Asia and Chinese Turkestan,” in Encyclopædia Iranica, Online Edition, October 18, 2011, available at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/christianity-iii; Sims-Williams, “Bulayïq,” in Encyclopædia Iranica, Online Edition, December 15, 1989, available at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/bulayq-town-in-eastern-turkestan.

  92. S. P. Brock, “The ‘Nestorian’ Church: A Lamentable Misnomer,” Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester 78, no. 3 (1996): 23–35.

  93. For a full translation, see Hans-Joachim Klimkeit, Gnosis on the Silk Road: Gnostic Texts from Central Asia (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1993), 353–56.

  94. Klimkeit, Gnosis on the Silk Road, 40–41.

  95. Zsuzsanna Gulacsi, Manichaean Art in Berlin Collections (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2001), 70–75.

  96. Moriyasu Takao, Uiguru-Manikyō shi no kenkyū [Research in the history of Manichaeism under the Uighurs] (Osaka: Ōsaka Daigaku Bungakubu, 1991), 18–27, plate 1.

  97. Werner Sundermann, “Completion and Correction of Archaeological Work by Philological Means: The Case of the Turfan Texts,” in Histoire et cultes de l’Asie centrale préislamique, ed. Paul Bernard and Frantz Grenet (Paris: Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, 1991), 283–89.

  98. Zhang and Rong, “Concise History of the Turfan Oasis,” 20–21; Morris Rossabi, “Ming China and Turfan, 1406–1517,” Central Asiatic Journal 16 (1972): 206–25.

  99. Perdue, China Marches West.

  CHAPTER 4

  Étienne de la Vaissière, École Pratique des Hautes Études; Frantz Grenet, Centre Nationale de la Recherche Scientifique; the late Boris I. Marshak, Hermitage Museum; and Kevin van Bladel, University of Southern California, each went over earlier drafts of this chapter with meticulous care. The late Professor Marshak taught two classes at Yale during the spring of 2002; my discussion of Panjikent draws heavily on my notes from his lectures. Oktor Skjaervø, Harvard University, checked the translations against the Sogdian originals and made many helpful suggestions. I also want to thank Asel Umurzakova for her help in locating and reading Russian materials and Nikolaos A. Chrissidis for additional research assistance.

  1. Shiratori, “Study on Su-t’ê,” 81–145.

  2. Huili and Yancong, Sanzang fashi zhuan, 27.

  3. Arthur Waley, The Real Tripitaka and Other Pieces (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1952), 21.

  4. Scholars are not certain which route Xuanzang took through the Tianshan mountains. One possible route crossed the Bedal Pass, which is not that high. The more likely route went directly north from Kucha to the heartland of the Western Turks, near Little Khonakhai in northern Xinjiang, and then due west to Lake Issyk-kul. See Xiang Da, “Rehai dao xiaokao” [A brief examination of the routes around Issuk-kul], Wenwu 1962, nos. 7–8: 35.

  5. Beal, Life of Hiuen-tsiang, 25n80. The Chinese term for wa
rm sea is rehai.

  6. Xuanzang met Yabghu Kaghan Si, who succeeded his father, Tong, who was assassinated in 628 or the beginning of 629, as the leader of the Western Turks. Étienne de la Vaissière, “Oncles et frères: Les qaghans Ashinas et le vocabulaire turc de la parenté,” Turcica 42 (2010): 267–78.

  7. There were many ways to write the name of the Sogdians in Chinese. See the learned note by Ji Xianlin and his collaborators in Xuanzang’s Da Tang Xiyu ji jiaozhu, 73–74.

  8. Xuanzang, Da Tang Xiyu ji, 72; Beal, Life of Hiuen-tsiang, 27.

  9. Liu, Jiu Tang shu, 198b:5310; Ouyang Xiu, Xin Tang shu [New Tang history] (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1975), 221b:6243–44.

  10. Klimkeit, Gnosis on the Silk Road; Nicholas Sims-Williams, “Sogdian and Turkish Christians in the Turfan and Tun-huang Manuscripts,” in Cadonna, Turfan and Tunhuang, 43–61.

  11. Frantz Grenet, “Old Samarkand: Nexus of the Ancient World,” Archaeology Odyssey 6, no. 5 (2003): 26–37.

  12. Nicholas Sims-Williams and Frantz Grenet, “The Sogdian Inscriptions of Kultobe,” Shygys 2006, no. 1: 95–111.

  13. Ruins of both the house and tower appear in M. Aurel Stein, Ruins of Desert Cathay: Personal Narrative of Explorations in Central Asia and Westernmost China (London: Macmillan, 1912; repr., New York: Dover, 1987), figure 177.

  14. Aurel Stein, Ruins of Desert Cathay, 2:113.

  15. For the circumstances of discovery, see Stein, Serindia, 669–77, and map 74. For a general overview of the letters, see Vaissière, Sogdian Traders, 43–70. (The original book, in French, appeared in 2002, but I cite the English for the convenience of the reader.) See also Nicholas Sims-Williams and Frantz Grenet, “The Historical Context of the Sogdian Ancient Letters,” in Transition Periods in Iranian History, Actes du symposium de Fribourg-en-Brisgau (22–24 Mai 1985) (Leuven, Belgium: E. Peeters, 1987), 101–22.

  Nicholas Sims-Williams has posted translations of letters 1–3 and 5 on the Internet: http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/sogdlet.html.

  The most recent and up-to-date translations of individual letters are as follows: