6. Juliano and Lerner, Monks and Merchants, 59.
7. There was a hole through the entry passage where a Tang-dynasty well had been dug. Shaanxi sheng kaogu yanjiusuo, Xi’an Bei Zhou An Jia mu [An Jia tomb of Northern Zhou at Xi’an] (Beijing: Wenwu Chubanshe, 2003), 12; Rong Xinjiang, “The Illustrative Sequence on An Jia’s Screen: A Depiction of the Daily Life of a Sabao,” Orientations 34, no. 2 (2003): 32–35.
8. Shaanxi sheng, An Jia mu, 61–62.
9. His mother’s surname was Du, a family name not associated with foreigners.
10. Rong Xinjiang, Zhonggu Zhongguo yu wailai wenming [Middle-period China and outside cultures] (Beijing: Sanlian Chubanshe, 2001), 119.
11. Insufficient sources mean that we do not know the position of the sabao in the bureaucratic ranking (eighteen ranks existed, from a low of 9b to a high of 1a) of the Northern Zhou, but the next dynasty, the Sui, adopted its bureaucracy from the Northern Zhou. Under the Sui, the sabao of Yongzhou County (the capital) had a rank of 7b, while a sabao of rank 9a was appointed in every prefecture with a population of more than 10,000. Because the Sui adopted much of its bureaucratic structure from the Northern Zhou, it seems likely that the sabao of the Northern Zhou were similarly ranked. Albert E. Dien, “Observations Concerning the Tomb of Master Shi,” Bulletin of the Asia Institute 17 (2003): 105–16, esp. 109–11.
12. Frantz Grenet, Pénélope Riboud, and Yang Junkai, “Zoroastrian Scenes on a Newly Discovered Sogdian Tomb in Xi’an, Northern China,” Studia Iranica 33 (2004): 273–84, esp. 278–79.
13. Rong, Zhonggu Zhongguo yu wailai wenming, 32.
14. Grenet, “Self-Image of the Sogdians,” 134–36; for an opposing view, see Lerner, “Aspects of Assimilation,” 29n73.
15. Grenet, Riboud, and Yang, “Zoroastrian Scenes”; see also Yang Junkai, “Carvings on the Stone Outer Coffin of Lord Shi of the Northern Zhou,” in Vaissière and Trombert, Les Sogdiens en Chine, 21–45. The best translation of the Sogdian epitaph is Yoshida Yutaka, “The Sogdian Version of the New Xi’an Inscription,” in Vaissière and Trombert, Les Sogdiens en Chine, 57–71, while the best translation of the Chinese epitaph is Dien, “Observations Concerning the Tomb of Master Shi.”
16. Another bilingual epitaph, in Chinese and Middle Persian, was dated 874 and found in Xi’an; see Yoshida, “Sogdian Version,” 60.
17. Similarly, the Chinese text records that the three sons built a stone item for their father, but the word right after “stone” is missing. Yoshida, “Sogdian Version,” 59, 68; bracketed material in Yoshida’s translation.
18. Grenet, Riboud, and Yang, “Zoroastrian Scenes.”
19. Arthur F. Wright, The Sui Dynasty (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1978).
20. Heng Chye Kiang, Cities of Aristocrats and Bureaucrats: The Development of Medieval Chinese Cityscapes (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1999), 9.
21. For brief reports about the excavation of the Tang capital, see Kaogu 1961, no. 5: 248–50; 1963, no. 11: 595–611.
22. Twitchett, “T’ang Market System,” 245.
23. Heng, Cities of Aristocrats and Bureaucrats, 22.
24. Edwin O. Reischauer, trans., Ennin’s Diary: The Record of a Pilgrimage to China in Search of the Law (New York: Ronald, 1955), 333.
25. Wallace Johnson, trans., The T’ang Code, vol. 1, General Principles (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), 252: chapter 6, article 48; Liu Junwen, Zhonghua chuanshi fadian: Tanglü shuyi [Chinese law codes for the ages: The Tang Code] (Beijing: Falü Chubanshe, 1999), 144; Liu Junwen, Tanglü shuyi jianjie [Commentaries on and interpretations of the Tang Code] (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1996), 478.
26. Liu, Jiu Tang shu, 37:961.
27. Xiang Da, Tangdai Chang’an yu Xiyu wenming [Tang-dynasty Chang’an and the civilization of the Western Regions] (1957; repr., Beijing: Sanlian Shudian, 1987), 28n8.
28. Rong Xinjiang, “The Migrations and Settlements of the Sogdians in the Northern Dynasties, Sui and Tang,” China Archaeology and Art Digest 4, no. 1 (2000): 117–63, esp. 138.
29. Matteo Compareti, “Chinese-Iranian Relations, xv. The Last Sasanians in China,” in Encyclopædia Iranica, Online Edition, July 20, 2009, available at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/china-xv-the-last-sasanians-in-china.
30. Rong, “Migrations and Settlements,” 141.
31. James Legge, The Nestorian Monument of Hsî-an Fû in Shen-hsî, China (1888; repr., London: Trübner, 1966).
32. Pénélope Riboud, “Tang,” in Handbook of Christianity in China, ed. Nicolas Standaert vol. 1, 635–1800 (Boston: Brill, 2001), 1–42. For a recent study of the Syriac inscription with a helpful line-by-line translation, see Erica C. D. Hunter, “The Persian Contribution to Christianity in China: Reflections in the Xi’an Fu Syriac Inscriptions,” in Hidden Treasures and Intercultural Encounters: Studies on East Syriac Christianity in China and Central Asia, ed. Dietmar W. Winkler and Li Tang (Piscataway, NJ: Transaction, 2009), 71–86.
33. Valerie Hansen and Ana Mata-Fink, “Records from a Seventh-Century Pawnshop in China,” in Goetzmann and Rouwenhorst, Origins of Value, 54–64.
34. Deng Xiaonan, “Women in Turfan during the Sixth to Eighth Centuries: A Look at Their Activities Outside the Home,” Journal of Asian Studies 58, no. 1 (1999): 85–103, esp. 96.
35. For a sketch of the pots at the time they were found, see Helmut Brinker and Roger Goepper, eds., Kunstschätze aus China: 5000 v. Chr. bis 900 n. Chr.: Neuere archäologische Funde aus der Volksrepublik China (Zurich: Kunsthaus, 1980), 33. Like many Cultural Revolution finds, the Hejia Village site was never the subject of a detailed site report. A preliminary report, which included a list of everything that was found, was published in Wenwu 1972, no. 1: 30–42, and I have published a short English article about the site that includes a table of all the finds, “The Hejia Village Hoard: A Snapshot of China’s Silk Road Trade,” Orientations 34, no. 2 (2003): 14–19. For the most thorough treatment in Chinese, see Qi Dongfang, Tangdai jinyinqi yanjiu [Studies of the silver and gold vessels of the Tang dynasty] (Beijing: Zhongguo Shehui Kexue Chubanshe, 1999). For a summary in English, see Qi Dongfang, “The Burial Location and Dating of the Hejia Village Treasures,” Orientations 34, no. 2 (2003): 20–24.
36. Qi, “Burial Location,” 202, figure 47.
37. Frédéric Obringer, L’aconit et l’orpiment: Drogues et poisons en Chine ancienne et médiévale (Paris: Fayard, 1997); Edward H. Schafer, “The Early History of Lead Pigments and Cosmetics in China,” T’oung Pao, 2nd ser., 44 (1956): 413–38.
38. For photographs of the cup and details of its exterior and interior as well as line drawings of the exterior scenes, see Qi, Tangdai jinyinqi, 66–73.
39. François Louis, “The Hejiacun Rhyton and the Chinese Wine Horn (Gong): Intoxicating Rarities and Their Antiquarian History,” Artibus Asiae 67, no. 2 (2007): 201–42, esp. 207–8.
40. Liu Xinru, Ancient India and Ancient China: Trade and Religious Exchanges, AD 1–600 (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988), 160–61; Jens Kröger, “Laden with Glass Goods: From Syria via Iraq and Iran to the Famen Temple in China,” in Coins, Art and Chronology: Essays on the pre-Islamic History of the Indo-Iranian Borderlands, ed. Michael Alram and Deborah E. Klimburg-Salter (Vienna: Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1999), 481–98.
41. Li Jian, ed., The Glory of the Silk Road: Art from Ancient China (Dayton, OH: Dayton Art Institute, 2003), 208, catalog entry no. 116.
42. Louis, “Hejiacun Rhyton,” 207–8.
43. Louis, “Hejiacun Rhyton,” 210; Yao Runeng, Histoire de Ngan Lou-Chan (Ngan Lou-Chan Che Tsi), trans. Robert des Rotours (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1962), 81–84.
44. Liu, Jiu Tang shu, 8:171.
45. François Thierry, “Sur les monnaies Sassanides trouvées en Chine,” Res Orientales 5 (1993): 89–139.
46. Charles A. Peterson, “Court and Province in Mid- and Late T’ang,” in The Cambridge History of China, vol. 3, Sui and T’ang China, 589–906, Part 1
, ed. Denis Twitchett (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 474–86.
47. Rong Xinjiang, “An Shi zhi luan hou Sute huren de dongxiang” [The movement of Sogdians after the An Lushan rebellion], Jinan Shixue 2 (2004): 102–23.
48. Vaissière, Sogdian Traders, 220, 200n77; Yao Runeng, Histoire de Ngan Louchan, 238, 239, 254, 346.
49. Rong, “Migrations and Settlements,” 138–39; Sima Guang, Zizhi tongjian [Comprehensive mirror for aid in government] (Beijing: Guji Chubanshe, 1957), 232:7493.
50. Edward H. Schafer, “Iranian Merchants in T’ang Dynasty Tales,” in Semitic and Oriental Studies: A Volume Presented to William Popper, Professor of Semitic Languages, Emeritus, on the Occasion of his Seventy-Fifth Birthday, October 29, 1949, ed. Walter J. Fischel (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), 403–22, 411 (“wonder tale”), 409n58 (definition of “hu”). See also Francis K. H. So, “Middle Easterners in the T’ang Tales,” Tamkang Review 18 (1987–88): 259–75.
51. Li Fang, Taiping guangji [Wide gleanings from the Taiping Era] (Beijing: Renmin Wenxue Chubanshe, 1959), 403:3252–53.
52. The decision is included in the anthology Wenming panji, preserved in Dunhuang document P3813. Liu Junwen, Dunhuang Tulufan fazhi wenshu kaoshi [An examination and explanation of documents about the legal system from Dunhuang and Turfan] (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 1989), 444–45; Rong, Zhonggu zhongguo yu wailai wenming, 81; Rong, “Migrations and Settlements,” 139.
53. Only one epitaph for a merchant survives. Rong Xinjiang and Zhang Zhiqing, Cong Samaergan dao Chang’an—Suteren zai Zhongguo de wenhua yishu [From Samarkand to Chang’an: Cultural traces of the Sogdians in China] (Beijing: Beijing Tushuguan Chubanshe, 2004), 137.
54. Axelle Rougelle, “Medieval Trade Networks in the Western Indian Ocean (8th–14th centuries),” in Tradition and Archaeology: Early Maritime Contacts in the Indian Ocean, ed. Himanshu Prabha Ray and Jean-François Salles (New Delhi: Manohar, 1996), 159–80.
55. The ancient name of Palembang was Bhoga.
56. The ancient name of this port was Tamralipti.
57. James Legge, trans., A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms: Being an Account by the Chinese Monk Fa-Hien of Travels in India and Ceylon (AD 399–414) in Search of the Buddhist Books of Discipline (1886; repr., Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1991), 103, 37.
58. This passage has been variously understood by different scholars. Where Luo translates “sabao and merchants,” others see “sabao” as an adjective, with the resulting translation “sabao merchants.” Luo Feng, “Sabao: Further Consideration of the Only Post for Foreigners in the Tang Dynasty Bureaucracy,” China Archaeology and Art Digest 4, no. 1 (2000): 165–91, esp. 178–79; Legge, Fa-Hien, 104, 38.
59. Legge, Fa-Hien, 111, 42.
60. Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 4, Physics and Physical Technology, part 3, Civil Engineering and Nautics, by Joseph Needham, Wang Ling, and Lu Gwei-Djen (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1971), 563–64.
61. Beal, Si-yu ki, xxxiv; Da Tang Xiyu qiufa gaoseng zhuan, in Taishō shinshū Daizūkyū, vol. 51, text 2066, 1–12b, esp. 11a.
62. Schafer, “Iranian Merchants in T’ang Dynasty Tales,” 404n8.
63. See the very helpful discussion of this source in Park, “Delineation of a Coastline,” 87–99.
64. Sulayman al-Tajir, Ancient Accounts of India and China, by Two Mohammedan Travellers Who Went to Those Parts in the 9th Century, trans. Eusebius Renaudot (London: Printed for Sam. Harding at the Bible and Author on the Pavement in St. Martins-Lane, 1733), 20 (list of goods), 21 (porcelain), 40 (later editor’s views); available online through Google Books and the subscriber-only database Eighteenth Century Collections Online (http://mlr.com/DigitalCollections/products/ecco/), Range 1831.
For another partial translation, see S. Maqbul Ahmad, trans., Arabic Classical Accounts of India and China (Shimla, India: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1989).
65. Robert Somers, “The End of the T’ang,” in Twitchett, Cambridge History of China, 3:682–789.
66. Park, “Delineation of a Coastline,” 98.
67. Edward H. Schafer, “The Last Years of Ch’ang-an,” Oriens Extremus 10 (1963): 133–79, esp. 157–58, citing Lionel Giles, “The Lament of the Lady of Ch’in,” T’oung Pao, 2nd ser., 24 (1926): 305–80, poem on 343–44.
CHAPTER 6
Many colleagues have helped with this chapter, most notably Victor Mair of the University of Pennsylvania and Rong Xinjiang of Peking University. This chapter draws on two papers previously presented but never published: the first was coauthored with Valéria Escauriaza-Lopez, “The Negotiations for Cave 17: A Case Study in Archaeological Method,” presented at “Dunhuang: Past, Present, Future—100th Anniversary of Sir Aurel Stein’s Expedition,” at the Department of the Far East, Eötvös Loránd University of Science (ELTE), Budapest, December 14–15, 2007; I presented the second, “Locating Dunhuang in a Broader History of the Silk Road,” at a conference entitled “A Hundred Years of Dunhuang 1907–2007,” at the British Library and the British Academy, London, May 17–19, 2007.
1. The International Dunhuang Project, available online at http://idp.bl.uk, gives the figure of forty thousand items in the cave. Victor Mair provides a breakdown of the number of manuscripts held in different places in “Lay Students and the Making of Written Vernacular Narrative: An Inventory of Tun-huang Manuscripts,” CHINOPERL Papers 10 (1981): 95–96.
2. Mirsky, Sir Aurel Stein, 212–29.
3. Lilla Russell-Smith, “Hungarian Explorers in Dunhuang,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, 3rd ser., 10, no. 3 (2000): 341–61.
4. See the helpful chronology in Roderick Whitfield, Dunhuang: Caves of the Singing Sands: Buddhist Art from the Silk Road (London: Textile & Art Publications, 1995), 341–43.
5. Éric Trombert, “Dunhuang avant les manuscrits: Conservation, diffusion et confiscation du savoir dans la Chine médiévale,” Études chinoises 24 (2005): 11–55.
6. Rong Xinjiang, “The Nature of the Dunhuang Library Cave and the Reasons for Its Sealing,” trans. Valerie Hansen, Cahiers d’Extreme-Asie 11 (1999–2000): 247–75. Stein believed—erroneously—that Wang Yuanlu found the cave in 1905: Ruins of Desert Cathay, 2:164.
7. Lionel Giles, Six Centuries at Tunhuang: A Short Account of the Stein Collection of Chinese Mss. in the British Museum (London: China Society, 1944), 28.
8. The account of Stein’s first trip to Dunhuang presented in this chapter draws on Stein, Ruins of Desert Cathay, 2:28–30, 159, 165, 798; Stein, Serindia, 2:805, 813, 825.
9. Donohashi Akio, “A Tentative Inquiry into the Early Caves of the Mo-kao Grottoes at Tun-huang: Questions Regarding the Caves from the Sui Dynasty,” Acta Asiatica 78 (2000): 1–27, esp. 2. Ma De has sketched the cliff face at nine different points in time between the fourth and the ninth century: Dunhuang shiku yingzao shi daolun [An introduction to the history of the construction of the Dunhuang caves] (Taibei: Xinwenfeng, 2003), 119–50, figs. 1–9. For a chronology of how many caves were dug in each period, see Ma De, Dunhuang Mogaoku shi yanjiu [Studies in the history of the Mogao caves at Dunhuang] (Lanzhou, China: Gansu Jiaoyu Chubanshe, 1996), 43–46.
10. Mirsky, Sir Aurel Stein, 36–37.
11. Mirsky, Sir Aurel Stein, 280, citing Stein’s letter to Allen dated October 14, 1907.
12. Paul Pelliot, “Une Bibliothèque Médiévale Retrouvée au Kan-sou,” Bulletin de l’Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient 8 (1908): 501–29; Stein, Serindia, 2:820.
13. Rong, “Nature of the Dunhuang Library Cave,” 256.
14. James Russell Hamilton, ed. and trans., Manuscrits ouïgours du IXe-Xe siècle de Touen-houang (Paris: Peeters, 1986), ix.
15. Stein, On Central Asian Tracks, 211.
16. Asel Umurzakova, “Russian Archaeological Exploration of the Silk Road,” paper for the seminar “The Social History of the Silk Road,” dated April 30, 1999, citing S. F. Ol’denburg, Russkaya Turkestanskaya ekspeditsiya (1909–1910 gg.): Kratki
y predvaritel’ny otchet [The Russian Turkestan Expedition (1909–1910): Short preliminary report] (St. Petersburg: Imperatorskaya Akademiya Nauk, 1914).
17. Hodong Kim, Holy War in China: The Muslim Rebellion and State in Chinese Central Asia, 1864–1877 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004).
18. Helen Wang, Sir Aurel Stein in The Times: A Collection of over 100 References to Sir Aurel Stein and His Extraordinary Expeditions to Chinese Central Asia, India, Iran, Iraq and Jordan in The Times Newspaper 1901–1943 (London: Saffron Books, 2002), 147–51, appendix 2: “Meng Fanren’s Preface to the Chinese Translation of Serindia.”
19. Hao Chunwen, “A Retrospective of and Prospects for Historical Studies Based on Dunhuang Conducted this Century,” Social Sciences in China 20, no. 4 (1999): 95–110. This is a translation of an article that appeared in Lishi Yanjiu in 1998.
20. Rong Xinjiang, “Zhongguo Dunhuangxue yanjiu yu guoji shiye,” Lishi Yanjiu 2005, no. 4: 165–75.
21. Valéria Escauriaza-Lopez, “Aurel Stein’s Methods and Aims.”
22. Stein, Ancient Khotan, ix.
23. W. M. Flinders Petrie, Methods & Aims in Archaeology (London: Macmillan, 1904), 35 (baksheesh), 119 (publishing), 175 (“test of right”), 187 (government regulations).
24. Stein, Ancient Khotan, ix, citing Petrie, Methods & Aims in Archaeology, 175.
25. Rong, “Nature of the Dunhuang Library Cave,” 247–75.
26. Rong Xinjiang, Guiyijun shi yanjiu: Tang Song shidai Dunhuang lishi kaosuo [Studies in the history of the Returning-to-Righteousness Army: An examination of Dunhuang’s history in the Tang and Song dynasties] (Shanghai: Shanghai Guji Chubanshe, 1996), 3.
27. John C. Huntington, “A Note on Dunhuang Cave 17: ‘The Library,’ or Hong Bian’s Reliquary Chamber,” Ars Orientalis 16 (1986): 93–101; Imaeda Yoshirō, “The Provenance and Character of the Dunhuang Documents,” Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo Bunko 66 (2008): 81–102. See also the cybercaves available on the ARTstor.org database (search “Dunhuang,” “cave 16,” and “QTVR”).
The Silk Road: A New History Page 36