The Silk Road: A New History

by Valerie Hansen

  28. Éric Trombert, Le crédit à Dunhuang: Vie matérielle et société en Chine médievale (Paris: Collège de France, Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises, 1995), 76; citing S2729, as explicated by Fujieda Akira, “Tonkō no sōni seki” [The registers of monks and nuns at Dunhuang], Tōhō Gakuhō 29 (1959): 293–95.

  29. A partial translation of Document 0345 appears in Rong, “Nature of the Dunhuang Library Cave,” 260; the full passage is translated by Stephen F. Teiser, The Scripture of the Ten Kings and the Making of Purgatory in Medieval Chinese Buddhism (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 1994), 142–43.

  30. Earliest text (S 797), Stein, Serindia 2: 821n2a; Shi Pingting, Dunhuang yishu zongmu suoyin xinbian (A new index to the lost manuscripts of Dunhuang) (Beijing: Zhonghua Shuju, 2000), 27. This is a very useful list of all the manuscripts in the Stein, Pelliot, and Beijing (but not Russian) collections. Latest text, see Rong, “The Nature of the Library Cave,” 266.

  31. For a discussion of one group of Dunhuang manuscripts not in the Buddhist canon, see Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 7 (1993–1994), a special issue on Chan/Zen studies.

  32. Victor Mair gives a breakdown of the number of student-copied manuscripts held in different places in “Lay Student Notations from Tun-huang,” in The Columbia Anthology of Traditional Chinese Literature, ed. Victor H. Mair (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994), 644–45. See also Erik Zürcher, “Buddhism and Education in T’ang Times,” in Neo-Confucian Education: The Formative Stage, ed. Wm. Theodore de Bary and John W. Chaffee (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989), 19–56.

  33. Giles, Six Centuries at Tunhuang.

  34. Frances Wood and Mark Barnard, The Diamond Sutra: The Story of the World’s Earliest Dated Printed Book (London: British Library, 2010). About the almanac (Dh 2880), see Jean-Pierre Drège, “Dunhuang and the Two Revolutions in the History of the Chinese Book,” in Crossing Pamir: Essays Dedicated to Professor Zhang Guangda for His Eightieth Birthday, ed. Rong Xinjiang and Huaiyu Chen, forthcoming from Brill.

  35. Jean-Pierre Drège, Les bibliothèques en Chine au temps des manuscrits (jusqu’au Xe siècle) (Paris: École Française d’Extrême-Orient, 1991).

  36. Historians now date the Tibetan conquest of Dunhuang to 786—certainly not 781, and most likely not 787—as proposed by Yamaguchi Zuihō, “Toban shihai jidai” [Dunhuang under Tibetan rule], in Kōza Tonkō 2: Tonkō no rekishi (Lectures on Dunhuang 2: The history of Dunhuang), ed. Enoki Kazuo (Tokyo: Daitō Shuppansha, 1980), 195–232, esp. 197–98. My thanks to Sam van Schaik and Iwao Kazushi for this reference.

  37. Rong Xinjiang, “Nature of the Dunhuang Library Cave,” 251–54.

  38. Stein, Serindia, 2:813.

  39. Originally numbered Pelliot Hébreu 1; now Manuscrit hébreu 1412, Bibliothèque Nationale. Wu Chi-yu, “Le Manuscrit hébreu de Touen-huang,” in De Dunhuang au Japon: Études chinoises et bouddhiques offertes à Michel Soymié, ed. Jean-Pierre Drège (Geneva, Switzerland: Librairie Droz, 1996), 259–91 (photo of document on 291). Photo available online at http://expositions.bnf.fr/parole/grand/018.htm.

  40. For the Avestan prayer: K. E. Eduljee, Scriptures Avesta. Available online at http://www.heritageinstitute.com/zoroastrianism/scriptures/manuscripts.htm; for the sheet of paper showing the two deities, see Frantz Grenet and Zhang Guangda, “The Last Refuge of the Sogdian Religion: Dunhuang in the Ninth and Tenth Centuries,” Bulletin of the Asia Institute 10 (1996): 175–86.

  41. In the absence of census data from the ninth and tenth centuries, scholars round up from the pre-755 population figures from the revised official history of the Tang for Dunhuang: 16,250 people living in 4,265 households. Ouyang, Xin Tang shu, 40:1045.

  42. Jason David BeDuhn, The Manichaean Body in Discipline and Ritual (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2000).

  43. Peter Bryder, The Chinese Transformation of Manichaeism: A Study of Chinese Manichaean Terminology (Löberöd, Sweden: Bokförlaget Plus Ultra, 1985); Gunner B. Mikkelson, “Skilfully Planting the Trees of Light: The Chinese Manichaica, Their Central Asian Counterparts, and Some Observations on the Translation of Manichaeism into Chinese,” in Cultural Encounters: China, Japan, and the West, ed. Søren Clausen, Roy Starrs, and Anne Wedell-Wedellsborg (Aarhus, Denmark: Aarhus University Press, 1995), 83–108; J. G. Haloun and W. B. Henning, “The Compendium of the Doctrines and Styles of the Teaching of Mani, the Buddha of Light,” Asia Major, n.s., 3 (1952): 184–212. A partial translation of the Compendium gives the full English translation of the hymn scroll: Tsui Chi, trans., “Mo Ni Chiao Hsia Pu Tsan; ‘The Lower (Second?) Section of the Manichæan Hymns,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 11, no. 1 (1943): 174–219.

  44. Mikkelson, “Skilfully Planting the Trees of Light,” 87, a partial translation of S3969, P3884.

  45. Mikkelson, “Skilfully Planting the Trees of Light,” 93.

  46. For the most up-to-date survey of these texts, see Riboud, “Tang,” 4–7, who explains that some of the Christian texts are of uncertain origin, having been bought by Japanese buyers in 1916 and 1922, and others are forgeries.

  47. A. C. Moule, Christians in China before the Year 1550 (New York: Macmillan, 1930), facing p. 53, reproduces P3847; 53–55 gives the translation. See Riboud, “Tang,” for references to other translations.

  48. Jean-Pierre Drège, “Papiers de Dunhuang: Essai d’analyse morphologique des manuscrits chinois datés,” T’oung Pao, 2nd ser., 67 (1981): 305–60.

  49. Mair, “Lay Student,” 644–45.

  50. Hansen, Negotiating Daily Life, 50.

  51. P3348, transcribed in Ikeda On, Chūgoku kodai sekichō kenkyū: Gaikan, rokubun [Research on ancient Chinese population registers: Overview and register texts] (Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku Tōkyō Bunka Kenkyūjo, 1979), 463–64.

  52. Trombert, “Textiles et tissus,” 111.

  53. R. A. Stein, Tibetan Civilization, trans. J. E. Stapleton Driver (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1972), provides a charming introduction to the geography and history of Tibet.

  54. Ouyang, Xin Tang shu, 216a: 6073.

  55. Tsugihito Takeuchi, Old Tibetan Contracts from Central Asia (Tokyo: Daizo Shuppan, 1995); Takeuchi, “Military Administration and Military Duties in Tibetan-Ruled Central Asia (8th–9th century),” in Tibet and Her Neighbours: A History, ed. Alex McKay (London: Edition Hansjörg Mayer, 2003), 43–52. See the bibliographies of Prof. Takeuchi’s works for detailed references, including the pioneering studies of the Hungarian scholar Géza Uray.

  56. For the Chinese-language contracts, see Trombert, Le crédit à Dunhuang; for the Tibetan, see Takeuchi, Old Tibetan Contracts.

  57. Ikeda On, “Tonkō no ryūtsū keizai” [The circulating economy of Dunhuang], in his Kōza Tonkō 3: Tonkō no shakai [Lectures on Dunhuang 3: Dunhuang society] (Tokyo: Daitō Shuppansha, 1980), 297–343, 316–17, citing P2763, P2654.

  58. Yamamoto and Ikeda, Tun-huang and Turfan Documents, 13–18.

  59. Takeuchi, Old Tibetan Contracts, 325; Yamamoto and Ikeda, Tun-huang and Turfan Documents, no. 257.

  60. The Tibetan-language divination texts from Dunhuang that mention coins (P1055, P1056) use the Tibetan word dong-tse, a rendering of the Chinese word tongzi. See Takeuchi, Old Tibetan Contracts, 25–26.

  61. Takata Tokio, “Multilingualism in Tun-huang,” Acta Asiatica 78 (2000): 49–70, esp. 60–62.

  62. Lilla Russell-Smith, Uygur Patronage in Dunhuang: Regional Art Centres on the Northern Silk Road in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2005), 22; Whitfield, Singing Sands, 318–26.

  63. Ernesta Marchand, “The Panorama of Wu-t’ai Shan As an Example of Tenth Century Cartography,” Oriental Art 22 (Summer 1976): 158–73; Dorothy C. Wong, “A Reassessment of the Representation of Mt. Wutai from Dunhuang Cave 61,” Archives of Asian Art 46 (1993): 27–51; Natasha Heller, “Visualizing Pilgrimage and Mapping Experience: Mount Wutai on the Silk Road,” in The Journey of Maps and Images on the Silk Road, ed. Philippe Forêt and
Andreas Kaplony (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2008), 29–50.

  64. Jacob Dalton, Tom Davis, and Sam van Schaik, “Beyond Anonymity: Paleo-graphic Analyses of the Dunhuang Manuscripts,” Journal of the International Association of Tibetan Studies 3 (2007): 12–17, available online at http://www.thlib.org/collections/texts/jiats/#jiats=/03/dalton/.

  65. F. W. Thomas, “A Chinese Buddhist Pilgrim’s Letters of Introduction,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1927): 546–58; Sam van Schaik, “Oral Teachings and Written Texts: Transmission and Transformation in Dunhuang,” in Contributions to the Cultural History of Early Tibet, ed. Matthew T. Kapstein and Brandon Dotson (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2007), 183–208; Whitfield, Silk Road, 126–27, photo on 127; Sam van Schaik and Imre Galambos, Manuscripts and Travellers: The Sino-Tibetan Documents of a Tenth-Century Buddhist Pilgrim (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2011).

  66. Matthew T. Kapstein, “New Light on an Old Friend: PT 849 Reconsidered,” in Tibetan Buddhist Literature and Praxis: Studies in Its Formative Period, 900–1400, ed. Ronald M. Davidson and Christian K. Wedemeyer (Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2006), 23.

  67. Takata, “Multilingualism in Tun-huang,” 55–56.

  68. Rong Xinjiang gives a year-by-year chronology, with relevant document numbers, for the period 848–1043. See his Guiyijun shi yanjiu, 1–43. In English, see the cogent summary of Dunhuang history in Russell-Smith, Uygur Patronage in Dunhuang, 31–76.

  69. Victor H. Mair has devoted much of his scholarly career to studying transformation texts. His first book translated and copiously annotated four of these texts: Tun-huang Popular Narratives (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983). His subsequent books have greatly expanded our understanding of storytelling traditions around the world.

  70. Mair, “Lay Students,” 5.

  71. Mair, Tun-huang Popular Narratives, 169. Mair dates the text to between 856 and 870 (p. 11).

  72. Southern wall of cave 156, shown in Ma De, Dunhuang Mogaoku, 4, figure 133; ARTstor.org offers a much sharper photo.

  73. Whitfield, Singing Sands, 327, translation of P3720, a record of merit-making by Zhang Huaishen, as cited by Ma De, “Mogaoku ji jianyi,” Dunhuang Xue Jikan 2 (1987): 129.

  74. Ma Shichang, “Buddhist Cave-Temples and the Cao Family at Mogao Ku, Dunhuang,” World Archaeology 27, no. 2 (1995): 303–17.

  75. Sarah E. Fraser, Performing the Visual: The Practice of Buddhist Wall Painting in China and Central Asia, 618–960 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004), 4 (the painting academy); 37 (donors’ preparation); 18–19, figure 1.1 (position of donors’ portraits in cave); Fraser, “Formulas of Creativity: Artist’s Sketches and Techniques of Copying at Dunhuang,” Artibus Asiae 59, nos. 3–4 (2000): 189–224.

  76. Rong Xinjiang, “The Relationship of Dunhuang with the Uighur Kingdom in Turfan in the Tenth Century,” in De Dunhuang à Istanbul: Hommage à James Russell Hamilton, ed. Louis Bazin and Peter Zieme (Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2001), 275–98, esp. 287.

  77. Rong, Guiyijun shi yanjiu, is the definitive work for the political history of Dunhuang in this period.

  78. Moriyasu Takao, “Sha-chou Uighurs and the West Uighur Kingdom,” Acta Asiatica 78 (2000): 28–48, esp. 36–40.

  79. Rong, “Relationship of Dunhuang with the Uighur Kingdom,” 275–98.

  80. The document has not been studied extensively; Zheng Binglin analyzes document P3547 in his very useful article about trade at Dunhuang: “Wan Tang Wudai Dunhuang shangye maoyi shichang yanjiu” [A study of the mercantile trade and markets of Dunhuang in the late Tang dynasty and Five Dynasties periods], Dunhuang Xue Jikan 45 (2004): 108. See also Rong, Guiyijun shi, 8.

  81. Rong, Guiyijun shi, 8, 11.

  82. The Chinese word jiu is best translated as beer. Éric Trombert, “Bière et Bouddhisme—La consummation de boissons alcoolisées dans les monastères de Dunhuang aux VIIIe–Xe siècles,” Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie 11 (1999–2000): 129–81.

  83. P2629 and two related documents are reproduced and transcribed in Tang Geng’ou and Lu Hongji, eds., Dunhuang shehui jingji wenxian zhenji shilu [Photographs and transcription of Dunhuang social and economic documents] (Beijing: Shumu Wenxian Chubanshe, 1990), 3:271–76. Feng Peihong presents some of the information in a chart, which omits some visitors, in “Kesi yu Guiyijun de waijiao huodong” [Foreign relations between envoys and the Returning-to-Righteousness Army], in Dunhuang Guiyijun shi zhuanti yanjiu xubian [Continued studies on selected topics in the history of the Returning-to-Righteousness Army at Dunhuang], ed. Zheng Binglin (Lanzhou, China: Lanzhou Daxue Chubanshe, 2003), 314–17.

  84. S1366 and S2474, discussed in Feng Peihong, “Waijiao huodong,” 318.

  85. Jacques Gernet, “Location de chameaux pour des voyages, à Touen-huang,” in Mélanges de sinologie offerts à Monsieur Paul Demiéville (Paris: Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises, 1966), 1:41–51.

  86. Gernet, “Location de chameaux,” 45, French translation of document P3448.

  87. Hao Chunwen and Ning Ke, Dunhuang sheyi wenshu jijiao [Collected collations of the club documents from Dunhuang] (Shanghai: Jiangsu Guji Chubanshe, 1997).

  88. Ma De, Dunhuang Mogaoku shi yanjiu, 255–61.

  89. Trombert, Le crédit à Dunhuang, 27, 190.

  90. Rong Xinjiang, “Khotanese Felt and Sogdian Silver: Foreign Gifts to Buddhist Monasteries in Ninth- and Tenth-Century Dunhuang,” Asia Major, 3rd ser., 17, no. 1 (2004): 15–34; the Chinese version of the article appeared in Siyuan caifu yu shisu gong-yang, ed. Hu Suxin [Sarah E. Fraser] (Shanghai: Shanghai Shuhua Chubanshe, 2003), 246–60. The table on 31–34 in the Asia Major article is particularly useful; it lists all the commodities in each monastery and the documents mentioning them.

  91. I thank my colleague Peter Perdue for this formulation.

  92. Schafer, “Early History of Lead Pigments and Cosmetics,” 413–38, esp. 428.

  93. Zheng Binglin, “Wan Tang Wudai Dunhuang maoyi shichang de wailai shangpin jikao [A study of foreign commodities at the trade markets of Dunhuang in the late Tang dynasty and Five Dynasties period], in Zheng, Dunhuang Guiyijun shi zhuanti yanjiu xubian, 399.

  94. Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum, part 2, Inscriptions of the Seleucid and Parthian Periods and of Eastern Iran and Central Asia, vol. 3, Sogdian, section 3, Documents turco-sogdiens du IXe–Xe siècle de Touen-houang, by James Hamilton and Nicholas Sims-Williams (London: Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum and School of Oriental and African Studies, 1990), 23; Takata, “Multilingualism in Tun-huang,” 51–52.

  95. Turco-Sogdian Document A (P3134), transcribed and analyzed in Hamilton and Nicholas Sims-Williams, Documents turco-sogdiens, 23–30.

  96. Vaissière, Sogdian Traders, 328–30.

  97. These have been translated by James Russell Hamilton in Manuscrits ouïgours.

  98. Hamilton, Manuscrits ouïgours, 176–78.

  99. Moriyasu Takao, Shiruku Rōdo to Tō teikoku [The Silk Road and the Tang Empire] (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 2007), 103–11.

  100. Stein, Ruins of Desert Cathay, 2:38, 68, 99.

  CHAPTER 7

  Mathew Andrews, Kumamoto Hiroshi, Prods Oktor Skjærvø, Nicholas and Ursula Sims-Williams, Wen Xin, Yoshida Yutaka, and Zhang Zhan all graciously answered queries and provided unpublished materials.

  1. For brief histories of Khotan, see Hiroshi Kumamoto, “Khotan ii. History in the Pre-Islamic Period,” in Encyclopædia Iranica, Online Edition, April 20, 2009, available online at http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/khotan-i-pre-islamic-history; Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum, part 2, Inscriptions of the Seleucid and Parthian Periods and of Eastern Iran and Central Asia, vol. 5, Saka Texts, section 6, Khotanese Manuscripts from Chinese Turkestan in the British Library, by Prods Oktor Skjærvø (London: British Library, 2002). Following scholarly convention, subsequent footnotes refer to this book as Catalogue.

  2. Huili, Biography of the Tripiṭaka Master, 164; “Da Tang Da Ci’en si Sanzang Fashi zhuan” [Biography of the Great Tang Tripitaka Master from th
e Great Ci’en Monastery], in Taishō shinshū Daizōkyō, text 2053, 50:251a.

  3. My discussion of the Shanpula site is based on a volume published by the Abegg Foundation in Switzerland, which contains extensive translations from Chinese sources and surveys all the earlier site reports in Chinese publications: Dominik Keller and Regula Schorta, eds., Fabulous Creatures from the Desert Sands: Central Asian Woolen Textiles from the Second Century BC to the Second Century AD (Riggisberg, Switzerland: Abegg-Stiftung, 2001); see 37, fig. 39, for the saddle blanket, and 50, fig. 48, for a diagram of a cleaver-shaped pit, mentioned below.

  4. Stein, Innermost Asia, 1:127; 3:1022, 1023, 1027.

  5. Angela Sheng, personal communication, June 28, 2010.

  6. Elfriede Regina Knauer, The Camel’s Load in Life and Death: Iconography and Ideology of Chinese Pottery Figurines from Han to Tang and Their Relevance to Trade along the Silk Routes (Zurich: Akanthus, 1998), 110. The dimensions of the full tapestry are 7.5 feet (2.3 m) long, 19 inches (48 cm) wide.

  7. Yu Taishan, Xiyu zhuan, 94–95; Ban, Han shu 96A:3881; Hulsewé, China in Central Asia, 96–97.

  8. Following Joe Cribb, Helen Wang dates the Sino-Kharoṣṭhī coins to the first and second centuries CE: Money on the Silk Road, 37–38. Hiroshi Kumamoto, “Textual Sources for Buddhism in Khotan,” in Collection of Essays 1993: Buddhism across Boundaries; Chinese Buddhism and the Western Regions (Taibei: Foguangshan Foundation for Buddhist and Culture Education, 1999), 345–60, notes that the kings’ names do not match Chinese sources and dates them slightly later, to the second and early third centuries.

  9. Chu sanzang jiji, 97a–b; Kumamoto, “Textual Sources for Buddhism in Khotan,” 345–60, esp. 347–48.

  10. This description of the site draws on Stein, Ancient Khotan, 2:482–506, and plate 40.

  11. Rhie, Early Buddhist Art, 276–322. See also the discussion of the nearby Keriya site in Debaine-Francfort and Idriss, Keriya, mémoires d’un fleuve, 82–107.

  12. Faxian, Gaoseng Faxianzhuan, 857b–c; Legge, Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms, 16–20.