Dayuan
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Dayuan (or Tayuan;
), which can probably be understood as "Greco-Fergana city-state" in English language.These Chinese accounts describe the "Dayuan" as urbanized dwellers with
The Dayuan were the descendants of Greeks forcibly resettled in the area by the
By 100 BC, the Dayuan were attacked and then defeated by the
History
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Persia
This region was ruled over by Persia starting with Xerxes I, and began to be populated by Greeks starting at this time. When Greeks in other parts of the Persian empire rebelled or otherwise were troublesome, they would be exiled to Sogdia in the far northeast of the Persian empire, the most distant segment from their homelands. The largest city in this northeastern outpost of the Persian empire was known to the Greeks as Cyropolis, after the Persian emperor Cyrus the Great. By the time of the fall of Persia to Alexander the Great, Greek villages, language, and culture were therefore all common in this area.
Hellenistic rule (329–160 BCE)
The region of Ferghana was conquered by
The whole of
Greco-Bactrian kingdom (250–160 BCE)
The
Around 160 BC, the area of Ferghana seems to have been invaded by
The Yuezhi attacked the king of the Sai ("Sai-Wang") who moved a considerable distance to the south and the Yuezhi then occupied his lands
— Han Shu, 61 4B.
The Sakas occupied the Greek territory of Dayuan, benefiting from the fact that the Greco-Bactrians were fully occupied with conflicts in India against the
The remaining of the Sai-Wang tribes apparently seized the Greek province of Ferghana… It was easy at this time to occupy Ferghana:
Heliocles, preoccupied first with the recovery of Bactria and then with the invasion of India, must have let this outlying province go— W. W. Tarn, The Greeks in Bactria and India.
Saka rule
The
Also in 106–101 BCE, during their conflict with China, the country of Dayuan is said to have been an ally with the neighbouring tribes of
Yuezhi migration
According to the
Han Chinese rule and interaction
The Dayuan remained a healthy and powerful civilization[citation needed] which had numerous contacts and exchanges with China from 130 BCE.
Zhang Qian's Report
Around 130 BCE, at the time of
The capital of the kingdom of Dayuan is the city of Guishan (
li(Shiji,123 calls the capital Ershi). The kingdom contains 60,000 families, comprising a population of 300,000, with 60,000 trained troops, a Viceroy, and a National Assistant Prince. The seat of the Governor General lies to the east at a distance of 4,031 li.— Han Shu
To their south-west were the territories of the Yuezhi, with the
The great Yueh-chih is situated about 2000 or 3000 li west of Dayuan; they dwell north of the river Kuei (Oxus). To the south of them there is
Shiji, 123.5b
The Shiji then explains that the Yuezhi originally inhabited the
Urbanized city-dwellers
The customs of the Dayuan are said by Zhang Qian to be identical to those of the Bactrians in the south, who actually formed the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom at that time.
Their customs (the Bactrians) are the same as those of Dayuan. The people have fixed abodes and live in walled cities and regular houses like the people of Dayuan. They have no great kings or heads, but everywhere in their walled cities and settlements they have installed small kings.
—Shiji, 123.3b
They are described as town-dwellers, as opposed to other populations such as the Yuezhi, the Wusun or the Xiongnu who were nomads.
They have walled cities and houses; the large and small cities belonging to them, fully seventy in number, contain an aggregate population of several hundreds of thousands…There are more than seventy other cities in the country.
— Han Shu
Appearance and Culture
The Shiji comments on the appearance and the culture of the people around Dayuan:
Although the states from Dayuan west to Anxi speak rather different languages, their customs are generally similar and their languages mutually intelligible. The men all have deep-set eyes and profuse beards and whiskers. They are skillful at commerce and will haggle over a fraction of a cent. Women are held in great respect, and the men make decisions on the advice of their women.[5]
They were great manufacturers and lovers of wine:
Round about Dayuan they make wine from grapes. Wealthy people store up as much as 10,000 stones and over in their cellars, and keep it for several tens of years without spoiling. The people are fond of wine.
—Shiji, 123
According to the Shiji, grapes and alfalfa were introduced to China from Dayuan following Zhang Qian's embassy:
The regions around Dayuan make wine out of grapes, the wealthier inhabitants keeping as much as 10,000 or more piculs stored away. It can be kept for as long as twenty or thirty years without spoiling. The people love their wine and the horses love their alfalfa. The Han envoys brought back grape and alfalfa seeds to China and the emperor for the first time tried growing these plants in areas of rich soil. Later, when the Han acquired large numbers of the "heavenly horses" and the envoys from foreign states began to arrive with their retinues, the lands on all sides of the emperor's summer palaces and pleasure towers were planted with grapes and alfalfa for as far as the eye could see.[2]
The Shiji also claims that
... the casting of coins and vessels was formerly unknown. Later, however, when some of the Chinese soldiers attached to the Han embassies ran away and surrendered to the people of the area, they taught them how to cast metal and manufacture weapons.[6]
Han-Dayuan war
Following the reports of Zhang Qian (who was originally sent to obtain an alliance with the
The Chinese subsequently sent numerous embassies, around ten every year, to these countries and as far as
The Chinese were also strongly attracted by the tall and powerful horses ("heavenly horses") in the possession of the Dayuan, which were of capital importance to fight the nomadic Xiongnu. The refusal of the Dayuan to offer them enough horses along with a series of conflicts and mutual disrespect resulted in the death of the Chinese ambassador and the confiscation of the gold sent as payment for the horses.
Enraged, and thinking Dayuan weak, the Chinese Emperor in 104 BCE sent out Li Guangli, the brother of his favorite concubine. He was given 6,000 horsemen and '30,000 young men of bad reputation rounded up from the provinces'. General Li lost many men along the way in petty fights with local rulers. After a severe defeat at a place called Yucheng Li concluded that he was not strong enough to take the enemy capital and therefore returned to Dunhuang (about 102 BC).
Emperor Wudi responded by giving Li Guangli a much larger army along with a huge number of oxen, donkeys and camels to carry supplies. With this force he had no difficulty reaching Ershi, the Dayuan capital. After a 40-day siege the Chinese had broken through the outer wall and cut off the water supply. The nobles of Ershi killed their king and sent his head to Li Guangli, offering the Chinese all the horses they wanted. Li accepted the offer, appointed one of the nobles to be the new king and withdrew with the horses. On his return journey all the petty states accepted Chinese sovereignty. He reached the
Contacts with the West were re-established following the peace treaty with the Yuan. Ambassadors were once again sent to the West, caravans were sent to Bactria.
Era of East-West trade and cultural exchange
The Silk Road essentially came into being from the 1st century BCE, following the efforts of China to consolidate a road to the Western world, both through direct settlements in the area of the Tarim Basin and diplomatic relations with Dayuan, Parthians and Bactrians further west.
Intense trade followed soon, confirmed by the Roman craze for Chinese silk (supplied by the Parthians) from the 1st century BC, to the point that the Senate issued, in vain, several edicts to prohibit the wearing of silk, on economic and moral grounds. This is attested by at least three significant authors:
- Strabo (64/ 63 BCE–c. 24 CE).
- Seneca the Younger (c. 3 BCE–65 CE).
- Pliny the Elder (23–79 CE).
This is also the time when the Buddhist faith and the Greco-Buddhist culture started to travel along the Silk Road, entering China from around the 1st century BCE.
See also
Footnotes
- ^ Schuessler, Axel. (2009) Minimal Old Chinese and Later Han Chinese.. University of Hawai'i Press. p. 233, 268
- ^ ISBN 0-231-08167-7(pbk)
- ISBN 9789811033049.
- ISBN 0-231-08167-7(pbk)
- ISBN 0-231-08167-7(pbk)
- ISBN 0-231-08167-7(pbk)
References
- ISBN 0-231-08167-7
- "Zhang Qian's Mission to the West", translation by Friedrich Hirth published in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, 37/2 (1917), pp. 93–116, adaptation by J. Moore, Department of History, Austin College.
- Han Shu, as translated by A. Wylie in the Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vols. III (1874), pp. 401–452, V (1876), pp. 41–80, and X (1881), pp. 20–73, and XI (1882), pp. 83–115, adaptation by J. Moore, Department of History, Austin College.
- The diffusion of Classical art in Antiquity, John Boardman, Princeton University Press, 1993 ISBN 0-691-03680-2
- The Greeks in Bactria and India, W. W. Tarn, Cambridge University Press
External links
- ShiJi 123: The Account of DaYuan
- Selection from the Han narrative stories
- See references to Dayuan/Ferghana in the annotated translations by John Hill from the 2nd century Hou Hanshu: [1] and of the 3rd century Weilüe: http://depts.washington.edu/silkroad/texts/weilue/weilue.html