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Chapter 3. The Great Silk Road

3.1 The birth of relations between West and East

West and East, the ancient world and Chinese civilization. When did they start direct contact? When did they learn about each other, when did this symbol of their ties finally appear - the Great Silk Road, is this the most reliable evidence of the previously unprecedented scale of international communication, communication from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea to the Great Chinese Plain?

Geographical ideas of the ancient Greeks about the Asian East at the turn of the 6th-5th centuries. BC. can be reproduced from surviving passages from the Survey of the Earth by Hecatel of Miletus (Map 1). Asia Minor, the Black and Azov Seas are quite clearly outlined, the outlines of the Red Sea are close to true, the contours of the Arabian Peninsula are guessed. Further east are the Tigris and Euphrates. And Eastern Hindustan is completely absent in the ideas of the Greeks. In the middle of the 5th century BC. Herodotus creates his own "history", a work that is unique in its geographic informativeness (Map 2). In Herodotus we can find many new geographical names. The Caspian appeared, Central Asia is more fully represented - the territories of settlement of Bactrians and Sogdians are indicated . But then again only nomads - Massachets and Issedons . The largest settled civilization of the Ancient East - Chinese - Herodotus also does not know.
In the IV century. BC. in the ancient world, a powerful desire was born to advance to the East, to Asia. Later, this movement became inextricably linked with the concept of Hellenism. Already in Herodotus, rather peculiar remarks flicker here and there: about the fabulous fertility of the lands in Mesopotamia, about the wealth of the Asian peoples, about their abundance of cattle, gold, and beautiful clothes. In 401 BC there was not a very large-scale, but extremely significant event. 13 thousand Greek soldiers joined the army of the rebellious governor of the Persian king in Asia Minor and went to win back his throne. The viceroy was killed, more solid was achieved. But for the Greeks it did not go in vain. The brightest village of propaganda among the Greeks of ideas about striving for Asia, about its conquest as a panacea for all ills, is connected with the activities of Isocrates . Isocrates in his speeches, letters and journalism urged the Hellenes to unite, stop civil strife, declare a general Hellenic war against the Persians, go to their territory, conquer it, “transfer the disaster of Hellas to Asia, and the wealth of Asia to Hellas”, making the “barbarians” subjects of the Greeks .
The baggage of knowledge about the eastern limits of the ecumene of the teacher Alexander, the greatest encyclopedist of antiquity Aristotle, was as follows: the most extreme point in East Asia is Mount Parnes (meaning a chain of mountain ranges in Central Asia or, perhaps, only Gundukush ). China didn't exist for him. In 333 BC. Syria was conquered by Alexander, in 331 BC. - Iran is subordinated, and, finally, in 327 BC. completed the capture of Central Asia. But he did not go to China. However, the ideas of Isocrates embodied by Alexander already made a revolution in the geographical representation of the ancient world about Asia. Trade contacts have become more intense than ever before. There was a deep interpenetration of cultures. But we must not forget that this grandiose and one of the fastest in the history of mankind expansion of the space of international communication, when the shores of the Mediterranean Sea suddenly infinitely approached Central Asia and India, did not take place through peaceful caravan routes, but through cruel wars. Of course, such a phenomenon as Hellenism is a pearl in the history of the culture of the East. In the views of Eratosthenes, a Greek geographer who lived between 234 and 196. BC. in the East, the extreme country of the world is India. True, it is much more extensive, not only the Ganges is present, but the contours of the subcontinent themselves become somewhat more realistic. In place of China, the geographer has a water desert. In the northeast, it borders the territories of Central Asia inhabited by nomads, according to Eratosthenes - these are the Scythians. Such is the eastern part of the ecumene in the view of the ancient world as early as the 2nd century BC. BC.
Already at that time it was penetrated by many trans-Asian routes. Subsequently, most of them will enter that historical and cultural corridor of international communication that stretched from China to the Black and Mediterranean Seas and which will be called the Great Silk Road. In principle, in the III-II centuries. BC. this "corridor" will be almost ready. All that remains is to open the “Chinese door” into it. As for the rest, he, while still closed with the eastern Pamirs, Tien Shan and the Himalayas, actively and independently acted from Arabia and the Black Sea region to Central Asia and India. That existing road network had approximately the following contours. Herodotus, referring to an earlier author, Aristaeus , tells about a huge route from the eastern shores of the Sea of \u200b\u200bAzov to Central Asia. He raised a little up the Don ( Tanais ) or next to it, apparently, to the place where the river comes closest to the Volga (near the current Volga-Don Canal), then crosses it, the waters of the river. The Urals, the Orenburg steppes, skirted the Aral Sea from the north and ended behind the Syr Darya in the foothills of the Central Asian mountain range. The same Herodotus owns the story of the "royal road" in the Achaeminid Empire . According to this report, its length is about 2.2 thousand km, and the inns are located at a distance of one day's journey. It starts in Asia Minor from Saru, and a little later from Ephesus on the coast of the Aegean Sea and went to Iran - to the royal residence of Susa (map 4). A younger contemporary of Herodotus - Ctesias , a doctor at the court of the Achemid king and historian, says that this path goes further: to Afghanistan and Northwestern India (map 5). But there was another branch, which Ctesias is silent about - on the territory of modern Central Asia. Moreover, the connections of Central Asia date back to much more ancient times than the Achaemenid ones - to the III-II millennium BC. Even then, lapis lazuli was exported from Badakhshan to Iran. Somewhat later to the Near and Middle East. Khorasan began to supply turquoise, and Sogdiana - serdomite . There were other ancient routes to the west of Iran, and not just the "royal road". That " azure . path" did not end in Persia. Badakhshan lapis lazuli was found in Mesopotamia and Syria. Archaeological finds in Sarazm (Tajikistan) also testify to the trade relations of Central Asia, North India and the Middle East, dating back to the 3rd - beginning of the 2nd millennium BC. In the Babylonian, Achaemenid , and even more so in the Hellenic time, the channel of land communications from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea to the Middle East was already so defined that somewhere close to its fairway (Map 6) and subsequently passed the western section of the "classical" for the ancient scheme of the Great Silk Road , which the geographer Claudius Ptolemy will leave us.
Many details about the Central Asian -Iranian roads, about their branches to Afghanistan and India, are contained in the Geography of Eratosthenes. He pointed to the path from the land of the Hyrcanians (Southern Caspian ) to the banks of Aksarti (Syrdarya), from the Caspian Gates (this is also Southern Caspian ) - to Alexandria (i.e. to Herat), from Bactria - to the Indus. It was possible to get into Central Asia not only from such remote regions of India or from the Mediterranean, but also from Arabia. The Caucasus occupied an important place in this process of ancient international communication. Eratosthenes spoke about the road through Colchis to the Southern Caspian and further to the territory of Central Asia and present-day Afghanistan, about the road to the Syr Darya from the lands of the Albanians and other Caucasian peoples, which also skirted the Caspian Sea from the south.
So, there was only a little left - to open a message with China. But on the eastern border of this ecumene of civilized peoples, an impenetrable mountain barrier, which until now played a powerful role as a disconnector, stood up, isolating the Far Eastern civilization from the rest of the world. Here the highest mountain systems of Asia converged - Tien Shan, Kunlun , Karakoram and Hindu Kush, and from the junction of the Karakorum ridge with the Hindu Kush in the northwest to the impenetrable jungle of Burma in the southeast, the Himalayas stretched for 3 thousand kilometers, completing this isolation.
In the first half of the II century. BC. the Greek kings of Bactrius Demetrius and Menander somewhat expanded the possessions of the Greeks to the East at the expense of India. But the sphere of international communication remained the same until the time when the Celestial Salga did not enter into direct contacts. The authenticity of this fact is not doubted by the Khan's chronicles - the evidence of the Chinese themselves. Their surprise that there were other large settled agricultural civilizations, developed culture, was boundless. However, it would be inaccurate to explain the reasons for such a long isolation by an extremely difficult terrain - after all, when China nevertheless needed to overcome it, it did it. Here there was another factor of a completely different order. Some thoughts of Confucius, the ruler of the minds of the ancient people, who lived at the opposite end of Eurasia from ancient Greece, turned out to be a stimulant of territorial isolation. Created on the basis of the teachings of Confucius (551-179 BC), the philosophical system considered the issues of the universe and social structure, based on 2 cosmic principles - harmony and disharmony, i.e. harmony is the fertile lands of the Chinese, and disharmony is the barren semi-deserts inhabited by nomads. Therefore, the question arose: why go there?
The entry of China into the sphere of international communication happened rather unexpectedly. Occupying a relatively small area in the basin of the Yangtze and Huang He rivers, at that time it was surrounded from the west and northwest by numerous nomadic tribes. Among them were the 2 largest tribal associations - large Yuezhi and Xiongnu . The Xiongnu are the same Huns who later passed like a whirlwind through the whole of Eurasia and brought the decrepit Roman Empire into a state of shock. All nomads caused a lot of trouble. The Xiongnu were the most aggressive. In 170-160 years. BC. they defeated their main rivals - the big Yuezhi . The Chinese decided to use the created situation. Xiongnu attacks became more and more dangerous, in 138 BC. an embassy was sent to find the departed tribes, conclude an alliance with the big Yuezhi , return them and, with joint efforts, hit the common enemy. Zhang was placed at the head of an embassy of more than 100 people. Qian . The donkeys set off from the border town of Longxi , but already somewhere beyond Dunhuang they were captured by the Xiongnu . Zhang Qian had to endure a ten-year captivity and only then managed to escape. He went through the hardest deserts of the Tarim Basin , the Tien Shan mountains and went to about. Issyk-Kul. Further searches led him to the Forgan valley - to Davan , as he later called it in his report to the Chinese emperor. Before Zhang Qian represented flourishing sedentary civilizations of Central Asia, already deeply involved in the widest sphere of international communication. It lacked the last major link, and now it appeared. He eventually found the big Yuezhi - they settled in Bactria and subjugated the settled population. To Zhang's proposal Qian's nomads remained indifferent. The ambassador visited some places in Central Asia himself, and learned about even more countries and kingdoms from stories. In 126 BC. Zhang Qian came back. He spoke about goods, about various necessary things that China does not have, but which could be purchased. One very important addition was also made: the peoples he met did not know the culture of the silkworm and did not know how to cultivate silk. Zhang's stories Qian was so captivated by the emperor and forced him to make an unequivocal decision to establish contacts. True, another frequent phenomenon influenced here. In the story about Ferghana, horses of unusually tall and extraordinary beauty were mentioned. Somehow earlier, such a horse was caught near Cunhuang and handed over to the emperor. The animal made a huge impression on the ruler of the Celestial Empire. It was believed that it was of unearthly origin, that it was the spirit of heaven, their messenger to the Son of Heaven - the Emperor. Such admiration is not difficult to understand. Everything that the Chinese had seen and acquired until that time was very short, shaggy horses of nomads. All the best was to serve the greatness of the emperor. Also, the possession of such cavalry gave a huge advantage in the fight against nomads. In general, the reigning person burned with an ardent desire to have a sufficient number of "messengers from heaven." And so that nomads did not interfere with communications, military companies began a few years later. They were fought consistently, by large forces, and for more than one century, until Xinjiang was completely conquered.
However, even the first years of expansion (still very limited) brought tangible results, and embassies to Central Asia became permanent. As evidenced by the chronicle of that time, "messengers in the mind of another on the way to Divan ". Most of the caravans carried silk. This is the time, i.e. last decade of the 2nd century BC, and was the beginning of the functioning of the Great Silk Road.
The road started from Xian , went to Lanchhou , then forked in the Tarym basin into the northern and southern branches, which also gave their branches in the west of Xin Jian . At present-day Kaligara , again splitting into several large and small routes, it joined the long-established system of routes from Central Asia and India to the shores of the Black and Mediterranean Seas (Map 7).
Of course, ignorance by the Chinese until the last quarter of the 2nd c. BC. the rest of the world did not mean that some small part of their goods could not get to other settled civilizations. Individual items did fall. The most ancient nomads who lived on the lands bordering China cannot, of course, be called trade intermediaries in the true sense of the word, but during the robberies they carried away Chinese products with them and sometimes resold them to other tribes, and sometimes to settled peoples. In addition, Chinese chronicles report quite official trade with nomadic tribes, where they received Chinese goods, including silk, in exchange for cattle. As a result, small fragments of silk were found near Athens (1st century BC), in Macedonia (the first half of the 4th century BC) and even in the region of modern Luxembourg (5th century BC). Of course, one cannot but mention the indirect links between India, Central Asia and South China.
Of course, that in the I century. BC, and even much later, the connection between these extreme points - the Roman Empire and the Celestial Empire - was very weak, and their ideas about each other were extremely vague (the monopoly mediation of the Persians and some other red and blue intermediaries on east of Central Asia, whom the Romans partly mistook for the Chinese). But the real fact was the silk trade. It was already worn by the last queen of Egypt, Cleopatra. Be that as it may, but in the minds of the Romans, the idea was gradually strengthened that there was China somewhere at the end of the world. However, geographers in the same I century. AD certainly know about China. In the II century. AD Serica is given a significant place in his "Geographical Guide" by Claudius Ptolemy. Moreover, he has the first description of the way there that has come down to us. This route went through the Roman border town of Hierapolis near the Euphrates, crossed Mesopotamia, headed for the Tigris, then to Ecbatana in Media, skirted the southern sides of the Caspian Sea, passed the ancient capital of Parthia Hecatompils , Antioch Margiana , Baktra and through the Komed mountains (perhaps these are the Alai or Trans-Alay ridges) fell into the side of the river. Tarish , from there it led to the capital of the Seres . This is the classic ancient description of the path.
Now about the origin, and the very essence of this name. The name of the track was given by the German scientist F. Richthofen in his work "China", published in 1877. The Romans called silk " sericum ", and its producers and sellers " seri ", i.e. silk people.
But ancient reports also speak of a completely different overland road that went from the country of the Seres . She, according to Pseudo-Arrian , like the route from China, headed to Bactria, but then abruptly went south and ended on the northwestern coast of India in the port of Barigaza . All these routes were interconnected, and Chinese silk traveled through an incredible labyrinth of roads to the most remote western points of the ancient world. For Byzantium in the Middle Ages, when the Persians and then the Arabs severely restricted its silk imports through the Middle East, the routes of the North Caucasus became the Silk Road. Italians in the 13th century had its own Silk Road: it started in Tanya (near Azov), went to Dzhutarkhan (Astrakhan), then to Urgench, Otrar , Armalek (near Gulja ) - in general, almost repeated the ancient route of Aristaeus - Herodotus - and, finally, ended in Beijing .

3.2 External relations

In the second half of the 1st millennium BC. a system of routes connecting China with Central and Western Asia is taking shape. The external contacts of the principalities of Northern and Central China went mainly along the Jade Road, leading to the upper reaches of the Yarkand River and further to the West. The Western Meridional Way connected the ancient Chinese kingdom of Chu, as well as the areas of the modern provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan and North Vietnam with Central Asia. One of the northern branches of this path, the so-called Kyrgyz path, led to southern Siberia, the Steppe path went from the coast of the Black and Azov Seas to East Turkestan.

jade path
The emergence of links between the Middle East, Central Asia and China, dating back to the 2nd millennium BC, was facilitated by the development of semi-precious stones - lapis lazuli in the mountains of Badakhshan and jade in the upper Yarkand in the Khotan region . Written and archaeological sources testify to the existence of a trade route along which lapis lazuli, highly valued in the Ancient East, was delivered from Badakhshan to Iran, Mesopotamia, Egypt, Syria and Anatolia. The fact that the Assyrian ruler Tiglapalasar III (VIII century BC) imposed an annual tribute on the subject areas, the amount of which corresponded to nine tons of lapis lazuli, tells us about a significant volume of transportation. In the middle of the 1st millennium BC. Badakhshan lapis lazuli comes to China. In addition to lapis lazuli, carnelian was exported to the countries of Western Asia from Sogdiana and Bactria, and turquoise from Khorezm. It is impossible to say now when the Khotan jade appeared in China , but it has already been proven that in the second half of the 2nd millennium BC. Khotan jade was imported to China. Thus, a significant part of the more than seven hundred jade products found in the tomb of Fu Hao in Anyang , dated to the reign of Udin (1238-1188 BC), was made from Khotanese jade.
In ancient China, state regalia were made from jade, jade products played an important role in religious ceremonies and decorated everyday life.
The jade path coincided in general terms with the "road tuyuhun " (as Huang Wenbi called it ). This route led from Khotan to the Tarim Basin and on through Qinghai to northern China. An important archaeological source that testifies to trade relations between East and West in the second half of the 1st millennium BC. these are glass products, the center of production of which, starting from the 2nd millennium BC, was located in the Eastern Mediterranean. Near Eastern beads made of transparent glass were found in the burial grounds of the Saka time (mid-1st millennium BC) in the Southern Pamirs (the burial grounds of Akbent and Tamda ) and the Tien Shan (the burial ground of Jarchetal ).
Silk was the trade equivalent of the jade and glass products that came to China. It is difficult to say when silk brought from China appeared in the West.
Chinese writings about silk trade with western neighbors are reported approximately from the end of Zhangguo (the first half of the 3rd century BC). As archaeological data show, Chinese silk appeared on the territory of Central Asia by the middle of the 2nd millennium BC. In ancient Greece, Chinese silk, apparently, appeared to us as a known witness to the existence of silk in the pre-Khan time are fragments of silk gauze fabric with a rhombic pattern and embroidery depicting phoenixes found in a rich burial in Alagau in the Urumqi region, dated to the Zhangguo period (V-III centuries BC ) .
Western Meridional Way
Recent archaeological discoveries and a detailed study of written sources made it possible to identify a previously unknown system of connections that played a significant role in antiquity and the early Middle Ages. This is the so-called Western Meridional Way, linking South Siberia, Central Asia and the northwestern regions of China with southwestern China, Vietnam and Burma. The path went through East Turkestan and further to the south and ego-east - to Burma or Vietnam. The northern segment of this route, from Dzungaria to Southern Siberia, the so-called Kyrgyz route, was of great importance in the external relations of early medieval China.
The Western Meridional Way supported the external communications of the northwestern Chinese kingdom of Qin . Even in the IV century. BC. Shuya fabrics in large quantities fell to the north along the Western Meridional Way. The length of this route mainly passed along the steppe plateau with northern climatic features, which greatly facilitated the movement of Central Asian nomads along it. Active migration took place along this path in both directions, although the main movement was to the south, and above all, the movement to the south of the Qian tribes. Thanks to frequent migrations and numerous contacts of different tribes and peoples, an active exchange of spiritual and material values along this path. Khotan jade and glass items came to the Chu kingdom along the Western Meridional Route . The results of excavations in Shichhaishan and Taibangshan are very important for studying contacts on the Western Meridional Way. ( Yunnan Province ), conducted since 1955. Many excavated graves are burials of the ruling elite of the state of Dien, which existed in the 4th century. BC. in the upper reaches of the Yangtze. Findings in the Pazyr kurgans in Altai and in the Minusinsk Basin testify to extensive contacts along the Western Meridional Route . Middle of the 1st millennium BC in the history of Southern Siberia was an era that was distinguished by a very intense intertribal exchange, when powerful tribal associations and international relations were created, and the main route connecting Southern Siberia with other civilizations of Asia was the northern segment of the Western Meridional Way, the so-called Kyrgyz Way. Along with goods of Western Asian origin, along the Western Meridional Route, luxury items were delivered to South Siberia from the territory of modern southwestern China, for example , a bronze mirror with 4 T-shaped figures from the Pazyry barrow.
Huns on the Silk Road
The main political events in Central and East Asia in the III century. BC. were the formation of the Hunnic state and the creation of the Han Empire. The Hun state formed under the Shanuy Moudune (died 209 BC), fortifies and expands from Baikal in the north to the Great Wall of China in the south and to the Liaohe River in the east. At the beginning of the II century. BC. the Huns conquered the population of the oases of East Turkestan. The expansion of the Huns to the west resulted in a significant expansion of their trade and other contacts with the Western world. By this time, the path with the west through the northern oases of East Turkestan to Northern Mongolia and then south to Northern China was activated. In the Han era, this road was called the Longcheng Road , and in the early Middle Ages, the Uighur Way. The art objects of the Hellenistic Middle East were delivered along this route to the Hun nobility, which is clearly evidenced by the well-known finds in the burials of the Hun shans in the mountains of Nain-uly , dated to the last years BC. From the south, from the Han Empire, a huge amount of various silk fabrics, embroideries and silk wool, as well as lacquer, bronze, and jewelry went to the Hun headquarters. The Chinese chronicles describe in detail these parcels, which were of great importance in the Han Empire. It is likely that the Huns at that time acted as intermediaries in the silk trade and some of these fabrics were sent to the west along the Uighur route, which the Huns held in their hands until the beginning of our era. Along with the exchange of parcels in the border markets between the Han and the Huns, there was an active bilateral trade, mainly in horses and silk.