A Journey in Antiquity from Afghanistan to China (July 2, 2022, the severed branch)
Mountains, Deserts | The Sogdians and Samarkand | Alexandria the Furthest | Han Expansion and the Heavenly Horses of Ferghana | Oasis Kingdoms of the Tarim Basin | Through the Jade Gate to China
Above: The Pamir Mountains, a central barrier between Western and Eastern Asia (wikimedia)
Sources:
Craig Benjamin, Empires of Ancient Eurasia
Raoul McLaughlin, The Roman Empire and the Silk Routes
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Part 1:
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My journey from York to Bactria was a tranquil one compared to the immense distances across uninhabitable spaces which are still to come. To arrive at the Jade Gate, an entry into China through the Great Wall, I must steel myself for a months-long journey across one of the world’s most deadly deserts, relying for shelter and sustenance on the tiny oasis kingdoms and town states sprinkled along its mountainous edges. And even before arriving to the Taklamakan Desert, I will need to be prepared for the narrow trails cut into the sides of the highest mountains on Earth. Before beginning the first leg of my journey, from Bactria to Sogdia and the Ferghana Valley, I contemplate the dangers which await me.
Waking up in my room overlooking Bactra’s bustling market in the early 300s AD, with the sounds of various Iranian languages seeping through my windows, I discreetly reach into my bag and pull out a copy of Craig Benjamin’s Empires of Ancient Eurasia. Weary from my studies and caravan rides across Persia, and almost unwilling to believe in my ability to make my way across Asia in late antiquity, I turn to a dog-eared page containing a terrifying account. It is written by one of those brave explores who did indeed trek overland across the barriers which separate Western and Eastern Asia. In it, the Han envoy Tuzhin, writing in the second century AD, describes one section of the journey between South/Central Asia and the Tarim Basin in modern Xinjiang, a modern province of China, which he calls the Hanging Pass.
“There is a path that is 40 cm wide, but leads forward for a length of thirty li, overlooking a precipice whose depth is unfathomed. Travelers passing on horse or foot hold on to one another and pull each other along with ropes… When the animals fall, before they have dropped half-way down the chasm they are shattered in pieces, and when men fall, the situation is such that they are unable to rescue one another. The danger of these precipices defies description.”
What is it that moved ancient people to risk their lives on such journeys? Could my own modern antiquarian fascinations possibly motivate me to summon such courage? Pure motives aimed at acquiring knowledge for its own sake might for some be enough. But when the famed Han explorer Zhang Qian risked death as he pressed on into the unknown western world, the prospect of glory must have inspired and fortified his resolve. Dangling before him was an eternal greatness attained by only the most fortunate and audacious adventurers; his was a fame to be celebrated not only within the Emperor Wudi’s court of his own time, but also among historians and readers some two thousand years into the future.
But most of the men and women who crossed these passes harbored no such anticipation of everlasting renown. Lest human existence be robbed of its transcendency, a truly unadulterated urge to explore for its own sake must include a willingness to risk one’s entire life by defying such staggering dangers. And if that is not enough, then profit or religion must suffice as inducements for mere mortals to leave the safety of their towns and press on into the deadliest mountains.
Given that the construction of the Karakorum Highway connecting China and Pakistan cost around 900 lives by the time of its completion in 1986, plenty of the brave merchants and missionaries who passed through commercial and religious centers like Samarkand, my upcoming stopover after I leave Bactria, must have perished before their next destination. They perhaps became accustomed to repeatedly enduring these most stupefying perils. But if their emotions did not succeed in attaining any acclimation, then either the money they made or the spiritual happiness they brought to their grateful converts must have compensated for the trauma. And yet for all the lives lost during the course of the Sogdians’ great facilitation of cultural and commercial connections between east and west, the very name of their nation is hardly to be remembered in the coming millennia.
Above: A Map of Bactria and beyond. My journey takes me from Bactra (Bactres) across the Oxus, onward to Samarkand, and into the Ferghana Valley via Alexandria Eschate. From there, I will cross the mountains into the Tarim Basin and onward to China. (wikimedia)
Crossing the Oxus after leaving Bactria, I press onward toward the ancient Sogdian capital of Samarkand. Samarkand is destined both now and in the centuries to come to serve as a crucial hub of commerce and gospel. In this elegant city, groups of Sogdian caravans continuously depart and arrive, ceaselessly amassing riches while transporting goods across Inner Asia’s most challenging mountains and deserts. The streets are filled by the sounds of Iranian languages, including Sogdian itself, and the markets here constitute the center of a vast Sogdian tradework connecting India, Persia, and China. Yet Samarkand’s most prosperous days are still a thousand years ahead of it. These will come when it serves in the fourteenth century as home the Mongol ruler Timur, his court, and countless Islamic scholars and architects.
When I am passing through in the fourth century, long before the birth of Islam, Samarkand is among the first stops by which Manichaeanism will inspire the construction of churches and communities as far east as the middle of China. Despite the Zoroastrian zeal of Samarkand’s distant Sasanian overlords, devout Manichaeans flow into the city with the caravans. Even under an intolerant Persian rule, this ancient city in modern Uzbekistan is rapidly transforming into a center of Manichaeanism. One day, under a wave of Muslim persecution, the very leadership of the Manichaeans will be transported to Samarkand; in the ninth century, the patriarchal successor to the prophet Mani will take his episcopal seat here. In the meantime, this city near the center of Eurasia contains within it not only Manichaeans but also Zoroastrians, Christians, and Buddhists.
Sogdia, a large territory of which Samarkand is simply the most important city, lies just beyond the Oxus River, which I had to cross on my way north from Bactra. In modern times, the Amu Darya (its new name) serves as the natural border between Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan and between Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. In antiquity, especially for the Greco-Romans, the Oxus takes on the mythological significance of a mysterious frontier on the very edge of the world, near the end of known geography.
Dubbed by the Greeks as Transoxiana (Beyond the Oxus), and imagined by the Chinese to be just as distant and mystical as by the Romans, the Sogdian lands between the Oxus and the further-east Jaxartes have long composed a frontier zone for many advanced empires. Although in truth it lies at Asia’s center, its image as the very edge of urbanized society has often given it a semi-mythical aura in the eyes of the great civilizations who surround it. For the Achaemenid Persians who first imposed imperial rule here, this was their most distantly controlled territory, the place to which they shipped off disobedient Greeks. For the Hellenist empires which succeeded the Persians, it was the very limit of the world itself. What lay further east, beyond the mountains and desert, they could hardly pretend to dream.
For Alexander the Great, Transoxiana was where his conquests came to an end. It was across the Oxus that he successfully pursued the last Achaemenid king, the satrap Bessus, who had usurped the Persian throne for himself by killing its last legitimate ruler in 330 BC. That was the occasion for Alexander’s furthest journey into Inner Asia, and it was here where he established the very edges of his short-lived Macedonian Empire. On the southern banks of the Jaxartes, in modern Tajikistan and so wildly distant from his origins in Macedonia, Alexander left behind my next destination after Samarkand: the city of Alexandria Eschate (Alexandria the Furthest).
For some two centuries, Alexandria Eschate prospered as an integral part of the Seleucid and Greco-Bactrian kingdoms (both successors to Alexander’s empire). But the Greeks of the Ferghana Valley soon found themselves detached from their Hellenist sisters. This was in the chaotic aftermath of a wave of pastoralist invasions from the north, which crushed centralized Greek political control over the region in the second century BC. Alexandria Eschate was thus to become a small island of Hellenism separated from its nearest Greek sister by hundreds of miles of Sogdian tribes. It was in this precariously enduring city, known to the Chinese as Dayuan, where Chinese and Greek military units experienced their first and possibly only ancient clashes. Here were the first sustained contacts between urbanized Greek and Chinese societies. Yet very little is known about the Greek people who lived in Dayuan. Arriving in Alexandria the Furthest, I am thus conscious of my presence now in a city which has long been shrouded in myth and mystery. Around it, there was a war fought partially for the sake of controlling its legendary horses.
Above: Sogdia, last stop between crossing the mountains into Kashgar and the Tarim Basin (Alexandria Eschate lies near the city of Khujand in modern Tajikistan)
The War of the Heavenly Horses, fought between the Dayuan Greeks and the Han Chinese, was waged for control over the Ferghana Valley in modern Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan from 104 - 101 BC. It is a region of the world which even now, in the most interconnected moment of human history, still seems to epitomize remoteness. The sheer distance of the Ferghana Valley from Han China made its victory an immensely climactic moment in Han China’s western expansion.
Thirty years before this, after Zhang Qian escaped the Xiongnu and continued his epic journey westward, he found himself in Dayuan. Here at Alexandria Eschate, he was admitted into the presence of the king. And while Zhang Qian had never heard of Dayuan, the Dayuan Greeks had heard of China; his imperial credentials were eagerly accepted by a monarch who had learned of his empire’s riches. Zhang Qian promised the king that, should he help him continue further west, China would richly reward him. And thus the first meeting was a peaceful one, but then Zhang Qian discovered the blood-sweating horses who populated the Greek-controlled lands of Ferghana.
When Zhang Qian returned to court, he told the Emperor Wudi about these mysterious horses. Their bodies, he said, were often covered in the red beads of their blood, which seeped out from them during exertion. Wudi then recalled a prophecy upon which he fixated: “divine horses will soon appear from the northwest.” Henceforth these Ferghana livestock, renowned for the streams of blood which streaked down their bodies as they galloped, were known to the Chinese as the heavenly horses of Dayuan. It was a foreign policy imperative to procure them.
China sent envoys to Dayuan in the decades to come. It was a part of their broader effort to enhance their diplomatic, commercial, and military influence across Central Asia in the aftermath of Zhang Qian’s many hard won discoveries. But in 105 BC, the Chinese envoy to Alexandria Eschate was assassinated. And it was this, in addition to a great desire to acquire more of the prophesied horses, which moved the emperor toward an unprecedentedly far-flung invasion.
Feeling no doubt as if they were journeying to the furthest reaches of human civilization and into the most unknown parts of the western world, 40,000 Chinese cavalrymen proceeded 3,000 miles across the difficult terrain of Inner Asia. Reaching Ferghana, they were decisively defeated by Dayuan forces. The general returned with the survivors in disgrace. But the Emperor Wudi was both forgiving of his general and also still determined to acquire the heavenly horses. He yearned to demonstrate the awesome power of his empire, whose wrath would not be hindered by any amount of distance. He would showcase the brutal consequences facing anyone who dared harm his envoys, no matter where they might find themselves on the vast face of the Earth. He soon sent another 60,000 men under the same commander. The once humbled general defeated the Dayuan Greeks this time, decapitated their king, and shipped 3,000 heavenly horses back to his emperor. Sadly, only 1,000 survived the journey. But the emperor must have taken solace in the fact that the operation struck terror into leaders across Western Asia, many of whom obsequiously sent gifts while submissively pledging themselves as loyal vassals to his awesome power. This was the ultimate projection of Han strength into previously unknown lands.
The conquest of Alexandria the Furthest was only one component of this broader effort to expand Chinese military, diplomatic, and commercial influence into the depths of Central Asia. As an aid to its efforts toward building relations with its newly found neighbors, China gifted them huge quantities of silk. The silk arrived continuously, shipped with caravans containing envoys, merchants, and soldiers. While building military outposts and trade cities at increasingly further reaches beyond its original territory, China gradually won pledges of loyalty from the small kingdoms of the region, sometimes by inspiring fear and sometimes with the promise of mutual benefits. Much of the silk, which China distributed as a demonstration of its wealth and benevolence, passed into the hands of Sogdian merchants. These steadily made their way back westward, spurring trade in other goods across the same routes. All this activity initiated the first model of a global economy, one which would intimately connect commercial, political, and religious developments in Europe, Africa, and Asia. And yet despite increasing business and cultural ties between their domains, there were to be no further significant direct encounters between the rulers of Greco-Roman and Chinese societies after the confrontation at Alexandria Eschate.
From Alexandria Eschate, I continue my journey eastward across the fertile Ferghana Valley. I proceed with a group of merchants bound for Kashgar. Thanks to my modern journey to the Ferghana Valley and its surrounding mountains in 2017, I am theoretically prepared with a terrifying sense of what to come. While staying within the Ferghana Valley in the city of Osh in Kyrgyzstan that year, I ventured lightly into the mountains separating the Ferghana Valley from Xinjiang.
Standing in those mountains near Osh at that time, I contemplated China’s territory on the other side. Could I make it, if I just kept going? Having already flown across Kyrgyzstan, and having thus seen the true scope of these mountains from the air, I could only feel a sense of hopelessness while I stood in the high-altitude snow and gazed off toward Xinjiang. Confined at night to my hotel room in Osh, I could only linger idly and wonder at the courage of the adventurers who routinely and fearlessly crossed that formidable barrier. Alas, I am blessed by the gods with another chance to try my luck. My present fourth-century expedition from Alexandria Eschate will certainly pass through Osh. It is after a night’s sleep in the settlements around modern Osh, on the easternmost part of the Ferghana Valley, that we shall commence our taxing journey through the mountains which divide us from Kashgar.
In the ancient world, there are countless merchants who regularly traverse the mountains separating the Ferghana Valley from modern Xinjiang. And it is with them that I must travel if I want any chance of reaching China. Incredibly, our journey will not end even after those mountains are crossed. Because as soon as the surviving traveler reaches the Tarim Basin (modern Xinjiang) on the other side, the colossal Taklamakan Desert greets him as a deadly menace. And the heartlands of China are still some distance further even once a traveler succeeds in getting around that. It is perhaps no wonder, with such awesome lengths and barriers facing any lunatic who might strive to proceed all the way from Britain to China, that these networks proved nearly impossible for any one individual to successfully traverse.
Above: The Oasis Kingdoms of the Tarim Basin, sprinkled across the edges of the Taklamakan Desert between Kashgar and China, in the third century AD
Kashgar, the first city which greets me on the other side of the mountains, is the gateway to the Tarim Basin of modern Xinjiang. It is in Kashgar where Sogdian merchant caravans converge. They pause briefly from their incessant east-west journeys. They rest, exchange goods, and seek entertainment within the inns and caravansaries. After our stopover for relaxation and trade in Kashgar, we will continue together on the long roads which wrap hundreds of miles eastward around the desert. Heading toward the small kingdom of Loulan near the Great Wall, we will need to pass through the Taklamakan’s many surrounding oasis kingdoms and town states, venturing over 600 miles around that enormous and terrifying wasteland. Although stability has been shaky in recent years, most of these small powers have long served as vassals to the Chinese state. With their aid, we hope to arrive alive at the Jade Gate: an entry into China through the Great Wall on the other side of the Taklamakan.
For millennia, the enormous difficulties in crossing this region of rugged mountains, vast steppe, and punishing desert have kept East Asia in a state of deep isolation from Western Eurasia. But Han China’s expansion in the aftermath of Zhang Qian’s explorations was the pivotal force which made long-distance trade across this harsh region possible. For centuries, Persian, Greek, and Indian empires had expanded up to the point of Kashgar before stalling in the face of the formidable Taklamakan Desert and the stupefyingly enormous mountains all around it. Even if a merchant reached lands beyond that, the militant Xiongnu pastoralists on the outskirts of China, precursors of the Huns who would later ravage the Romans, could easily intercept any further movement toward China. Those militant Xiongnu nomads not only harassed the oasis kingdoms at the edges of the Taklamakan Desert; they also dominated the Hexi Corridor, a stretch of land over 600 miles long (equal to the distance already to be traversed crossing the Taklamakan) which connects the Tarim Basin to Han China.
Han Chinese expansion, however, drove the Xiongnu out from the Hexi Corridor and then integrated numerous Tarim Basin city-states into China’s diplomatic tributary network. All of this dramatically eased long-distance travel between the Ferghana Valley and the Han capital of Cang’an, supporting a process of regional economic and political integration. Rather than simply threatening them with military conquest, the Chinese convinced the oasis kingdoms to shift their loyalties from the Xiongnu to the Han in exchange for massive quantities of gifts especially in the form of silk. Chinese generosity must have been preferred to Xiongnu raids. But in case it was not, China also deployed military garrisons who would guarantee peace and security for all the merchants seeking safe transit between the oasis kingdoms of the Tarim Basin, through the heavily militarized Hexi Corridor, and onward to Chang’an.
Above: Han Expansion across the Hexi Corridor and into the Tarim Basin (wikimedia)
When necessary, China made clear that its military, under the command of the Western Protector General, was the supreme authority in the region, before whom many rulers came to pledge personal loyalty. Rulers of small town states and oasis kingdoms who proved challenging could be deposed. Tactics could sometimes be brutal, but China’s political dominance across the region nevertheless provided a security umbrella for the First Silk Roads Era. Through trade, China was introduced to wine made from grapes, the Roman Empire became addicted to Chinese silk, and religious movements spread across further distances than ever before. Countless Chinese, Sogdian, and local elites must have made their fortunes in these far flung oasis kingdoms. The kingdoms’ seemingly improbable existence, based on the flow of mountain water, was all there was to make such global commerce possible despite the incredible obstacles posed by the Taklamakan Desert. This startlingly narrow thread enabled events in the Mediterranean to have an impact as far away as China.
The Taklamakan is a massive and deadly wasteland which dominates the majority of the Tarim Basin. Crossing it alive, especially in the ancient world, is hopeless. But this scorching hot hell scape is flanked by enormous mountain ranges, down which flow the steady quantities of rainwater that have long been harnessed by the small city-states whose delicate polities dot the northern and southern routes around the Taklamakan. It is these tiny oasis kingdoms and town states, populated largely by an ancient Indo-European people called the Tocharians, which were steadily integrated by various means into Han China’s economic and political network.
The first oasis town I pass through on my way east is Khotan in modern Xinjiang. There are two major routes around the Taklamakan, one in the north and one in the south. Khotan sits at the edges of mountains on the southern route. Had I made my way here via the Red Sea, Arabia, the Indian Ocean, and India instead of by way of Persia and Afghanistan, it is here in Khotan where such an alternative path would have finally crossed with the one I have taken. From Khotan, there is a lengthy and treacherously narrow trail through the mountains out into Kashmir, and many ancient travelers have left carvings in the rocks along the way commemorating their journeys through this so-called Karakorum route. This is the same route described earlier by a Chinese envoy, where men and horses sometimes fell to their deaths down the great precipies along which all travelers had to perilously proceed.
Setting out on a trip like that, death must have seemed like an immediate possibility, and many of the travelers did meet this fate before ever arriving in Khotan. Accordingly, they made appeals for divine protection. In his book The Roman Empire and the Silk Routes, Raoul McLaughlin cites an inscription from the era in which a Sogdian left the following message: “Nanai-Vandak, son of Narisaf, passed her on the tenth and requested this favor from the holy presence at Kart: may I reach [the Stone Tower] quickly and see my dear brother in good health.”
Others who braved the dangerous route between India and Khotan recorded more religiously motivated messages. Some were left by Zoroastrians, whose practices had endured in these parts long before the Sasanians’ Zoroastrian regime rose to power. Even during centuries of Greek political dominance, groups of Zoroastrians maintained a steadfast faith in Ahura Mazda, always standing for the Truth against the Lie despite pressures from Hellenistic deities. But other travelers left messages referencing Buddhism, a religion more recently arrived to places like Khotan. Many of those who wrote such messages were merchants. Others were missionaries and monks in the process of building an enduring network of Buddhist monasteries funded by the very same trade passing through such dangerous passes as this one.
While this whole area was once under the firm control of the Chinese, it has been outside the orbit of imperial power ever since Han China collapsed in 300 AD. But in the aftermath of the military dominance which once secured so much trade, there is now a new world of religious infrastructure which accomplishes the same. In addition to the state support Buddhism received from the Kushan rulers of Greco-Bactria in the first two centuries AD, it was was partly through close relationships with Sogdian merchants that Buddhism spread from India and into China via the connections nurtured by the Tarim Basin oasis kingdoms of modern Xinjiang. Growing numbers of Buddhist merchants, eager to attain some form of salvation through their generous donations to the monks, financially supported the construction of numerous Buddhist monasteries which are now sprinkled across the Tarim Basin kingdoms, cities, and town states.
In the early fourth century, they provide lodging and logistical support to the merchants passing through. The monasteries themselves have business operations which take advantage of the trade network, winning profits to supplement their donations. After the unifying Han political control ceased in 220 AD, the role of these monasteries in facilitating trade and travel must have become even more crucial, and it is on their services that me and my companions rely.
Between them are also the caravansaries. These are cheap motels catering to caravans with facilities for camels and goods. I share rooms with cosmopolitan commercial casts. I relish the nights of drinking in those inns; in the bars, I am surrounded by travelers, diplomats, and merchants representing every nation, religion, and language within a thousand miles. There we can exchange tips for the road, debate which religions teach the truth, and scheme to profit off global aristocratic demand for the luxuries we transport. Yet not all nights on the road are so animated. It is in the dim light of a monastery-run Khotan hostel that, alone and spooked, I wonder to myself about passage to India. Could I have made it here alive had I gone that way? Would I ever have set foot in Khotan had I dared come up through Kashmir?
I gaze the next day into the mountainous pass going southward from Khotan. Should I follow it, it would take me through hundreds of miles of perilous mountain all the way to India. I cannot help but reflect more on the messages left behind by the ancient travelers who daringly traverse it. I have noticed that some of these Indian and Sogdian travelers heading into the Tarim Basin were on their way to the Stone Tower, a mysterious settlement in the center of the Eurasia. Recall it was the Syrian merchant Maes who, beginning in the Roman Empire, had himself reached the same destination. How close, I wonder, did he come to where I am here in Khotan?
But the coordinates of the Stone Tower remain unknown even to 21st-century historians, and I simply cannot identify its location even as a fourth-century time traveler with a non-existent command of Sogdian. As much as I wish to find this mysterious settlement which served simultaneously as the edge and the center of the world for so many merchants, diplomats, and generals, I must press onward toward my next destination in the Tarim Basin: Loulan.
The oasis kingdom of Loulan, where I now arrive, was among the earliest entities pulled into China’s orbit during the Han expansion westward. Nearby Turfan, a similar oasis town-state, itself had long been threatened by Xiongnu raids; the kings there eagerly welcomed China’s military support and freely given silk. But Loulan, despite building close ties with Chinese diplomats, was less cooperative. As the gateway kingdom between China and the Tarim Basin, political dominance over the kings of Loulan was regularly contested between China and the Xiongnu for over two centuries. Each tried repeatedly to intervene in Loulan’s domestic politics, while the leaders of Loulan struggled to maintain the very existence of their small state against both Xiongnu and Chinese pressures. China mostly prevailed in this contest, turning Loulan into a puppet state. Chinese military garrisons and colonial settlers arrived in its vicinity to dilute local culture in favor of the Chinese while also helping maintain political control over the area.
And yet after centuries of struggle to survive politically, the town of Loulan itself, when I arrive here in the early fourth century, is doomed to be abandoned in roughly 330 AD. Around then, the Tarim River, whose water was all that sustained Loulan’s fragile population, will suddenly shift its course, leaving this place nearly as uninhabitable as the rest of the Tarim Basin. Loulan’s fate is a reminder of the dangers facing travelers passing through these lands, where the continued physical existence of the oasis kingdoms which house passing merchants and missionaries depends so closely on the whims of nature in a mostly hostile terrain.
From Loulan, I travel to the Jade Gate, an entrance into China through the farthest reaches of the Great Wall. I have finally crossed into the territory of my destination. In the 2000s, the Jade Gate just nearly marks the boundary between the modern provinces of Xinjiang and Ganju. But in the early 300s, crossing it leads to the Chinese garrison city of Dunhuang. Its name appropriately means “Blazing Beacon,” as it has long served as one of China’s most important garrison towns for operations against the constant threat of Xiongnu invasion. Like other Chinese cities such as Wuwei and Lanzhou, Dunhuang was one of the many command centers established by the Han Chinese. It was a crucial military outpost in the Chinese mission to secure the whole Hexi Corridor against a Xiongnu presence, thereby guaranteeing safe passage for trade and extending Chinese power.
But today around 320 AD, Dunhuang is not so far from the conflicts which characterize China’s Age of Disunity. I have come to China at the very wrong time; this period from 304 to 439 AD is known as the Era of the Sixteen Kingdoms. It has been a hundred years since the collapse of the Han Dynasty which brought so much stability to this area. Wars have raged recently across these lands as ambitious generals dare to set up their own states. During the most dangerous time periods, Sogdian merchants have even found themselves stranded in Chinese cities, unable to depart across battle-stricken territories. Critical garrison cities like Wuwei and Lanzhou, from which Chinese troops once provided a united front of security across the Hexi Corridor, have found their control contested between the various warlords who rise and fall around northern China, dividing its cities amongst a retinue of smaller and mutually hostile powers. The political landscape is so chaotic and war-torn that, in the immediate years before my passage through the Jade Gate, the Xiongnu have completely broken through Chinese defensive lines. They recently sacked two ancient Chinese capitals (Louyang in 311 AD and Chang’an in 316 AD).
It is unclear how many merchants currently dare to proceed through the lands ahead, contested as they are between the Xiongnu cavalry forces and the divided Chinese warlords. If they are willing, it might be thanks to the profits accruing to them by their successful transportation of goods across such a dangerous region. Or it might be a zeal to spread religious teachings and philosophies which moves them deeper into China despite the risks involved. It is during the Age of Disunity that Buddhism, taking advantage of a collapse in Confucian power structures and a shaken confidence in traditional teachings, is able to make its most significant progress across China.
The dangerous military situation I encounter in the crucial 600-mile long Hexi Corridor, my only possible path for reaching the ancient Han capital of Chang’an, is another reminder of how fragile and ephemeral are the opportunities for any person seeking a full journey across Eurasia in antiquity. Had I only come a hundred years earlier, in a time of political stability from here to Rome, I could easily reach Chang’an. And yet if I can summon up motives grounded in gold or God, maybe I still can. The continued construction of Buddhist monasteries and Manichaean churches, as well as the improbable endurance of at least some commerce even in the midst of all the turmoil which rages across the Hexi Corridor, is a reminder that there are important forces, both spiritual and economic, which move countless adventurers to disregard the most deadly obstacles in their quest for travel. But I must also trust that the pure desire to simply discover something new can also propel the most daring journeys. Could this have been Zhang Qian’s true motivation when he, long before any peace or stability had been established in the region, accomplished his adventures? I like to think it was a thirst to explore, rather than glory, gold, or God, which inspired him to press ever deeper into Central Asia on behalf of his emperor.
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