The time gap between these two periods of evidence is bridged by historical indications from Chinese and Greek sources for the second century BCE, relating to the Yuezhi, or, as they are later called by the Greeks, the Tochari, a powerful horde who had long dominated the Kansu area, and who are plausibly identified as the ancestral speakers of the “Tocharian” dialects. They had been a numerous and powerful tribe, well able to maintain themselves against the encroachments of neighbors. However, the rising power of their northern borderers, the Xiong-nu/Hsiung-nu (probably ancestors of the later Huns), was beginning to make itself felt, and in 176 BCE the Yuezhi were heavily defeated by Maodun (d. 174 BCE), the rising chief (
shanyu) of the Xiong-nu. A few years later, they were again decisively defeated by his son and successor Jizhu (entitled the
Laoshang), and their chieftain was killed. This was the notorious occasion when the skull of the defeated Yuezhi chief was made into a drinking-cup for the use of the conqueror.
Following the defeat of the formerly powerful Yuezhi confederation by the Xiongnu near Dunhuang in c.162 BCE, the Yuezhi dynasty and those tribes that remained loyal to it commenced a migration away from the Gansu that was destined to completely reshape the geopolitics of ancient Inner Asia. Both the
Han Shu and
Shi Ji provide evidence of their departure: "the Yuezhi had fled furious with the Xiongnu", the 'Yuezhi had fled and bore a constant grudge against the Xiongnu'. The decision to migrate, despite still having a force of perhaps 100,000 armed archer warriors at their disposal is indicative of the severity of the defeat, and also of the steadily increasing power of the Xiongnu under Maodun and Jizhu during the preceding decades. The Yuezhi dynasty may in fact have considered such a move several times during the fourteen years between Maodun's initial raid against them in 176, and their ultimate defeat in 162. Indeed, the fact that the migration seems to have been conducted in an orderly fashion suggests something of a planned strategic relocation rather than a rout. The Yuezhi's original intention was to move some 2000 kilometres to the northwest and resettle in the valley of the Ili River, a region occupied by a group of Sakas (or Scythians). They had no intention, nor any idea, that this journey would only be the first stage of a migration that ultimately would take them half away across Central Asia, until thirty years later they would find themselves in secure occupation of the fertile river valleys north of the Amu Darya, and masters of the former Greek kingdom of Bactria. Leaving the Gansu in 162 the Yuezhi headed northwest towards the Ili Valley, settling near Ysyk Kul in present-day Kazakhstan. Corroborative evidence for this new location is provided by the Greek geographer Ptolemy who mentions a group called the
Tagouraioi (clearly a variation on Tocharian, the Indo-European language spoken by the core Yuezhi) dwelling near Ysyk Kul. Russian archaeologist Yu Zadneprovsky has noted a substantial number of podboy sites in the region, which he has tentatively identified as Yuezhi on the basis of their similarity to other podboy tombs discovered at the Haladun site near Minqin in the Central Gansu, which he also argues are Yuezhi. The Ysyk Kul region is rich in nomadic burial sites and some 370 tombs had been noted by as early as 1960. Of these, 80% were in pits, and attributed to the autonomous Sakas, and 17% in podboys, tentatively attributable to the Yuezhi.
The Chinese sources show that the Ili/Ysyk Kul region was already populated by the
Sai people, an eastern concentration of Sakas or Scythians *who probably spoke an Indo-Iranian language. Upon arriving at the Ili, the Yuezhi quickly displaced them: (The Yuezhi) 'attacked the king of the Sai (who) moved a considerable distance to the south and the Yuezhi then occupied his lands'. Most of the displaced Sakas subsequently undertook their own substantial migration, moving west and then south through the western Tarim Basin, crossing the so-called 'Suspended Crossing' (probably the Khunjerab Pass or similar, between present-day Xinjiang and northern Pakistan) before ultimately settling in Kashmir. The Yuezhi confederation occupied the former Sakan lands in the hope of permanently resettling there, and remained in residence for almost three decades. They no doubt felt they had successfully relocated, having escaped the Xiongnu menace and reestablished themselves in the fertile Ili Valley. They returned to their previous semi-nomadic, semi-sedentary lifeway and probably began to lose interest in Chinese/nomadic politics. But the
Kunmo of the Wusun, the former neighbours of the Yuezhi in the Gansu, could not forget the ill treatment his people had suffered as a result of a Yuezhi attack upon them in 173. Eventually he sought permission from his Xiongnu overlord (the new
ShanyuJunchen, successor to Jizhu who had died in 158) to pursue the Yuezhi into the Ili and 'avenge his father's wrongs'. In 132 BCE the
Kunmo led a powerful force of mounted Wusun archers into the region which attacked and routed the no doubt surprised and dismayed Yuezhi, forcing them to once again uproot and resume their long march to the west. The sources indicate that within a short space of time the Yuezhi passed through a region called
Dayuan 'The Yuezhi thereupon went far away,
passing Dayuan and proceeding west' and then through a land to the southwest called
Kangju. Although the exact route remains a matter of some conjecture, the evidence of both the Chinese annals, and of Russian and Central Asian archaeology, leaves little doubt that the Dayuan through which the migrating horde passed can only be identified with the Ferghana Valley. The Yuezhi apparently met with little resistance from the urbanised Dayuans/Ferghanese, and after perhaps spending some months (the winter of 132/1?) in southwestern Ferghana, they passed on unmolested. Zadneprovsky has also noted several single podboy burials that have been unearthed in the southwestern, northern and eastern parts of the Ferghana Valley, most concentrated in the Lyailyaka-Isfara-Sokha interfluve in southern Kyrgyzstan where over 300 podboy burials have been located. Although originally attributed to a separate culture by Baruzdin in 1960, Zadneprovsky argues for their re-attribution to the migrating Yuezhi, on the basis of their similarity to podboy sites also tentatively attributable to the Yuezhi in both the Gansu and Ysyk Kul region. Perhaps in the spring of 131 BCE then, the Yuezhi most probably moved from Ferghana into the 'state' of Kangju, probably the Zeravshan Valley in the heart of Sogdiana. Some four or five years later they were followed through the region by Han envoy Zhang Qian, who was led there by guides and interpreters provided for him by the king of Dayuan. It is references to Kangju in the
Han Shu and
Shi Ji (and by Ptolemy in his
Geographica), as well as the discoveries of Soviet and Russian archaeologists, that has provided evidence identifying Kangju with Sogdia, and thus of the role of Sogdia in both the migration of the Yuezhi and the mission of Zhang Qian. The intention of this paper is to consider the origins of the relationship that developed between the Kangju and Yuezhi dynasties, a relationship that subsequently evolved to provide vital political and military stability in the region throughout the Kushan Era. The initial task is to consider evidence that allows for the conclusive identification of Kangju as Sogdia.
Attempts by scholars over several centuries to geographically locate and delineate Kangju have not been helped by textual corruption in both the
Han Shu and
Shi Ji. And yet, although several words and even whole sentences are missing, the information provided is still in the same order as that for the other 'western states', so that any gaps cannot be substantial. Certainly the distances between Xian and Beitian are not quite reconciled, and the distance from Beitian and the king's summer capital (9104
li or 3641 kms) is surely corrupt. Hulsewe and Loewe suggest that the text may originally have read 'ninety one
li' (or 36 kilometres, although this seems too low), while Pelliot noted Wang Kuowei's suggestion of 1104
li (441 kms) which is a more viable figure within a country described as 'small'. The identities of both Beitian and (Le)yueni(di) are almost impossible to determine, however, Wang Kuowei identified the former (impossibly) with Ysyk Kul while Pulleyblank has argued that the latter might 'represent some form of the name Jaxartes'. The distance between Beitian and (Le)yueni(di) is described as 'seven days on horseback' in the
Han Shu, which Hulsewe and Loewe suggest equals about 500
li i.e. marches of seventy
lior 28 kilometres per day through the mountainous country of the region. The identification of these two principal settlements with Samarkand and Bukhara is one obvious possibility, although the distance between the two cities by road is about 200 or so kilometres which does not reconcile with any of the given statistics. Pulleyblank discusses the possible Tokharian philological origin of the name 'Kangju', in his reconstruction of 'Old Chinese' *
khan-kiah. In the Tokharian vocabulary (Tokharian 1A) there is the word
kank, which means 'stone'. Thus Kangju could mean the 'Stone Country', i.e. Samarkand (or equally Tashkend as 'Stone City'). A.K. Narain offers a precise geographical location for Kangju: 'the northeastern wedge of modern Uzbekistan into Kirghiziya and Kazakhstan; the eastern part of this wedge formed part of Dayuan. This description, however, does not allow for the inclusion of any lands south of the Syr Darya, thus excluding the entire Zeravshan Valley, the cultural heart and population centre of Sogdia. The information provided by the texts is hardly ambiguous, however, and clearly suggests the identification of the 'state' of Kangju with ancient Sogdia. Kangju is to the north of the Amu Darya and the Yuezhi's principal city of Jianshi (Khalchayan in the Surkhan Darya valley?); to the west and northwest of the Ferghana Valley (where it also apparently adjoined the clearly very substantial, post-132 realm of the Wusun); and southeast of the western realms of the Xiongnu (which must therefore have included the steppes of present-day Kazakhstan). Kangju incorporated lands on either side of the middle Syr Darya, particularly the densely occupied Zeravshan Valley south of the Syr Darya, and must surely have included Samarkand and Bukhara (as Shishkina also argues below). Hence, according to the textual evidence at least, Kangju can only convincingly be located within the general geographical region of ancient Sogdiana. Here is a good Chinese-made insight towards the Tocharians before their exodus westwards:
- Population/Size - Households: 120,000 Individuals: 600,000
- The physical dimensions of the Kangju realm may not have been vast, but the population was substantial, which allowed the ruling dynasty to maintain a formidable military force.
- Military Strength - Persons able to bear arms: 120,000
- 'They have 80,000 or 90,000 skilled archer warriors'
- The Chinese were clearly impressed by the strength of Kangju, finding them arrogant and militarily self-confident. The military resources of Kangju (120,000 armed men, 80,000 - 90,000 of which were skilled and presumably mounted archers) were substantial, and would not easily be defeated by the Han. Presumably the ruling Kangju dynasty and its pastoralist allies provided the bulk of the mounted archer warriors, while the sedentised agriculturists of the river valleys could be relied upon to provide the remainder. Eschewing any military option then, Zhang Qian argued instead (in his report to Wudi) that the Kangjuans could be persuaded by Han gifts and favours to consider becoming subjects (or at least allies) of the Chinese. In short, Kangju was powerful and remote enough to resist Han attempts to join their tributary confederacy by military means, but was clearly under some sort of sovereignty obligation to both the Yuezhi and the Xiongnu.
- Its people likewise are nomads and resemble the Yuezhi in their customs'
- The way of life of the dominant Kangju faction was probably that of semi-nomadic militarised pastoral nomadism, similar to the assessment of the lifeway of the Yuezhi soon after their arrival north of the Amu Darya that Zhang Qian provided to the Han court. If the Kangju state is thus to be identified with ancient Sogdia under Kangju dynastic hegemony, then a brief account of Sogdian history prior to the arrival of the Yuezhi is required to identify the probable date of the establishment of Kangju power, and also to clarify the archaeological and textual evidence of subsequent Yuezhi/Kangju interaction.
The Yuezhi were visited by a Chinese mission, led by Zhang Qian in 126 BCE, that was seeking an offensive alliance with the Yuezhi to counter the Xiongnu threat to the north. Although the request for an alliance was denied by the son of the slain Yuezhi king, who preferred to maintain peace in Transoxiana rather than to seek revenge, Zhang Qian made a detailed account, reported in the
Shiji, that gives considerable insight into the situation in Central Asia at that time. Zhang Qian, who spent a year with the Yuezhi and in Bactria, relates that "the Great Yuezhi live 2,000 or 3,000
li (832-1,247 kilometers) west of Dayuan (Ferghana), north of the Gui (Oxus) river. They are bordered on the south by Daxia (Bactria), on the west by Anxi (Parthia), and on the north by Kangju (beyond the middle Jaxartes). They are a nation of nomads, moving from place to place with their herds, and their customs are like those of the Xiongnu. They have some 100,000 or 200,000 archer warriors." Although they remained north of the Oxus for a while, they apparently obtained the submission of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom to the south of the Oxus. The Yuezhi were organized into five major tribes, each led by a
yabgu, or tribal chief, and known to the Chinese as
Xiūmì (休密) in Western Wakhān and Zibak,
Guishuang (貴霜) in Badakhshan and the adjoining territories north of the Oxus,
Shuangmi (雙靡) in the region of Shughnan,
Xidun (肸頓) in the region of Balkh, and
Dūmì (都密) in the region of Termez. A description of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom was made by Zhang Qian after the conquest by Yuezhi: "Daxia (Greco-Bactria) is located over 2,000 li southwest of Dayuan, south of the Gui (Oxus) river. Its people cultivate the land and have cities and houses. Their customs are like those of Ta-Yuan. It has no great ruler but only a number of petty chiefs ruling the various cities. The people are poor in the use of arms and afraid of battle, but they are clever at commerce. After the Great Yuezhi moved west and attacked the lands, the entire country came under their sway. The population of the country is large, numbering some 1,000,000 or more persons. The capital is called the city of Lanshi (Bactra) (modern Balkh) and has a market where all sorts of goods are bought and sold." In a sweeping analysis of the physical types and cultures of Central Asia that he visited in 126 BCE, Zhang Qian reports that "although the states from Dayuan west to Anxi (Parthia), speak rather different languages, their customs are generally similar and their languages mutually intelligible. The men have deep-set eyes and profuse beards and whiskers. They are skilful 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."
Part III - The Invasion of Greco-Bactria, Gandhara and Hindu Kush (125 BCE - 20 BCE)
In 124 BCE, the Yuezhi were apparently involved in a war against the Parthians, in which the Parthian king Artabanus I of Parthia was wounded and died: "During the war against the Tochari, he (Artabanus) was wounded in the arm and died immediately" (Justin, Epitomes, XLII,2,2:
"Bello Tochariis inlato, in bracchio vulneratus statim decedit"). Some time after 124 BCE, possibly disturbed by further incursions of rivals from the north and apparently vanquished by the Parthian king Mithridates II, successor to Artabanus, the Yuezhi moved south to Bactria. Bactria had been conquered by the Greeks under Alexander the Great in 330 BCE and since settled by the Hellenistic civilization of the Seleucids and the Greco-Bactrians for two centuries. This event is recorded in Classical Greek sources, when Strabo presented them as a Scythian tribe and explained that the Tokhari—together with the Assianis, Passianis and Sakaraulis—took part in the destruction of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom in the second half of the 2nd century BCE:
"Most of the Scythians, beginning from the Caspian Sea, are called Dahae Scythae, and those situated more towards the east Massagetae and Sacae; the rest have the common appellation of Scythians, but each separate tribe has its peculiar name. All, or the greatest part of them, are nomads. The best known tribes are those who deprived the Greeks of Bactriana, the Asii, Pasiani, Tochari, and Sacarauli, who came from the country on the other side of the Jaxartes, opposite the Sacae and Sogdiani." The last Greco-Bactrian king, Heliocles I, retreated and moved his capital to the Kabul Valley. The eastern part of Bactria was occupied by Pashtun people. As they settled in Bactria from around 125 BCE, the Yuezhi became Hellenized to some degree, as suggested by their adoption of the Greek alphabet and by some remaining coins, minted in the style of the Greco-Bactrian kings, with the text in Greek. The area of Bactria they settled came to be known as Tokharistan, since the Yuezhi were called
Tókharoi by the Greeks. Commercial relations with China also flourished, as many Chinese missions were sent throughout the 1st century BCE: "The largest of these embassies to foreign states numbered several hundred persons, while even the smaller parties included over 100 members... In the course of one year anywhere from five to six to over ten parties would be sent out." (
Shiji, trans. Burton Watson). The
Hou Hanshu also records the visit of Yuezhi envoys to the Chinese capital in 2 BCE, who gave oral teachings on Buddhist sutras to a student, suggesting that some Yuezhi already followed the Buddhist faith during the 1st century BCE. A later Chinese annotation in
Shiji made by Zhang Shoujie during the early 8th century, quoting Wan Zhen's
Strange Things from the Southern Region (Nanzhouzhi, a now-lost third-century text of from the Wu kingdom), describes the Kushans as living in the same general area north of India, in cities of Greco-Roman style, and with sophisticated handicraft. The quotes are dubious, as Wan Zhen probably never visited the Yuezhi kingdom through the Silk Road, though he might have gathered his information from the trading ports in the coastal south. The Chinese never adopted the term
Guishuang and continued to call them Yuezhi: "The Great Yuezhi [Kushans] is located about seven thousand
li (about 3000 km) north of India. Their land is at a high altitude; the climate is dry; the region is remote. The king of the state calls himself "son of heaven". There are so many riding horses in that country that the number often reaches several hundred thousand. City layouts and palaces are quite similar to those of Daqin (the Roman empire). The skin of the people there is reddish white. People are skilful at horse archery. Local products, rarities, treasures, clothing, and upholstery are very good, and even India cannot compare with it."
According to the Chinese chronicle, the
Hou han-shu, the territory gained by the Yuezhi in Bactria was divided between five tribal or regional chiefs (
hi-hou), those of Hiu-mi, Shuang-mi, Kuei-shang, Hi-tun, and Tu-mi. It is clear that the Kuei-shang represent the Kushans, but the others are difficult to identify. That Heraus was therefore the tribal chief of the Kuei-shang (Kushan) section of the Tochari, ruling towards the end of the first century BCE, or during the first century CE, seems probable enough. A coin discovered during 1992, allegedly from Badaḵšān but afterwards said to have been from Mir Zakah in Paktiā province, showing a helmeted ruler on the obverse, and a “king on prancing horse” on the reverse, and bearing an Iranian name, Naštēn, son of Xšatran, may also be an issue of one of these regional chiefs, evidently not a Kushan (Bopearachchi and Grenet, p. 306: “This does not rule out the theory that Naštēn may have ruled north of the Hindu Kush under a Yue-chi domination that was still not consolidated”). On epigraphic grounds, the editors date him after 50 BCE. The
Hou han-shu reports “More than a hundred years after this [i.e., the Yuezhi migration], the
hi-hou of Kuei-shang, called K’iu-tsiu-k’io, attacked the four other
hi-hou; he styled himself king; the name of his kingdom was Kuei-shang. He invaded An-si [Parthia] and seized the territory of Kao-fu [Kabul]; moreover he triumphed over Pu-ta and Ki-pin [Kashmir?] and entirely possessed those kingdoms. K’iu-tsiu-k’io died more than eighty years old” (Konow, 1929, p. lxii). K’iu-tsiu-k’io is generally identified with the Kushan king Kujula Kadphises, named on late imitations of the Indo-Greek Hermaeus coin series in the Kabul valley region, and subsequently as the “Prince Kapa” on the celebrated Takht-i Bahi (remains of a Buddhist monastery in Pakistan) inscription (Konow, 1929, p. 62). There he appears as subordinate to the Indo-Parthian ruler Gondophares. The inscription is dated to the latter’s twenty-sixth year, and the year 103 of an era that is evidently the Azes/Vikrama Era of 58 BCE. Thus the Azes date of the inscription is 103 – 58 = 45 CE, and the first year of Gondophares (presumably at Taxila) is 45 - 26 = 19 CE. By the end of the 1st century BCE, one of the five tribes of the Yuezhi, the Guishuang (貴霜, origin of name
Kushan adopted in the West), managed to take control of the Yuezhi confederation. From that point, the Yuezhi extended their control over the northwestern area of the Indian subcontinent, founding the
Kushan Empire, which was to rule the region for several centuries. The Yuezhi came to be known as Kushan among Western civilizations; however, the Chinese kept calling them Yuezhi throughout their historical records over a period of several centuries.
