Yuezhi

The Yuezhi lived between Dunhuang and the Qilian range.^[1] At the end of the third century BC, they were one of the two powers that the Shiji names as strong when the Xiongnu were not. These were the Donghu in the east and the Yuezhi in the west.^[2] They matter chiefly as the people the Xiongnu destroyed. Their flight set off a movement that carried them to the Oxus, and the Han histories derive the Kushan realm from them.^[3]

Country and neighbours

The Han Shu says that the Great Yuezhi were a moving state in origin. They followed their herds and shared the customs of the Xiongnu.^[4] Their bowmen are counted at more than a hundred thousand, which made them strong enough to look down on the Xiongnu.^[4] The Shiji puts the figure at one to two hundred thousand.^[1] Both histories say that the Yuezhi first lived between Dunhuang and the Qilian.^[5]

There are two views about the location of their country.^[6] Some scholars follow the usual identification of the Qilian of the Han texts with the range south of the Gansu corridor that bears the name today.^[6] Others argue that the Qilian of the Han period was the eastern Tianshan, around the Karlik Tagh. In that case the Yuezhi country reached from the foot of the eastern Tianshan south to Dunhuang.^[6] Still others take up another question, the division of the Hexi between the Yuezhi and the Wusun. They put the Yuezhi in the east, around Liangzhou, and the Wusun in the west, around Shazhou.^[7]

They did not live alone there. Zhang Qian told the court that the Wusun had once lived beside the Yuezhi between the Qilian and Dunhuang, as a small state.^[8] The Xiongnu were their neighbours on the other side. The Shiji places the right-hand kings of the Xiongnu in the west, from the commandery of Shang upward, where they bordered the Yuezhi, the Di and the Qiang.^[2]

The blows of the Xiongnu

Duman sent his heir to them as a hostage. Then he attacked them, meaning the hostage to be killed. The heir stole a horse and rode home.^[2] As chanyu, that heir, Bagatur, first destroyed the Donghu. When he came back, he struck west and drove the Yuezhi away.^[2] His letter of 176 BC reports that he had sent the Right Worthy King against them, and that the king had destroyed them utterly. It adds that Loulan, the Wusun, the Hujie and twenty-six states beside them were now Xiongnu.^[2] The Han court read the letter and decided against war. The chanyu had just broken the Yuezhi and was riding on his victory.^[2]

His son Laoshang killed their king and made his skull a drinking vessel.^[5] The vessel was still in use at the Xiongnu court in 43 BC.^[9]^[10] Scholars date the Yuezhi departure from their homeland for the Ili in two ways. Some scholars tie the move to Laoshang’s victory. Others date it to Bagatur’s western campaign of 177 to 176 BC, the one his letter reports.^[11]

The Little Yuezhi

Not all of them went. The Shiji says that the small groups who could not leave kept to the southern mountains among the Qiang and were called the Little Yuezhi.^[1] The Han Shu says the same.^[4] They were still there when the Han reached the Qilian. In the summer campaign of 121 BC, the Han general Huo Qubing crossed Juyan, passed the Little Yuezhi and attacked the Qilian mountains.^[12] The edict that records it counts the Qiutu King and 2,500 men who surrendered with their people among the spoils.^[12] Officers who had followed him as far as the Little Yuezhi received the rank of Left Shuzhang.^[12] More than a century and a half later, the Little Yuezhi were still in Han service. In the summer of the eighth year of Jianwu, AD 32, the Han general Dou Rong joined the emperor at Gaoping. He brought the governors of five commanderies, with Qiang and Little Yuezhi, some tens of thousands of foot and horse.^[13]

The Great Yuezhi in the west

The Han learned of the Yuezhi’s fate from Xiongnu who had surrendered. They said that the Xiongnu had broken the Yuezhi king and made his head a drinking vessel. The Yuezhi, in flight, bore a lasting grudge but had no one to strike with.^[1] The emperor wanted such an ally and called for a volunteer. Zhang Qian, a gentleman of the palace since the Jianyuan years, answered and set out for the Yuezhi.^[1] The Xiongnu seized him and held him for more than ten years.^[1] One count dates the start of his captivity to 139 BC.^[14]

The chanyu had Zhang Qian brought before him. He said that the Yuezhi lay to his north. The Han could no more send envoys through his land to them than he could send envoys to Yue through the Han’s.^[1] There are two interpretations of the remark. Some scholars take it as a plain statement that the Yuezhi were then still in the Ili valley, north-west of the Xiongnu. They put their departure from the valley in the years between 133 and 129 BC.^[15] Others take it as the ruse of a chanyu who did not want the Han and the Yuezhi to meet. They look for the departure in Laoshang’s reign.^[16]

Zhang Qian reached them by way of Dayuan and Kangju, and found them changed. The Shiji says that the Hu had killed their king and that they had set up his heir. The Han Shu says that they had set up his wife.^[17] They had made Daxia their subject and lived there. The land was rich, and there were few raiders. They were content with their ease, and since the Han was far away, they had no wish to avenge themselves on the Xiongnu.^[1] Zhang Qian went on from the Yuezhi to Daxia. In the end he could not get a definite answer from the Yuezhi.^[1] The Shiji places them two or three thousand li west of Dayuan, north of the Gui river, the Amu Darya of today. Daxia lay to the south, Anxi to the west and Kangju to the north.^[1]

The Han Shu counts the realm: a hundred thousand households, four hundred thousand people and a hundred thousand men able to bear arms. The seat was at the city of Jianshi, and the realm was not under the Protector of the Western Regions.^[4] The Hou Han Shu gives the same figures and writes the seat Lanshi. The two histories therefore give one count and not two.^[3] The Han kept its interest in them. The Han Shu says that in the time of the chanyu Uwei, the Han opened a way west to the Yuezhi and Daxia. Its closing judgement lists the isolation of the southern Qiang and the Yuezhi among the purposes of Wudi’s western policy.^[18]

From the Ili to the Oxus

The Han histories tell the road west in two versions. The Shiji says that after the Xiongnu defeat, the Yuezhi went far away and passed Dayuan. They struck Daxia in the west and made it subject, and they set their royal court north of the Gui river.^[1] The Han Shu has the same road with more on it. In its version of Zhang Qian’s report, the Yuezhi first attacked and killed Nandoumi, king of the Wusun, and took his land. The Wusun people fled to the Xiongnu, and the infant Kunmo was brought up there.^[19] The Shiji gives the same story with the Xiongnu as the killers.^[1] When Kunmo grew up, he asked the chanyu to let him avenge his father. He attacked the Great Yuezhi, who moved west again to the land of Daxia. Kunmo took their people and stayed.^[19] The Yuezhi had already attacked the king of the Sai, who went far south, and had occupied his land.^[19]

Scholars have not settled the dating of the stages. One reckoning puts the first phase, which brought the Yuezhi to the borders of Bactria, at about 160 BC. It puts the Wusun attack on them between 133 and 129 BC.^[20] A second reckoning works the Han Shu out year by year. It puts the Yuezhi killing of Nandoumi at about 200 BC, the year Kunmo was born. It puts Bagatur’s defeat of the Yuezhi at about 176, and the departure from the Ili in 133 to 129.^[14] On that reckoning, the Wusun drove them out of the Ili country between 133 and 129 BC. Their road west then led through Dayuan, the Ferghana valley.^[21]

The people the Yuezhi displaced moved in their turn. The Han Shu says that the Sai king went south and became lord of Jibin. The Sai tribes scattered and formed several states.^[4] Xiuxun, Juandu and others west and north of Shule were old Sai stock.^[4] The Han Shu adds that the Wusun, who settled in the land the Yuezhi had left, were a mixture of Sai and Yuezhi.^[4]

The five xihou

The Han Shu says that Daxia had no great ruler, only petty chiefs in its towns. Once the Yuezhi had moved in, they made all of them subject.^[4] The Han Shu lists five xihou, a title the Chinese write 翕侯, each with his own seat. They are Xiumi, at the city of Hemo; Shuangmi, at the city of Shuangmi; Guishuang, at the city of Huzao; Xidun, at the city of Bomao; and the fifth at the city of Gaofu.^[4] It gives each distance from the Protector’s seat and from the Yang Pass. It says that all five belonged to the Great Yuezhi.^[4]

The Hou Han Shu agrees on the division and on the first three names. It writes the fourth Fudun, where the Han Shu has Xidun, and names Dumi as the fifth.^[3] It adds that Gaofu was never subject to the Yuezhi, and that the Han Shu was wrong to count it among the five.^[3] The second history thus corrects the first.

Its account of what followed is the one the Kushan article builds on. A hundred and more years after the division, the Guishuang xihou, Qiujiuque, attacked and destroyed the other four. He made himself king and named the realm Guishuang.^[3] He invaded Anxi and took the land of Gaofu. Then he destroyed Puda and Jibin and held them all.^[3] His son Yangaozhen destroyed Tianzhu and set a general over it.^[3] After that, the Yuezhi were at their richest and strongest. All the states called their king the king of Guishuang, while the Han, going by the old name, went on saying Great Yuezhi.^[3] One reckoning takes the move west to have fallen in 133 to 129 BC. It therefore puts the foundation of the Guishuang realm at about 20 BC.^[22] The Kushan Empire has its own article.

Language and identity

The sources do not record what language the Yuezhi spoke. They are usually equated with the Tochari of the western sources, whose name survives in the Tokharistan of the Islamic authors.^[20] Strabo names the Tochari among the nomads who took Bactria from the Greeks, together with the Asioi, Pasianoi and Sakarauloi.^[20] Scholars have not settled whether the Tochari of Bactria were of the same stock as the speakers of the two Tocharian languages of the Tarim. Those languages belong to the western branch of Indo-European, while the Kushan state that rose in former Greek Bactria used an East Iranian language.^[23] A study of the Yuezhi migration left a question open. It asked which of the four peoples of Strabo the Yuezhi of the Han histories were, if any, and how they relate to the Great Yuezhi of the Wei Shu.^[24] Whether the Kushan house itself came out of them is likewise unsettled.

References

^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Shiji, juan 123
^ a b c d e f Shiji, juan 110
^ a b c d e f g h Hou Han Shu, juan 88
^ a b c d e f g h i j Han Shu, juan 96
^ a b Shiji, juan 123; Han Shu, juan 96
^ a b c 内田吟風 1938a, p. 298
^ Kurakichi 1930, p. 15–23
^ Han Shu, juan 61; Han Shu, juan 96
^ Han Shu, juan 94
^ Kurakichi 1930, p. 53
^ 内田吟風 1938a, p. 313
^ a b c Shiji, juan 111; Han Shu, juan 55
^ Hou Han Shu, juan 23
^ a b 内田吟風 1938a, p. 317
^ 内田吟風 1938a, p. 315–317
^ 内田吟風 1938a, p. 315
^ Shiji, juan 123; Han Shu, juan 61
^ Han Shu, juan 94; Han Shu, juan 96
^ a b c Han Shu, juan 61
^ a b c Golden 1992, p. 52
^ 内田吟風 1938b, p. 401
^ 内田吟風 1938b, p. 422
^ Golden 1992, p. 54
^ 内田吟風 1938b, p. 423

Sources

Shiji, juan 110, 111, 123
Han Shu, juan 55, 61, 94, 96 (after Shiji)
Hou Han Shu, juan 23, 88

Literature

Peter B. Golden, An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (1992)
Emre-E. Yavuz, The Gokturk Empire: 2nd Edition (2025)
Uchida Ginpū 内田吟風, 月氏のバクトリア遷移に關する地理的年代的考證（上） (1938)
Uchida Ginpū 内田吟風, 月氏のバクトリア遷移に關する地理的年代的考證（下） (1938)
Étienne de la Vaissière, Sogdian Traders: A History (2005)
Shiratori Kurakichi, On the Territory of the Hsiung-nu Prince Hsiu-t'u Wang and His Metal Statues for Heaven-worship (1930)