Hu · Turkic Atlas

Hu, 胡, is a Chinese word for foreigners of the north and the north-west. It is not the name of one people. Its sense follows the frontier. In the Shiji’s account of Zhang Qian, the hu are the Xiongnu: the Han “wished to destroy the hu”, and the great men of the Wusun “all feared the hu”.^[1] Zhang Qian’s companion Ganfu is called a former hu.^[1]

In the following centuries, the word came to mean above all the Iranian-speakers of the west. In the Göktürk and Tang period it mostly means the Sogdians.^[2] The Zhou Shu calls An Nuopantuo, the envoy of 545, a hu of Jiuquan.^[3] The hu of the Hou Han Shu who traded every day at the gate cannot be shown to be Sogdians alone, for that would need “hu of Kangju”. Nor can it be shown that they were not.^[4] In 227, the “hu lords” of the Yuezhi and of Kangju at Liangzhou are named. The hu from Kangju can only have been Sogdians.^[5] The garrison companies of the Han frontier north of Dunhuang bore names such as “who devours the hu”, “who crushes the hu” and “who subdues the hu”.^[6]^[7] In the eighth century, the Sogdians who came with the Uyghurs were “hu with nine names”.^[8]

In the names of plants and goods, the word does not fix a country. A mint called hu bohe is thought to have come from Korea. Pepper and dried ginger of the hu are Indian. The salt of the hu is a salt of the Tibetan borderlands. The hu turnip, hu cai, is tied by Chinese tradition to Mongolia.^[9] Some plants native to China carry the word as well.^[10] A name with hu therefore does not show that a plant came from the west, still less that it came from the Sogdians.^[11] No such name can be shown with certainty for the Han period.^[12] A datable example comes from the garrison lists of the Jin period at the Lop Nor. They count 395 “hoes of the hu”, newly received, and small iron saws of the hu.^[13] The editor of the lists takes the hoes for spades of a kind common in eastern Turkestan and unknown in the Chinese heartland.^[13]

A Tang tradition says that the people of the north avoided the word under the Later Zhao, because its founder Shi Le (273–333), whose people were the Jie, was himself of hu descent. The tradition adds that the cucumber hu gua was renamed huang gua.^[14] Another work puts the renaming in 608, under the Sui.^[14] Both accounts were written long afterwards. The taboo may be a later explanation.^[15]

References

^ a b Shiji, juan 123
^ Laufer 1919, p. 194–195
^ Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50
^ de la Vaissière 2005a, p. 64
^ de la Vaissière 2005a, p. 60
^ Chavannes 1913, x
^ de la Vaissière 2005a, p. 57
^ de la Vaissière 2005a, p. 308
^ Laufer 1919, p. 198–201
^ Laufer 1919, p. 195
^ Laufer 1919, p. 201
^ Laufer 1919, p. 202
^ a b Chavannes 1913, p. 168
^ a b Laufer 1919, p. 300
^ Laufer 1919, p. 298,300

Sources

Shiji, juan 123
Zhou Shu (Book of Zhou), juan 50

Literature

Étienne de la Vaissière, Sogdian Traders: A History (2005)
Berthold Laufer, Sino-Iranica. Chinese Contributions to the History of Civilization in Ancient Iran (1919)
Édouard Chavannes, Les documents chinois découverts par Aurel Stein dans les sables du Turkestan oriental (1913)