Zhang Qian

Zhang Qian was the Han envoy whom the Xiongnu held for ten years and who then went on to the west regardless. He was the first Chinese to see Ferghana, the Yuezhi, Bactria and Kangju and to report on them to the throne. His mission was part of the Han search for allies against the Xiongnu.^[1] The Shiji tells his story in chapter 123. It opens that chapter with one line: “The traces of Dayuan were seen first by Zhang Qian.”^[2]

The mission to the Yuezhi

Zhang Qian came from Hanzhong. He served as a gentleman of the palace in the Jianyuan period, 140 to 135 BC.^[2] At that time the emperor questioned Xiongnu who had surrendered, and they all said the same thing. The Xiongnu had defeated the king of the Yuezhi and made a drinking cup of his skull. The Yuezhi had fled and hated the Xiongnu, but had no one to join them in an attack.^[2] The Han wanted to destroy the Xiongnu and sought an envoy who would go to the Yuezhi. The road ran through Xiongnu country. Zhang Qian volunteered.^[2]

He set out from Longxi with Ganfu, a slave of Xiongnu birth belonging to the Tangyi family.^[2] The Xiongnu caught them and sent them to the chanyu. “The Yuezhi are north of me,” the chanyu said; “how can the Han send envoys there? If I wanted to send envoys to Yue, would the Han let me?”^[2] He kept Zhang Qian for more than ten years and gave him a wife, who bore him a son. Zhang Qian kept the Han tally all the same.^[2]

When the watch on him slackened, he fled west with his people. After some tens of days he reached Dayuan, the country of Ferghana.^[2] Dayuan had heard of the wealth of the Han and wanted relations. The king gave him guides and interpreters, who took him to Kangju. Kangju passed him on to the Great Yuezhi.^[2] The Yuezhi were no longer the people the Han had hoped for. Their king had been killed and his heir ruled. They had subdued Daxia, that is Bactria. They lived in a rich land with few raiders, far from the Han, and had no thought of revenge.^[2] Zhang Qian went on to Daxia and could not bring the Yuezhi to an answer.^[2]

He turned back along the Southern Mountains, meaning to return through the country of the Qiang. The Xiongnu caught him a second time. After more than a year the chanyu died. The Guli king of the left attacked the heir and made himself chanyu. In the disorder Zhang Qian escaped with his Xiongnu wife and Ganfu.^[2] The chanyu who died was Junchen. Of the more than a hundred men who had left, two came back, after thirteen years.^[2]

The report

Zhang Qian had been to Dayuan, the Great Yuezhi, Daxia and Kangju himself, and had heard of five or six large countries beside them. He described them all to the emperor.^[2] Modern accounts take the description of the countries in the chapter to be a nearly literal copy of that lost report.^[3] Dayuan lay south-west of the Xiongnu and due west of the Han, about ten thousand li away. Its people were settled. They farmed rice and wheat and made wine from grapes. The country had many fine horses, horses that sweated blood and descended from heavenly horses. It had walled towns, more than seventy of them, and a population of some hundreds of thousands.^[2] The wealthy stored the wine in quantity, up to ten thousand shi. They kept it for decades without spoiling.^[2]^[4] Kangju lay north-west of Dayuan. It was a nomad country, small enough that it paid homage to the Yuezhi in the south and to the Xiongnu in the east.^[2]

Of the peoples from Dayuan west to Parthia, the chapter says that their languages differ but that they understand one another. It says that their men have deep-set eyes and full beards, and that they are good at trade and haggle over a fraction of a coin.^[2] Some scholars take this for the first description of the Sogdian merchants. This holds if Dayuan is Ferghana, so that the merchants between Dayuan and Parthia can only be the Sogdians.^[5] Others take the remark as the sign of a family of related Iranian dialects spoken from Ferghana to Parthia.^[6]

In Daxia, Zhang Qian told the emperor, he had seen bamboo staves from Qiong and cloth from Shu. He asked where they came from. The people of Daxia said that their merchants bought them in Shendu, India, some thousands of li to the south-east.^[2] He reckoned that Daxia lay twelve thousand li from the Han, to the south-west. He reckoned also that India, where goods of Shu were sold, could not be far from Shu. The way to Daxia through the country of the Qiang was dangerous, and a little to the north the Xiongnu controlled the ground. The road through Shu was direct and free of raiders.^[2] The emperor agreed and had secret envoys sent out of Shu by four roads. Each went one or two thousand li and was stopped by the peoples to the north and to the south.^[2]

Against the Xiongnu

Zhang Qian served as a colonel under the grand general against the Xiongnu. He knew where to find water and grazing, and the army did not go short. In the sixth year of Yuanshuo, 123 BC, he was made marquis of Bowang.^[2] The next year he went out from Youbeiping with General Li against the Xiongnu. The Xiongnu surrounded Li. Zhang Qian arrived late and was condemned to death. He bought himself off and became a commoner.^[2] In the same year the Han cavalry broke the Xiongnu in the west as far as the Qilian mountains. The next year the Hunye king surrendered with his people, and the land from Jincheng through Hexi to the Salt Marsh was empty of Xiongnu. Two years later the Han drove the chanyu north of the desert.^[2] The second of those campaigns is the battle of Mobei of 119 BC.

The Wusun embassy

Without his title, Zhang Qian proposed a new alliance. The Wusun, he told the emperor, had once been subjects of the Xiongnu. If they could be drawn east into the empty land of the Hunye king, that would cut off the right arm of the Xiongnu.^[2] He was made general of the palace and sent with three hundred men, two horses each. He took cattle and sheep by the ten thousand and gold and silk of immense value.^[2] The Wusun king Kunmo received the gifts without bowing. He bowed only when Zhang Qian said that the gifts of the Son of Heaven would go back if the king did not. The Wusun were divided, their king was old, and their great men feared the Xiongnu. Zhang Qian again could not get an answer.^[2]

He sent his deputies on to Dayuan, Kangju, the Yuezhi, Daxia, Parthia, India and Khotan. He came home with Wusun envoys.^[2] He was made Grand Herald, one of the nine ministers, and died a year or so later.^[2] Within another year the envoys he had sent returned with men of the countries they had reached, “and from then on the countries of the north-west began to have relations with the Han”.^[2]

Legacy

The Shiji says that Zhang Qian opened the road. It says that the envoys who went after him all called on the name of the marquis of Bowang to win the trust of foreign countries.^[2] His embassy accelerated a contact that had begun gradually. The Han made it because they were looking for allies to take the Xiongnu from behind.^[1] What followed was a stream of embassies to the west for the horses of Dayuan. Each year five or six to more than ten parties went out. The largest were several hundred strong.^[2]^[7]

Two plants are linked to those missions. The envoys brought back the seeds of alfalfa and the grape from Dayuan, where the horses fed on alfalfa and the rich made wine of grapes. The emperor began to plant both in rich ground. When the heavenly horses were many and foreign envoys came in numbers, the detached palaces and lodges were planted all round with grapes and alfalfa as far as the eye could see.^[2]^[4] The Shiji names the envoys and not Zhang Qian as the bringers. Later writers credit Zhang Qian with the walnut, the pomegranate, coriander, the cucumber and sesame as well. The chapters of the Shiji and the Han Shu on the western countries name none of them in connection with him. The earliest text to contain the legend is the Bowuzhi of the third century.^[8]

The Shiji adds that Han envoys traced the source of the river to Khotan, where the mountain was rich in jade. The emperor consulted an old book and named the mountain Kunlun.^[2]^[9]

References

^ a b de la Vaissière 2005a, p. 29
^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z aa ab ac ad ae af ag ah Shiji, juan 123
^ Herrmann 1910, p. 31
^ a b Laufer 1919, p. 221
^ de la Vaissière 2005a, p. 27
^ Laufer 1919, p. 212
^ Laufer 1919, p. 210
^ Laufer 1919, p. 190,258–259,278,297
^ Herrmann 1910, p. 66

Sources

Shiji, juan 123

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)
Albert Herrmann, Die alten Seidenstrassen zwischen China und Syrien. Beiträge zur alten Geographie Asiens, Bd. 1 (1910)