The Silk Road: Part II

September 2003 · Historically Speaking The Silk Road: Part Il AlfredJ. Andrea IN THIS ESSAY'Sfirst installment Alfred J. Andrea consideredthefirstgolden age ofthe Silk Road—the era ofthe Han, Kushan, Parthian, andRoman Empires—andlooked briefly at the early influx ofBuddhism into China following the collapse of the Han dynasty in 220 CE. This second and last installmentpicks up the thread ofBuddhist penetration into China andsurveys the succeeding 1300 years ofthe classicalSilk Road. The period from roughly 200 CE. to about 600 CE. witnessed the domination of the trade routes of Inner Asia bythe Sogdians, an easternIranianpeople . Sogdiana was the Greek name for the steppe region just east of the Amu Darya (Oxus) River, roughly modern Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, andsouthernKazakhstan andKyrgystan . The Sogdianswere politicallydivided into small city-states, such as Bukhara and Samarkand, butwere culturallyunited.More than any other people, they served as the overland merchants who connected the lands ofwestern Eurasia with those ofthe East and were major vectors of goods and ideas. Indeed, "Sogdian"was a synonym for "merchant ," and the Iranian language ofSogdiana was the linguafranca of Central Asia's trade routes. Sculptures of Sogdian merchants , with their conical hats (Phrygian caps), full beards (often colored red), and large noses,were astandarditemforChinese ceramic sculptors for centuries. The Sogdians dealtwithstrong, fairlystable states in Persia, the Eastern Mediterranean , and India, but China was a political mess. Still, Sogdian merchants carried on their work in Inner Asia, often protected by nomadic Turkic tribes who benefited from the Sogdians' activities. And that work was more than justbuying and selling goods. Sogdian culture was deeply Zoroastrian, butmanyadoptedthe Buddhist, Manichaean, andevenNestorian Christian faiths. Residing in diaspora communities along the major routes of the Silk Road and in northern China, Sogdians served as vectors through which these four foreignreligions, especially Buddhism, made theirwayacross InnerAsia and into China. Fluent in a variety oflanguages , as befit their mercantile way oflife, Sogdians also translated into Chinese a number of major Buddhist, Manichaean, and Christian texts. Although the Sogdians introduced some of the earliest Buddhist sutras, or sacred books, to enter China, soon native-born Chinese Buddhists sought to gain even more of the canonical literature ofthe Middle Path, and some ofthem were not about to wait for Sogdians to bring them additional sutras. After all, the SilkRoadwas a two-waystreet. In 399 Faxian, a Chinese Buddhist monk andpilgrim, setoutfromnorthern Chinafor India in search ofsacredsutrasand holysites. After years ofstudying and collecting Buddhist texts, Faxian chose to sail home from Ceylon by way ofthe islands of Southeast Asia. Perhaps he could not face the rigors of another overlandtrip. Whateverthe reason, his choice almost cost him his life. After a danger-filled, storm-tossed sea voyage, he arrived back in China in 414, hundreds of miles north ofhis intended port. Sea travel was not fast, sure, or safe in the 5th century, and that was one reason for the primacy of the Silk Road. When he finally reached home, Faxian spent the rest ofhis life translatinginto Chinese the scriptures thathe had acquired. We know about Faxian because he composed a marvelous travelogue of his adventures, but he was not the first or the only Chinese Buddhist who traveled to the home ofhis faithinsearch ofenlightenment. So, Sogdians were not the only travelers alongthemyriadpaths ofthe SilkRoad. Syrians , Choresmians (the people who lived to thenorth ofSogdiana), Indians, Chinese, and especially Persians also used these routes for many different purposes. But the Sogdians playedtheprimaryrole duringthese centuries when Chinawas politicallyfragmented. Even after 589, when China was again united into a singleempire, the Sogdianscontinuedto be major players along the pathways ofCentral Asia. Indeed, they became early converts to Islam and proved to be a major factor in Islam's becomingauniversalfaithandculture. It was the combined vigor ofIslam and the Second Chinese Empire thatdrove the next, or third, heroic age ofSilkRoad activity. The Silk Road's third golden age lasted from about 600 to about 850, a period that was roughly coterminous with China's Second Empire (the Sui [589-618] and Tang [618-907] dynasties) when a reunited imperial China and a rapidly developing Islamic world created a complexofconnected entities that stretched across Eurasia and North Africa. This was an era in which China was open to the world, and...