Through deserts and oases of central Asia

by Ella Sykes; Sir Percy Sykes

The earliest recorded connection of China with what is now the province of Chinese Turkestan is the progress of Mon Wang, one of the emperors of the Chow Dynasty, to a province in the vicinity of the Kuen Lun mountains which may be identified with Khotan. This tour is alleged to have taken place about 1000 B.C., but is possibly legendary, and we reach firmer ground at the beginning of the third century B.C., when China, under the Han dynasty, became a world power. At this period the chief concern of the ruler was the powerful tribe of the Hiong-Nu or Huns, which occupied Mongolia. These ambitious nomads attacked the Yue-chi (known later as the Lido-Scythians) then inhabiting the north-west parts of Kansu, Kokonor and the southern half of the Gobi, and not only defeated but expelled their enemy, thereby setting in motion a series of human avalanches, with far-reaching consequences. The dispossessed Yue-chi crossed the desert to Kucha and, advancing to the Ili river, subsequently broke up into two divisions, the Little Yue-chi who moved into Tibet, and the Great Yue-chi who occupied the Ili valley and drove the Sakas from Kashgar in 163 B.C. But the Huns, some fifteen or twenty years later, followed up and again defeated the Yue-chi, and the latter, fleeing westwards and driving the Sakas before them, invaded Bactria and, in 120 B.C., destroyed its Greek dynasty. They then crossed the Hindu Kush and carved out an empire in India with Peshawar as their capital.

The wide outlook of the Han dynasty is demonstrated by the fact that, between 120 B.C. and 88 B.C., missions were despatched across Chinese Turkestan to distant Parthia, known in China as An-Sih, from the Chinese form of the name of the royal house of Arsaces. It is worthy of mention that Mithradates II. of Parthia, who received the earliest of these missions, and thereby initiated an intercourse with China which was invariably peaceful, was also the first Parthian monarch to receive an embassy from Rome.

Wars with the Huns were a constant preoccupation of the Chinese until, in the first century B.C., they began to take most vigorous action in Chinese Turkestan. By 59 B.C. the entire province was conquered and a strong government was established. In 51 B.C. the nomads of Central Asia, exhausted by internecine strife, appealed to China, whose supremacy—so Chinese historians declare—was acknowledged in some form, however slight, from the province of Shensi to the Caspian Sea. Owing to the wide range of nomadic tribes the statement is not as fantastic as at first sight it would seem to be.

This vague authority was consolidated in the first century of our era by the famous warrior Pan Chao, who in the course of his earlier campaigns steadily annexed provinces and districts lying to the west of China. In A.D. 70 he defeated the ruler of Khotan, and six years later he conquered the entire province with which we are dealing. According to a local legend, on one occasion Pan Chao was besieged in Kashgar and access to the river was cut off, but the great general rose to the occasion and stamped on the ground, whereupon springs, still known as “the Springs of Pan Chao,” gushed out and the army was saved.

In 88 the Yue-chi, who had assisted Pan Chao in a campaign against Turfan, sent a tribute of jewels and lions to China, and demanded a princess of the Han dynasty as a consort for their ruler; but this proceeding was viewed with disfavour by Pan Chao, and he arrested the ambassador. The Yue-chi, to avenge the insult, despatched an army estimated at 70,000 men across the Pamirs. Broken down by hardships, it was defeated with ease, and as the outcome of further negotiations the Yue-chi continued to pay tribute to China.

In 91 Pan Chao was appointed General-Protector, and according to the Chinese historian not only crossed the Pamirs, but conquered fifteen kingdoms lying between Kashgar and the Caspian Sea. Probably what occurred was that he received envoys from the various nomadic tribes, who agreed to recognize Chinese suzerainty; for it is unlikely that a Chinese army actually marched to the Caspian Sea.

In 97 Pan Chao despatched a certain Kan Ying on an embassy to visit Parthia and Rome; but the envoy, after safely reaching Ctesiphon, was deterred from the long voyage down the Persian Gulf, across the Indian Ocean, and up the Red Sea and the Gulf of Akaba to Aelana, by exaggerated reports that on the return journey, if the winds were adverse, the ocean might take two years to cross! According to the local belief, Pan Chao is buried inside the present city of Kashgar, on a high mound which is surmounted by an artistic temple and overlooks the springs already mentioned.

In time the power of the Celestials waned in Chinese Turkestan, and we learn from the annals of the later Hans that at the beginning of the second century A.D. the ruler of Su-le (as Kashgar was then termed) was forced to send as a hostage to the king of the Yue-chi at Peshawar one of his relatives, who was subsequently placed on the throne of Kashgar. This piece of history is corroborated by Hiuen Tsiang. Under Kanishka, the most celebrated ruler of the Yue-chi, the tribe regained Kashgar about A.D. 125,[9] more than two centuries after their first seizure of the province—truly a remarkable cycle of conquest.

The Huns had recovered their strength at this period, and in 138, the Chinese Emperor sent a certain Chang Kien, with a suite numbering one hundred persons, to open up relations with the Yue-chi, whom he wished to enlist as allies. Chang Kien was unfortunately captured by the Huns and kept prisoner for ten years, after which he escaped with some of his followers and reached Farghana, where he was well treated. The Yue-chi had recently conquered Tokharistan, situated in the great bend of the Oxus, where the undaunted Chang Kien at last gained touch with them. As was to be expected, he found them unwilling to quit their new conquest in order to undertake a campaign in the interests of China. Chang Kien finally returned home with the two surviving members of his mission and drew up a valuable geographical and ethnographical memoir; he also introduced the vine into China. He will ever be famous in the annals of his country as the first Chinaman who “pierced the void.”

The Yue-chi introduced Buddhism into China after the conversion of Kanishka to that faith; they also undoubtedly brought to India a knowledge of Chinese civilization, together with the peach and the pear tree. Moreover, they had intercourse with Rome both from India and from Central Asia, and in various ways played a distinguished rôle until they finally succumbed before the onslaught of the White Huns.