About the same time that the Prince of Kashgar recognized the paramountcy of the Yue-chi the Uighur tribes in the Turfan and Hami districts revolted from China, and for five centuries Chinese control over the entire province was lost.
Buddhism reached Khotan and Kashgar from India and thence spread to China. In 399 the Chinese monk Fa-hien, “deploring the mutilated and imperfect state of the collection of the Books of Discipline,” set off on a long and successful journey to India, and to him we owe the first detailed account of the province of Khotan, which was at this period an important centre of Buddhism.
In the middle of the fifth century, not long after the journey of Fa-hien, the reigning member of the Toba Wei dynasty of China despatched an envoy to Po-sz, as Persia was then termed. The Persian monarch sent a return mission with a gift of trained elephants, which the independent Prince of Khotan detained, but in the end released. In all, ten missions are recorded as passing between Northern China and Persia between 455 and 513; and reading between the lines we find clear indications that at this period there was considerable intercourse between China and Persia via Khotan.
In 509, envoys from Khotan presented themselves at the Chinese Court bearing tribute. In the annals they are described as follows: “The people are Buddhists, and their women are in society as amongst other nations. They braid the hair into long plaits, and wear pelisses and loose trousers. The people are very ceremonious and polite, and curtsey on meeting, by bending one knee to the ground.” Except that Buddhism has given place to Islam, this description, generally speaking, stands good at the present time.
The next great wave of invasion was that of the Juan Juan, a tribe newly appearing on the stage of Manchuria. Gathering Turks and Mongols to their banners, the Juan Juan destroyed the Hiong-Nu, who were probably weakened by emigrations westward, and about 460 swept across Chinese Turkestan like a devastating tornado, without making any attempt at permanent conquest. The Hoa or White Huns, a vassal tribe, subsequently threw off their allegiance to the Juan Juan and founded an empire on the ruins of that of the Yue-Chi, embracing most of Chinese Turkestan to the east, but having its centre in the middle Oxus, whence for many generations it seriously threatened the existence of the Persian Empire.
In the middle of the sixth century the empire of the “White Huns” in its turn succumbed to the attack of the Western Turks, the Tu-chueh of the Chinese, who were organized in a confederacy of ten tribes. From the centre of this new power, which lay in the rich valleys to the north of the Tian Shan, the Paramount Chiefs ruled over a vast empire, leaving the states subject to their sway to be governed by their hereditary rulers, under the control of Turkish collectors of tribute.
Such was the state of the province we are dealing with when the great traveller Hiuen Tsiang passed through the empire of the Western Turks in 630. His meeting with the Paramount Chief is described by his biographer. In that very year this chief was assassinated. His death was a signal for the breakup of the confederacy of the ten tribes, and for Chinese Turkestan it was the end of a well-defined period.
A new epoch opened with the establishment of the Tang dynasty in China early in the seventh century, and during the reign of its founder the invasions of the Northern Turks made him in the first instance seek the help of the Western Turks. The Chinese dynasty, however, rapidly became strong, and the year 630 not only marked the downfall of the Western but also the subjugation of the Northern Turks, and China once again found herself in a position to recover her lost western provinces. With this end in view a Chinese army crossed the great desert in 640 and occupied Turfan, and later on Karashahr and Kucha. The King of Khotan, presumably alarmed by these successes, returned to his allegiance, the tradition of which had probably not been forgotten, and the annexation of the entire province to China was secured in 658 by a victory won on the banks of the Ili over the revolted Paramount Chief. By this final triumph the existence of the Western Turks as a power came to an end, and China succeeded to their vast empire, which extended southwards across the Hindu Kush to Kabul and westwards to the borders of Persia.
At this period Chinese Turkestan was known as the “Four Garrisons,” the reference being to the forces stationed at Kucha, Khotan, Karashahr and Kashgar, because Chinese power was based on this quadrilateral. Not that it remained unchallenged; for the Tibetans seized the province in 670 and retained possession of it until 692, when the Chinese reoccupied it in force.
The consolidation of Chinese dominion in the west opened the way for the almost simultaneous introduction of Christianity and Zoroastrianism into China and Chinese Turkestan. The first Nestorian missionary reached China with sacred books and images in 635; and Yule[10] shows how the Nestorian sees of China formed part of a wide-spreading ecclesiastical system controlled by the Patriarchal see in Persia. The recent discovery of Nestorian cemeteries west of the Issik Kul, with dates ranging from 858 to 1339, throws interesting light on the fact that Kashgar is shown as a Nestorian see in the middle of the thirteenth century. In 621, a few years before the introduction of Christianity, the first Fire Temple was erected in China, and we learn from Chavannes that the Zoroastrian cult existed at Kashgar, Khotan and Samarcand.