Silk

Trade & Exchange along the Silk Roads between Rome and China in Antiquity

Berit Hildebrandt

• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781785702808
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

"Already in Greek and Roman antiquity a vibrant series of exchange relationships existed between the Mediterranean regions and China, including the Indian subcontinents along well-defined routes we call the Silk Roads. Among the many goods that found their way from East to West and vice versa were glass, wine, spices, metals like iron, precious stones as well as textile raw materials and fabrics and silk, a luxury item that was in great demand in the Roman Empire. These collected papers connect research from different areas and disciplines dealing with exchange along the Silk Roads. These historical, philological and archaeological contributions highlight silk as a commodity, gift and tribute, and as a status symbol in varying cultural and chronological contexts between East and West, including technological aspects of silk production. The main period concerns Rome and China in antiquity, ending in the late fifth century CE, with the Roman Empire being transformed into the Byzantine Empire, while the Chinese chronology covers the Han dynasty, the Three Kingdoms, the Western and Eastern Jin and Sixteen Kingdoms, ending in 420 CE. In addition, both earlier and later epochs are also considered in order to gather an understanding of developments and changes in long-distance and longer-term relations that involved silk."

1

Looking towards the West – how the Chinese viewed the Romans

Liu Xinru

The Roman and Han Empires were roughly contemporaneous and accounted for about half the population on the Afro-Eurasian landmass during the first centuries CE. Given their importance and the Silk Road network that connected them, it seems strange that the two knew so little of one another. However, these two great empires were not only separated by mountains, oceans, and the vast steppe, but also distinctive cultures whose knowledge of each other was mediated by the equally distinctive and diverse communities between them. This paper explores how the Han Chinese came to learn about Rome and the nature of the information they obtained.

The Han emperors initiated trade missions to the west in an effort to find allies on the steppe to counter the threat of the Xiongnu nomads on their northern frontier. It is therefore a reasonable surmise that it was only after their envoys reached Afghanistan and India that the Chinese began to realize the existence of the Roman Empire. Alexander’s expedition to the East during the late fourth century BCE resulted in the founding of several garrison cities named Alexandria. Through Zhang Qian’s mission to the Yuezhi in Bactria in the late second century BCE, the Han Empire learned of the many oasis states around the Taklamakan Desert as well as those along the Amu and Syr Darya and the place name Alexandria soon entered the Chinese vocabulary. The earliest Chinese reference to the Hellenistic world was to a locale called Lixuan 黎轩. The etymology of this toponym has provoked much learned debate – among the many proposed solutions, Alexandria is the most likely choice (see also the general map for the empires, territories and major cities mentioned).

Lixuan first appears in the Shiji (History) of Sima Qian in discussing diplomatic exchanges between the Han Empire and the Parthians. Here the Parthian envoy who accompanied a Han mission back to China brought with him “eggs of big birds” and “magicians” (huanren 幻人 or 眩人）from Lixuan 黎轩 (Sima Qian 1962, 123/10/3172-73). The huanren here are presumably the magicians or magi associated with ancient Iran and the “big bird,” more than likely an ostrich. Taken together, this data indicates that this Alexandria was a Hellenistic city on the western edge of the Parthian Empire.

In the meantime, continued Roman expansion resulted in a Mediterranean-wide empire which included within its territory yet another Alexandria, the famed city on the delta of the Nile. This Alexandria became the chief entrepôt for the Empire’s eastern trade. The “Roman” traders, more accurately Greek-speaking sailors and merchants from the eastern Mediterranean, traveled east by land and sea to obtain spices and silks. During the first century CE, the fame of this Alexandria reached the Kushan Empire. This is evidenced by the fact that a crystal vase with Poseidon standing on top of the Lighthouse of Alexandria was discovered in Begram (Hackin 1939, figs. 37–40; Hackin 1954, figs. 359–363), the site of the Kushan city Kapisi, another of the Alexandrias in Afghanistan. Recently, the vase, with its representation of the famed Lighthouse, was reconstructed on the basis of the fragments. Information about these various Alexandrias, reaching China through the medium of several foreign languages, much perplexed court historians in the Later Han. The following passage from Hanshu (History of the Han Dynasty), compiled by Ban Gu during the mid-first century CE, exemplifies the confusion:

The King of Wuyishanli 乌弋山离 (Alexandria, according to Feng Chengjun), located as far as 12,300 li (Chinese miles) from Chang’an, is not under the Protectorate (that part of Central Asia under Han suzerainty). This is a great country in terms of population and military strength. Departing in a north-easterly direction, it takes 60 days to reach the headquarters of the Protectorate. Its eastern part borders on Jibin 罽宾 (Kashmir?); Putiao 扑挑 (Bactria?) is on its north; to its west are Lixuan (Alexandria) and Tiaozhi 条支 (Antioch?) (Ban Gu 1964: 96a/12/3888 (translation: Liu Xinru)).

Owing to variation in transliterations, Ban Gu, the author of the history of the Former Han Dynasty, did not realize that both Wuyishanli and Lixuan represent the name Alexandria. The distances provided by the Hanshu are hardly reliable measurements, but from the relative locations of the states mentioned, Wuyishanli should be identified with the Alexandria in Afghanistan, near Kandahar, and Lixuan with another Hellenistic city much farther to the west. As for Tiaozhi, it is most likely one of the Antiochs built by the Seleucid ruler Antiochus I, who, like Alexander, established a number of garrison cities bearing his own name. The fact that there was more than one Antioch to be found between the Mediterranean and Iranian plateau has further confused both ancient and modern scholars, who have been trying to locate Tiaozhi for more than half a century. Thus, even before the Roman Empire reached the lands of the eastern Mediterranean and its confrontation with the Parthians, Chinese envoys and scholars realized that there were a number of Hellenistic states and cities located beyond the imperial Protectorate of the Western Region.

Soon after the beginning of the Common Era, officials of the Later Han Dynasty gradually became aware that there was a country called Da Qin 大秦 (“Rome”), but initially identified it with Lijian 黎犍 (Fan Ye 1965, 88/10/2919). The origin of the former place name is vague, but it signals a change in the Chinese perception of the countries west of the Western Protectorate. Da Qin/Lijian was no longer just another Hellenistic city-state, but an empire similar to the Han in size and authority (Fan Ye 1965, 88/10/2919). It was during this time that Alexandria in Egypt became the center of Rome’s eastern trade, and the Indians, from their contact with Ionian Greeks, came to apply the name Yavana to the Romans. Given the fact that the Roman maritime trade with India and probably China was conducted by Greek speakers, it is hardly surprising that both Indians and Chinese viewed the Roman Empire as a continuation of the Hellenistic world they had encountered earlier.

This image was perpetuated in China through Buddhist texts that reached East Asia from India through the Hellenistic cultures of Bactria and Gandhara. In the Milinda Punha or The Questions of King Milinda, extant in a Sinhalese translation, the Greek King Menanda, the greatest of the many Indo-Greek rulers of the region, has a conversation with Nagasena, a Buddhist sage, in which he tells the latter he was born on an island called Alesanda, about two hundred leagues from Sagala where the conversation took place (Rhys Davids 1890, 127). In the Chinese version of the text, Naxian Biqiu Jing 那先比丘经, the King tells the sage that he was from Da Qin, from a country (i.e., a city) called Alisan 阿荔散, which was 2000 yoxun or yojana (= 8–9 miles/c. 13–14.5 km) distant, or about 80,000 li (Zhang and Zhu (eds.) 2003a, 148). The Chinese translation probably appeared two or three centuries after the original Sanskrit text, which is now lost. The Sinhalese version is presumably closer to the Sanskrit original. Given the ambiguity of the measures of distance in the two texts, one can assume that the Alexandria in Milinda Punha was not too far from Bactria or Gandhara, where Sagala can be located, and is in consequence a city in Afghanistan, perhaps to be identified with modern Kandahar. The Chinese version dramatically modified the distances involved to accommodate new information concerning the trade networks that had become available in the second or third century CE: thus, in this case, the Alexandria in question is most likely the port city on the Nile. The Roman Empire therefore entered the visual field of Han scholars as a political unit most closely associated with Hellenistic Alexandria.

At the height of the Roman Empire, fire-eaters and illusionists came from Da Qin to entertain and win the good will of the Chinese court (Fan Ye 1965, 88/10/2910). The Hou Han Shu makes reference to distant lands such as Mengqi 蒙奇 (Macedonia?) and Doule 兜勒 (likely Tokharistan, the country of the Tokharians), who sent envoys to the court of the Later Han (Fan Ye 1965, 86/10/2851). This information leads to several important conclusions. First, political and geographical entities in the backwater of the Roman Empire such as Mengqi or Macedonia sometimes presented themselves to the Han court as independent polities or at least as autonomous entities within Imperial Rome. Secondly, the name Doule or Tokharistan had replaced the older Greek designation, Bactria, for north Afghanistan, the center of the Kushan Empire, which adopted many Hellenistic cultural traits from its predecessors. Evidently, scholar-officials at the Later Han court continued to receive new information about the Western Region and beyond and updated their records accordingly, although they were sometimes confused by the different languages used in transmitting this information.

Through informal Buddhist information circuits, the Chinese were aware of some of the languages in the West, including the Greek that was in use in parts of Central Asia. Yemeini 耶寐尼 was the Chinese transliteration of Yavani, the Sanskrit word for Greek. The Chinese version of the Life of the Buddha, Buddhacarita by Ashvaghosha, Fo Benxing Jijin 佛本行集经, which appeared in the post-Han period, contains a lengthy list of the languages the young Buddha studied as a prince and Yemeini/Yavani is among them. The Sui Dynasty annotator of this text noted that Yameini is the language of the Romans and that Daqinshu 大秦书, literally “Roman writing”, designated their script (Zhang and Zhu 2003b, 187). This signifies that to the Chinese, Greek, not Latin, was the spoken and written language of Rome. This notion lasted into Tang times when Duan, in his Youyang Zaizu 酉阳杂俎, a volume of miscellaneous information, still used Daqinshu for “Roman”, i.e., for Greek writing (Fang (ed.) 1981 Duan Chengshi, 107). Moreover, by this time his usage was in full accord with the facts since now Greek-speaking Byzantium represented the Roman Empire to the Chinese. To conclude, most of the diplomatic contacts between the Later Han and “Rome” were actually with smaller Hellenistic polities to the east of the Roman Empire. And in cultural terms, it was the Greek populations, some well beyond their imperial frontiers, who most represented Rome to Han China.

In Chinese literature, the Roman Empire is portrayed as a rich country with its own productive sericulture. Among its many wonders were the magnificent glassware and beautiful woolen textiles so desired by Chinese elites. During the first century CE, the Silk Road reached the Roman Empire via land routes – from Parthia to Palmyra and the Levant, and by the sea route – from the ports of western India to the Red Sea and Egypt (Fan Ye 1965, 88/10/2919). The Kushans in Afghanistan and India were the principal intermediaries of this trade. Commodities from both the east and the west were found there and some Roman products, principally glassware, also reached China. The Kushans inscribed names of kings and gods in Greek letters on their coins, the major medium of exchange in this trade, to accommodate and reassure the many Roman commercial agents in their midst. The profound Hellenistic legacy in the lands between the Roman Empire and Han China operated as the primary cultural filter through which these two distant civilizations viewed each other.

Han China did not understand that the Romans wanted their silk since they assumed that Rome produced its own silk thread. The Romans could have had their own species of silk, albeit decidedly different from Chinese silk. Commercial information from the ports of western India filtered into the Han court, indicating that the Romans had such a pressing need for silk yarn that they unraveled plain silk textiles from China to obtain it (Wei Lue 1959, 30/3/861; Wang et al. (eds.) 1988 Du You, 193/5/5265). The confusing and contradictory information reaching China produced much speculation among historians of the Han era and among modern scholars. Why did Rome want silk fibers if they could produce silk themselves? Furthermore, the kind of yarn obtained from unraveling textiles produced short fibers suitable only for heavy types of textiles such as tapestry. Did this kind of fiber meet the needs of the Roman market? Apparently not, since according to Pliny the Elder, Roman women greatly desired thin and translucent silk (Pliny, Natural History VI 20, 54).

The only plausible explanation for this confusion is that both the technical and commercial information had been filtered through so many intermediaries, each with its own cultural preferences, languages and economic interests, that the data became badly distorted in the process of transmission. Pliny, for example, knew so little about silk production that he called it a “woolen substance obtained from their forests” (Pliny, Natural History VI 20, 54 (translation: Rackham 1942, 379)). Nonetheless, wall paintings in Pompeii and Herculaneum verify Pliny’s claim that thin and translucent silk clothing was fashionable among women (The Ancient Roman Civilization 2003, 163, 165).

This leads us back to the previous questions. Why did Rome import so much rough yarn unraveled from plain silk textiles, when the actual domestic demand was for fine silk gauze woven with long filament yarn taken directly from silk cocoons? And why were Chinese officials so certain that the Romans produced fine silk textiles and silk yarn of their own? The answers to these questions are to be sought in the many Greek-speaking traders and dealers living in caravan cities and ports between the Roman heartland and China who were in a position to manipulate both the supply and demand in the growing pan-Eurasian silk market.

Roman subjects in the Levant started to produce silk with Chinese yarn or unraveled plain silk to make heavy types of textiles. Viewed from Chang’an and Luoyang, this region was thought of as Rome proper, an understandable misconception since from this outlying Roman province came all the gems, glass and fragrances that reached the Han court. In the eyes of the Han elite, such a great country not only had its own sericulture to produce silk yarn and textiles, such as colorful damasks, 杂色绫, but also exotic embroidery 刺金缕绣 and woolen tapestries, both of which were woven with gold thread 织成金缕罽 (Fan Ye 1965, 88/10/2919). The Han court was familiar with a great variety of textiles brought from different foreign countries and mistakenly attributed all of them to the Roman Empire. In point of fact, these textiles were a byproduct of a far-reaching industrial revolution in textile production made possible by exchanges of technology and materials that took place in the territories lying between the Roman Orient and the Western Protectorate of Han China. Woolen tapestry from looms of the Parthian Empire inspired weavers of Han China to transform silk weaving technology from warp-based patterning to using colored weft threads to create large patterns and wider textiles. Meanwhile, weavers in the Levant were inspired to create brocade and tapestry, both heavy types of silk textiles using large quantities of yarn, not necessarily of the long filament type. The revolution took several centuries, resulting in the magnificent Byzantine and Tang silk textiles that became the symbols of ruling elites across Eurasia.

However, before the new products from the cultural exchange became available in the Eurasian market, what kinds of silk did the Romans in Italy purchase from Han China when silks first reached them? What kind of textiles did the Romans use in exchange to satisfy the tastes of the Han elite? The translucent and light silk textiles were produced in China long before the Silk Road brought silks to the west. Loose but sophisticated weaving with twisted and twined threads produced translucent gauze called luo 罗 and sha 纱. In the tombs of Mawandui, Changsha, dated to the early Han Dynasty (second century BCE), several fragments of silk gauze have survived. However, no such light silk gauze is known from sites in Central Asia or along any of the branches of the Silk Road, or at least, none is registered in the available catalogues. It could be that the more colorful, eye-catching silk brocades and tapestries are the ones collected and cataloged by museums. And, in contrast, gauze silk, beautiful when newly made, tends to decay and disintegrate with age. I was therefore surprised in searching through my files to find an image of silk gauze among a group of silk textiles dated to the Han times, presumably from sites in Mongolia (this group of textile fragments was in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum ...