'Nomads, Traders and Holy Men Along China's Silk Road' 2503521789, 9782503521787

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Nomads, Traders and Holy Men Along China's Silk Road

Papers presented at a symposium held at The Asia Society in New York, November 9 - 10, 2001

Edited by Annette L. Juliano and Judith A. Lerner

BREPOLS

© 2002, Brepols Publishers n.v., Tumhout, Belgium

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. D/200310095110

ISBN 2-503-52178-9 Printed in the E.U. on acid-free paper

CONTENTS lntroduction Annette L. Juliano and Judith A. Lerner

1

What is Dunhuang Art? Wu Hung

7

Central Asia from the Third to the Seventh Century Boris 1. Marshak

11

Strange Beasts in Han and Post-Han Imagery Jessica Rawson

23

The Nomads of the Fifth Century: The Tuoba Xianbei Shing Müller

33

Buddhist Steles from the Gansu/Ningxia Region Dorothy Wong

45

The Merchant World of the Sogdians Richard N. Frye

71

The Role of the Sogdians as Translators of Buddhist Texts Guanuda Zhang

75

When Glass Was Treasured in China An Jiayao

79

Iranian Luxury Vessels in China from the Late First Millennium B.C.E. to the Second Half of the First Millennium C.E. Prudence 0. Harper

95

Waisted Drums in Ancient China and Eurasia Bo Lawergren

115

Musical lntersections: Local Festivals As Cosmopolitan Centers of Exchange Sue Tuohy

121

INTRODUCTION

Annette L. Juliano and JudithA. Lerner This collection of papers formed part of the symposium, "Nomads, Traders and Holy Men Along China's Silk Road," held at the Asia Society in New York on November 9-10, 2001. lt was organized in conjunction with the exhibition which we co-curated, Monks and Merchants: Silk Raad Treasures from Northwest China, 4th-7th Century. Delayed by the tragic events of September 11, the exhibition was on view from November 14, 2001-January 6, 2002, and then was shown at the Norton Museum of Art, West Palm Beach, Florida, from February 7-April 21, 2002. A fully illustrated, comprehensive catalogue accompanied the exhibition. 1 Monks and Merchants was the first Silk Road exhibition to focus on a particular area of China, the so-called Hexi or Gansu Corridor. Situated on northwestern frontier of China proper (modern-day Gansu Province and the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region), the Hexi Corridor formed the final stretch of the Silk Road that led to the Chinese heartland and the imperial capital of Changan (modern Xi'an). lt was here that foreign ideas and objects carried by Buddhist monks and foreign merchants entered China to take root, to flower, and be transmitted to metropolitan centers farther east.

Although the Silk Road has inspired several important museum exhibitions, none had focused on the Hexi Corridor nor attempted to analyze the complexity of the cross-cultural relationships within China's borders. Nor had any exhibition focused on the nearly four hundred years of political disunity, nomadic incursions and social upheaval, brought about by the collapse of the great Han dynasty (206 B.C.E.-220 C.E.), that then, after a series of short-lived dynasties, culminated in the reunification of China under the Tang empire (618-906). Despite such upheavals, this interim period was a time of great cultural and artistic ferment as Buddhism took root in China and people and goods continued to move into China from Central Asia and farther west. The religious ideas and artistic styles and motifs transmitted during these four centuries served as the cultural and artistic foundation of the glorious empire of the Tang, which assimilated and transformed them to create a new, national style that defined the dynasty for the three centuries of its rule.

1 Annette L. Juliano and Judith A. Lerner, Monks and Merchants: Silk Raad Treasures from Northwest China, Gansu and Ningxia, 4th_J1h Century (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001).

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NOMADS, TRADERS AND HOLY MEN

As befitted the theme of the exhibition, the symposium was international and interdisciplinary in scope. Two opening keynote addresses, the first by Wu Hung and the second by Boris Marshak, provided a broad cultural context for the theme of the symposium and the panels. Wu Hung explored the view from within China's borders focusing on the city of Dunhuang and its world-famous Buddhist site twenty-five kilometers outside the city in western Gansu province - the last place for caravans to acquire provisions before embarking westward along the Silk Road and the first stop in China for caravans arriving from the west. Although known for the splendid Thousand Buddha Caves (also called Mogao ), Dunhuang was also a city of immigrants inhabited by people from different regions with different religious affiliations and cultural heritages. Buddhist art at Dunhuang co-existed with other temple and ritual structures constructed inside and outside the city to support the teachings of Daoism, Confucianism, Zoroastrianism, local cults, and ancestor worship. Boris Marshak offered a view from outside China's borders, Central Asia. Many different peoples inhabited this vast and complex region between Iran and China: sedentary people in several large oases and nomadic people in the long belt of the steppes that extends from the Black Sea to Mongolia. Marshak's presentation focuses on the Sogdians, an lranian people who inhabited the region of Transoxiana (in present-day Uzbekistan and Tajikistan), a dry but fertile land that incorporated the two great rivers of the Amu Darya (Oxus) and the Syr Darya (Jaxartes ), and other areas east and northeast, up to the borders of Chinese East Turkestan (present-day Xinjiang). The Sogdians traveled as merchants along these fertile valleys, oases, desert, and mountainous regions, carrying goods and ideas across a network of caravan routes that connected China with India and with the Mediterranean countries. Speaking to China's interactions with outside world, Jessica Rawson presented "Strange Beasts in Han and Post-Han Imagery." Although foreign influences had penetrated China since early times, official interest in the west began only during the Han, when the Han emperor Wudi (r.141-87 B.C.E.) dispatched missions westwards to seek allies against the incursions of mounted nomadic tribes from the north and northwest. The military colonies that were established in Gansu to protect the trade routes from nomadic incursions became important trading posts on the Silk Road. As trade flourished, new products and ideas entered China, brought by the monks and merchants, readily absorbed by the local populace, both Han Chinese and nomad. The nomads along China's northern borders have been frequently portrayed in the histories as barbarians bent only on pillage and destruction. The reality was much more complex. The Chinese and the nomads warred, but they also

INTRODUCTION

3

traded and intermarried, enriching the societies and cultures of both. From the nomads, the Chinese received furs, leather, camels and horses, and technology such as the stirrup, as well as luxuries acquired by the nomads from farther west. Nomads coveted not only the products of Chinese civilization, such as silk, but also their land. Conquest, however, was often followed by the abandonment of a true nomadic life in favor of a more sedentary one and by an intermingling of nomadic and Chinese customs. Indeed, between the fourth and sixth centuries, a series of overlapping short-lived dynasties and kingdoms of nomadic origin jostled for control of northern and northwestern China. Of those that gained control of Gansu, the Northern Wei (386-535), and Northern Zhou (557-581) were the most influential. The rulers of these kingdoms were of various origins-the Northern Wei, for instance, were a branch of the Xianbei (known as Tuoba), a confederation of tribes from the northeast speaking a language that contained Turkish and Mongolian elements. Little attention has been directed to defining the characteristics of nomadic cultures before the adaptation and assimilation of Chinese cultural values. In "The Nomads of the Fifth Century: The Tuoba Xianbei," Shing Müller discussed the formation of the Tuoba culture in the Datong area, identifying the mixture of cultural elements both indigenous and foreign. From its beginnings in India, Buddhism spread through vast areas of Asia, moving eastward across the developing trade routes and reaching China during the Han dynasty. After the fall of the Han in 220 C.E., Buddhism flourished in the north, supported by the movement of Buddhist monks and merchants traveling the Silk Raad. The Gansu/Ningxia region in Northwest China was an important center of Buddhist art in the fifth and sixth centuries nurtured by this transnational activity. The concentration of Buddhist cave temples reflects the widespread practice of Buddhism shaped by artistic influences from the West. At the same time, local traditions interacted with external influences, inspiring innovations and independent developments. In "Buddhist Steles from the Gansu/Ningxia Region," Dorothy Wang examined one innovation, the Chinese Buddhist stele, or a stone slab carved with Buddhist images: "an art form that represents a synthesis of both Chinese and Indian Buddhist traditions." Buddhist steles were produced in large numbers in northern China from the fifth through the early seventh century, derived mainly from the existing Chinese commemorative tablet, often with pairs of dragons on top. She focused her discussion on a small group of Buddhist stelae originating from the Gansu/Ningxia region. These Gansu/Ningxia stelae combine foreign and indigenous Chinese elements and offer excellent opportunities to explore a formative stage in the development of Chinese Buddhist art, reflecting an adaptation of visual forms and an interchange in function, symbolism, and patronage.

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NOMADS, TRADERS AND HOLY MEN

As already mentioned, the Silk Road was the first transnational highway of the ancient world, a vast network of routes that connected China with western Asia, the Mediterranean, and the Indian subcontinent. Along this network traveled traders, emissaries, monks, and pilgrims, bringing luxury goods, new ideas, and religions to the diverse communities it linked. Of all the nationalities engaged in trade along the Silk Road, the Sogdians controlled the most lucrative commerce of all with China, and their language became the lingua franca of Central Asia. The importance and effectiveness of their role as merchants linking China and Central Asia is evidenced by a ninth-century Chinese historian's characterization of the Sogdians in the Xin Tangshu: "Men of Sogdiana have gone wherever profit is to be found." Evidence of Sogdian commercial activity in China is known as early as the fourth century C.E. when Sogdian merchants had already established colonies in such northern Chinese cities as Dunhuang and Lanzhou (Gansu), Guyuan (Ningxia), Xi'an (Shaanxi), Loyang (Henan), and possibly Taiyuan (Shanxi), as well as on the steppes of Mongolia. Richard N. Frye in his presentation, "The Merchant World of the Sogdians," explored the multifaceted world of the Sogdians in Central Asia and their interactions with the Turks and the Chinese. At the same time, he raised provocative questions about the absence of Buddhist remains in the Sogdian homeland such as in the city of Panjikent. Although generally tolerant of religions, Buddhist missionaries seem to be far more successful converting the Bactrians to the south than their northern neighbors, the Sogdians. Sogdians were not only merchants. They were interpreters, entertainers, horse breeders, and craftsmen; as such, they were transmitters of ideas. Sogdian scribes were among the first translators of Indian Buddhist texts into Chinese. Although some of these scribes had converted to Buddhism, the majority of Sogdians retained the Zoroastrian beliefs and practices of their homeland and built temples in their communities in China. In his paper, "The Role of the Sogdians as Translators of Buddhist Texts," Guanuda Zhang provided insight into the early Sogdian translators who adopted Chinese surnames connected with specific cities of their birth, such as Kang, which refers to the city of Samarkand, or An, which refers to Bukhara. Sogdians actively participated in translation work at the great religious centers of Dunhuang, Wuwei, Xi' an, and Luoyang. For example, Zhang pointed out that nearly all of the Buddhist texts or fragments written in Sogdian have been found in Dunhuang or Turfan. The term "Silk Road" was coined in the late-nineteenth century by the German geographer Ferdinand von Richthofen to describe this network of overland caravan routes that stretched some five thousand miles from China to the Mediterranean. There were other "roads" that went overland from north to south as well as by sea. However, silk was by no means the only commodity that came

INTRODUCTION

5

along the Silk Road; it could as easily have beeen named after the many other trade goods that were brought along this route: silver, jade, horses, wool, and spices, to name several, along with people, slaves, craftsmen, and entertainers. lt could certainly have been called the Glass Road for the vessels imported from the West to China, as An Jiayao demonstrated in "When Glass Was Treasured in China." She pointed out the fascination that the Chinese had for glass, not only for its intrinsic clarity and transparency but because blown glass, to the Chinese, seemed mysterious. An traces the introduction of Western glass to China from the fifth century B.C.E. and documents Chinese attempts to copy and make Western glass, ending her account of glass production with the Northern Song dynasty in the tenth century. However, she concentrates on the four hundred years from the fourth through the seventh century C.E., which saw magnificent and exotic examples of Western glass reach China, many of which are known to us because they were preserved in tombs as prize possessions. In "Iranian Luxury Vessels in China from the Late First Millennium B.C.E. to the Second Half of the First Millennium C.E.," Prudence 0. Harper documented another dass of luxury imports, the gold and silver vessels and other objects made by Iranian peoples in the Near East and Central Asia. Not only as articles of trade, many of these vessels entered China as precious gifts. Valued in their countries of origin not only for their material but also for the royal or prestigious imagery that decorated them, we cannot truly know what these vessels and other luxury goods meant to the Chinese who chose to be buried with them. They were certainly valued for what they were made of and decorated with. These materials, which included gold, silver, rock crystal or glass, and agate, were, Harper suggested, not only precious because they were rare, exotic, and foreign but also because, by the early first millennium C.E., they were considered among the Seven Treasures of Buddhism (sapta ratna). In discussing these vessels and their decorative motifs, Harper demonstrated how China until the eighth century participated in a multicultural world environment that included Sasanian Iran, Bactrian and Sogdian Central Asia, and Byzantium. Finally, along with monks and pilgrims bringing new religious ideas and merchants transporting articles of trade, the Silk Road featured other kinds of travelers: entertainers such as dancers, musicians, and singers. As Bo Lawergren observed in his "Waisted Drums in Ancient China and Eurasia": "In historical times, the Silk Road provides the best example of a conduit of Western instruments into China. Lutes and harps arrived and became indispensable to Chinese music." However, Lawergren focuses on the diffusion of a Chinese waisted drum outward into Central Asia before the third millennium and its return to China with Buddhism.

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Formost of the symposium, the discussion of the dynamic process of cultural change had been rooted in the past, understood mainly through tomb finds, preserved sacred objects, and texts. In the last panel, the work of Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Project served as a reminder that the vitality of cultural exchange across the Silk Road could again be nurtured. Yo-Yo Ma and his associates have been bringing an international aggregation of musicians together to perform pieces commissioned from composers from countries spanning ltaly and China. An awareness of this vital connection between the past and the present was also emphasized by the work of Sue Tuohy, "Musical Intersections: Local Festivals As Cosmopolitan Centers of Exchange." Her work has centered on the hua'er genre of folksongs sung throughout northwestern China by Han Chinese, several Muslim groups, Tibetans, and members of the Tu nationality. These hua 'er singers came together periodically holding festivals, the largest being that in the Lianhua Mountains of Gansu. Although organized on the periphery of the temples and of the modern contemporary Chinese music world, these festivals serve as polycentric vehicles of economic, cultural, and artistic exchange - an echo of the ancient oases and trading centers that once existed in Northwest China.

WHAT IS DUNHUANG ART?

WuHung Although many learned books and articles have been written on Dunhuang art, these are primarily about specific examples, and not so much about Dunhuang art as an all-inclusive and ever-changing visual culture. In other words, in studying Dunhuang art we have mainly been focusing on what we see, not what they saw. Can we utilize the rich evidence and scholarship on Dunhuang art to reconstruct historical perceptions of this art? What further research would this reconstruction require? What methodological challenges would be entailed? This essay responds to these questions by exploring the content and spatial complexity of Dunhuang art. We often automatically equate Dunhuang art with Dunhuang Buddhist art. This conceptual slip is understandable because we are willingly overwhelmed by the splendid murals and sculptures in the Mogao Caves. But this slip is serious, because it prevents us from understanding the full range of Dunhuang art and in turn diminishes the context of Dunhuang Buddhist art. lt is important to remember that Dunhuang was a place and that the Mogao Caves, a Buddhist complex located about 25 kilometers southeast of the township, only formed a small portion of it. During the medieval period, many other temples and ritual structures were constructed both inside and outside the city of Dunhuang, to facilitate not only Buddhist teachings and rituals but also those of Taoism, Confucianism, Zoroastrianism, local cults, and ancestral worship. The social conditions for such a polycentric visual culture are well-known: medieval Dunhuang was a city of immigrants, inhabited by people from different regions with different religious affiliations and cultural heritages. Buddhist art at Dunhuang was therefore never an insulated tradition, and its historical significance must be comprehended in relation to other visual traditions that developed alongside it. Now when we visit the Mogao Caves on the cliffs of Mt. Three Perils, we drive across a wide-open desert. This enormous area, in fact, was used as a public cemetery for local residents from the third century onward. Archaeological excavations conducted here over the past 60 years have uncovered some 1,000 tombs dating from the Western Jin (265-317) to Tang (618-906); many more burials still lie beneath the sand. The dating of the tombs is important because it means that the establishment and development of this cemetery basically paralleled the nearby Mogao Caves, and it means that the earliest Buddhist icons were installed in the Mogao Caves roughly around the same time as tombs which contained Taoist prayers or were painted with empty tents for the invisible spirits of the

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dead. We wonder why two such radically different visual languages were employed for the caves and the tombs and what their relationship was, especially when more and more Mogao caves were built as "family shrines," in which deceased members of a family were portrayed as living worshippers of the Buddha. lt seems that a traditional dichotomy in ancestral worship-a "pairing" of a collective family temple and tombs of individual family members-still provided a general framework for the juxtaposition of the caves and tombs at Dunhuang: tombs built near the residential area provided the dead with posthumous homes; a "family cave-chapel" celebrated the family's prosperity with the Buddha's blessing. One way to understand the content and spatial complexity of Dunhuang art is therefore to identify various religious and ritual centers in the area, which in the medieval period served as the most important sites for both public activities and art production. Although none of these structures have survived except for the Mogao Caves, manuscripts found in the "secret library" at Dunhuang yield rich information about their past existence. This information, which is particularly rich about the period from the eighth to tenth centuries, has allowed scholars to identify some twenty Buddhist monasteries at Dunhuang. The large ones in town played dominant roles in organizing Buddhist activities; inventories of their properties found in Dunhuang manuscripts list many sculptures and paintings. Smaller temples and shrines were sponsored by individuals. A rare record preserved in the British Library (S. 3929) praises the merit accumulated by the Dunhuang painter Dang Baode, who transformed his former residence in town into an exquisite Buddhist temple. The same document also records that Dang collaborated with patrons to create five cave-chapels. Dang Baode was a senior painter (du liao) in the painters' guild (hua hang) of the region. Tenth-century manuscripts also record an official hua yuan or "painting academy" at Dunhuang, in which painters had different ranks such as senior academy painter (hua yuan shi), one who knows how to paint (zhi hua shou), and academy student (yuan sheng). These official and unofficial artists, as well as ordinary painter-craftsmen called hua jiang, were involved not only in decorating Buddhist temples, but also in painting ancestral portraits, Confucian sages, and Taoist and Zoroastrian deities. Dang Baode, for example, was praised for his art of portraiture, while Dunhuang manuscript P. 4640 records that official painters were assigned to make images of Zhong Kui, the Demon Queller. From Dunhuang manuscripts we also know the names of at least eleven Taoist temples in this area during the Tang. One of them, the Palace of the Purple Pole (Zijigong), was possibly founded in 739 to 741, when Emperor Xuanzong ordered temples to be constructed for the deified Laozi in the capital and all prefectures. Those in the prefectures were called Zijigong, which housed Laozi's

CENTRAL ASIA FROM THE THIRD TO THE SEVENTH CENTURY Boris I. Marshak This paper contains a brief survey of some characteristic features and crucial events of the history of Central Asia in light of new archaeological discoveries. Many different peoples inhabited this huge region between Iran and China, sedentary in several large oases and nomadic in the long belt of the steppes that extends from the Black Sea shores to Mongolia (fig. 1). 1 But first, one must mention a paradoxical feature of its history; the dense population of the oases was subordinate to the relatively small nomadic peoples, the founders of several great but short-lived empires. We do not have many historical records of the oases states, since foreign observers usually wrote more on the history of the nomads, who were more involved in international policy. Therefore, we have to speak about the Hun, Hephthalite, and Turk periods named after the nomads' ethnonymics. Why were the nomads so powerful and why were their empires so short lived? The first question is not so difficult to answer. In nomadic society, every man was a skillful rider and archer. Besides, they could leave their herds to a

Fig. 1. Map of Centra!Asia, after Juliano and Lerner, Monks andMerchants, 22-23.

1 The history of early medieval Central Asian civilization discussed in: Boris A. Litvinsky, ed., History of Civilizations of Central Asia, vol. 3 (Paris: UNESCO, 1996); Dennis Sinor, ed., The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (Cambridge, 1990); Richard N. Frye, The Heritage of Central Asia from Antiquity to the Turkish Expansion (Princeton, NJ, 1996).

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few shepherds and easily gather a large cavalry army. On the other hand, in sedentary society, the everyday life of the tillers did not allow them to learn the techniques of warfare. Moreover, they could not leave their fields for long military campaigns without a fatal loss of crops. The professional warriors of the oasis states were few and could not successfully attack the nomads on the vast steppes. The sedentary populations were often happy to accept a mighty nomadic sovereign, who would protect their caravan trade and guarantee their safety at home. Although they became vassal states, they still enjoyed almost full autonomy. The second question can be answered ifwe take into consideration the geography of Central Asia. In Eurasia the best pastures were situated in the Steppe Belt between the northern forests and the southern sand deserts. Every year the most powerful groups of nomads crossed this belt twice. At some point the nomads' northern neighbors, who had been hunters and fishermen, moved to the steppes abandoned by the nomads and soon became pasturalists. The best example of such transformation is the ancient Hungarians, a steppe people whose ancestors lived in the West Siberian forests. When one nomadic group conquered a neighboring group, it found itself twice as strong as before and was easily able to defeat other groups moving eastwards or more often westwards. Thus, we see the so-called "domino" effect at work, with a new great empire as the result of this process. However, the various parts of such empires had almost no common interests, and, therefore, could be divided back into several parts as easily as they were created. A few nomadic rulers moved to the settled countries of the south and founded new dynasties there. Soon they were integrated into sedentary society and gradually lost their close contacts with those large and militarily active tribes who still lived in the steppes, becoming less powerful. To the south of the Steppe Belt there were two less important nomad centers, in the regions near the Tien Shan and the Hindu-Kush Mountains, with their large and grassy pastures. The other important players on the historic stage of Central Asia were its settled peoples. They were not powerful but had far more developed culture and art. This we can say with assurance, following six decades of intensive archaeological excavations in the former Soviet republics, Afghanistan, and China. In this paper I will briefly consider several sedentary regions: Sogdia (Sughd) in the valleys of the Zeravshan and the Kashka-Darya Rivers (its main cities were Samarkand and Bukhara); Khorazm (Khwarizm) in the delta of the Amu-Darya River, Ustrushana and Chach, the northeastern neighbors of Sogdia, culturally

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very closely related to it; and Tokharistan (former Bactria) situated to the south of Sogdia up to the paths across the Hindu Kush Mountains. The three main languages in this area were Sogdian, Khorazmian, and Bactrian, all belonging to the East lranian branch of the Indo-European linguistic family. The oases of Xinjiang were divided, speaking East Iranian Khotanese in its western part and Tocharian (an Indo-European but not Iranian language) in its eastern part (Kucha, Karashahr). These fertile valleys and oases were linked through a network of caravan routes that connected China with India and with the Mediterranean countries. These caravan routes are commonly referred as the Silk Road, though there were several different roads and all kinds of goods other than silk moved along them. In the intervals between devastating wars, the worst of which were the Run (Xiongnu) invasions in the fourth (and perhaps also in the third) century. Sogdia was a rich agricultural country, with a large and dense population. After a long period of prosperity it became over populated, and many Sogdians had to leave their native land. The Sogdian emigration and colonization of other lands presented an integrating factor from the first centuries C.E. The Sogdians established their trade colonies, sometimes even towns and villages with agricultural activity, along the northern branches of the Silk Road up to Dunhuang in western China and also in the inner regions of China. From the fourth through the seventh century, the way to India in the upper reaches of the Indus River was primarily the Sogdian road. The great majority of travelers using the upper Indus passes, 2 as well as of the majority of sellers and buyers on the Turfan markets, were the Sogdians. 3 The dominating cultural role of Sogdia can be illustrated by the Sogdian legends on the coins of Ustrushana, Chach, Ferghana, Semirech'e (the land along the northern outskirts of the Tien-Shan Mountains ), and Khorazm. Sogdian became the lingua franca of Central Asia. However, there was no Sogdian empire. The country was divided into several city-states and petty principalities, though all of East Sogdia held Samarkand, its traditional capital, in high esteem. In the third century the most important political event was the fall of the wellorganized Kushan Kingdom extending from Bactria to India. Bactria-

2

Nicholas Sims-Williams, Sogdian and other Inscriptions of the Upper Indus, 2 vols., Corpus lnscriptiones lranicarum (London, 1989, 1992). 3 Jonathan Skaff, "Sasanian and Arabo-Sasanian coins from Turfan: Their Relationship to International Trade and Local Economy," Asia Major 2, no. 2 (1998), 67115.

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NOMADS, TRADERS AND HOLY MEN

Figs. 2-9. Painted reliefs from An Jia 's tomb in Xi'an, after Wenwu, no. 1 (2001) 4-26

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NOMADS, TRADERS AND HOLY MEN

site the entrance, there are several figures of Chinese bearing silk. On the sides, Turkic troops are seated. They, according to the Turkic Orkhon texts, went through Sogdia up to its southwest boundary, when they unwillingly served the Chinese Emperor, most probably in 658. 14 A one-word Sogdian inscription "arg" is on a hand of a figure of one of these Turks. The word refers to the status of a bondsman. 15 On another wall, the artist depicted a Tang emperor hunting leopards and a group of the Chinese court ladies in a boat. Notwithstanding the first raids of the Arabs, the last decades of seventh century were the period of the greatest prosperity for Sogdia. In the northeastern part of Central Asia the Turks revolted against the Tang Dynasty in 679 and re-established the Kaghanate, while in the southeast, the newly-born state of Tibet began, in the 670s, its attacks against the Chinese garrisons in the Tarim basin. The framework of the political history helps understand cultural relationships. As far as we know from works of art, Buddhism took root in Tokharistan during the Kushan period (2nd century). lt reached the southern oases of Xinjiang in the third century and the northern ones in the fourth century. In Xinjiang it also flourished in the following period (5th-7th centuries). In Tokharistan this religion almost disappeared after the Kushans. However, a second wave of Buddhism reached this country under the Turks in the late sixth-early seventh centuries. 16 1 agree with Bamiyan 's date of from 600 to 650, but not much later than that. 17 In Sogdia proper Buddhism was the religion of a small minority. However, it became popular in the Sogdian colonies under Tang rule. A mold for the clay figurines of Buddha from Panjikent is unique in Sogdia. 18 There, and perhaps in China, many Buddhist texts were translated from Chinese into Sogdian. We know that in the late seventh century the Chinese built a Buddhist monastery in Suyab

14 Etsuko Kageyama told me that she had read in Tang hui yao, vol. 99 a note on Samarkand where the date is 658, not between 650 and 655. 15 Vladimir A. Livshits's oral communication. 16 Tamara I. Zeymal, "On the chronology of the Buddhist site of Kara tepe," in Coins, Art and Chronology: Essays on the pre-Islamic History of the Indo-lranian Borderlands (Vienna, 1999) 413-422. 17 Zemaryalai Tarzi, L 'Architecture et le decor rupestre des grottes de Bamiyan (Paris, 1977); Deborah E. Klimburg-Salter, The Kingdom of Bamiyan: Buddhist Art and Culture of the Hindu Kush (Naples, 1989). 18 Boris I. Marshak and Valentina 1. Raspopova, "Buddha Icon from Panjikent," Silk RoadArt andArchaeology 5 (1997/98): 297-305.

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21

(Semirech'e). Approximately contemporary to it were several Buddhist temples unearthed by archaeologists, two inAk-Beshim (Suyab), one in Krasnaya Rechka (Semirech'e), and one in Kuva (Ferghana). The bronze medallion from the Buddhist temple in Ak-Beshim shows two Sogdian deities framed by a Chinesestyle ornament. 19 As a rule the Sogdians considered themselves to be Zoroastrians, but for them the worship of several gods (Zoroastrian and non-Zoroastrian) seems to have been more important than Zaratushtra's teachings. We know of a few totally Zoroastrian images in Sogdian and Sino-Sogdian art of the sixth and seventh centuries. The influence of Hindu iconography and Indian lay literary subjects reached Sogdia only in the sixth century, when the Hephthalites ruled in Sogdia and in northwestern India. Later, in Varakhsha, Sogdian artists depicted Ahura Mazda in the form of Indra on the back of an elephant, whereas in Panjikent the wind god Veshparkar was shown in the form of Shiva and so on. 20 Secular art is almost unknown in Central Asia, except Sogdia, where monuments have been unearthed in Samarkand and, especially, in Panjikent, a small fifth to eighth century town near modern Penjikent (Panjakent) in Tajikistan. The literary subjects of Panjikent murals of the seventh and eighth centuries come from Greek (Aesop's Fables), Indian (the "Panchatantra" and the "Mahabharata"), Iranian (Rustam's exploits), and local stories. 21 This worldwide scope is characteristic of the culture of the crossroads of Eurasian cultural traditions. Another characteristic feature of the period was the importation of Roman, Iranian, Tokharistanian (Bactrian), and Sogdian silver

19 Leonid R. Kyzlasov, "Arkheologicheskie issledovaniia na gorodishche Ak-Beshim v 1953-1954 gg," in Trudy Kirgizskoi kompleksnoi arkheologo-etnograficheskoi expeditsii, vol. 2 (Moskva, 1959): 206-209, fig. 38, 7. A stone Buddhist relief made by Tang Chinese sculptor was found in Krasnaya Rechka, see Galina A. Brykina, ed., Sredniaia Aziia i Da!'nii Vostok v epokhu srednevekov 'ia. Sredniaia Aziia v rannem srednevekov 'e (Moskva, 1999) plate 100, 4. 20 Alexander M. Belenitskii and Boris 1. Marshak, "The Painting of Sogdiana," pt. 1 of Sogdian Painting (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London, 1981) 29-33 and fig. 5. 21 Ibid., 27, 28, 68. 22 Gilded-silver ewer, Sasanian, sixth-seventh century C.E. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Dillon Gift and Rogers Fund, 1967. See Annette Juliano and Judith Lerner, Monks and Merchants: Silk Raad Treasures from Northwest China (New York: Abrams, 2001) 98-100.

22

NOMADS, TRADERS AND HOLY MEN

plate to China, mostly in the fifth to seventh centuries, and the influence of imported 22 vessels on the silversmith art of this country. 23 In conclusion, it is worth mentioning that several Chinese works of art, including an excellent Sui mirror, 24 were found in Sogdia, the westernmost part of Central Asia, and that in the seventh century, on one of the walls of the palace at Samarkand, a local painter depicted a Tang emperor hunting leopards and a group of the Chinese court ladies in a boat. 25

23 Boris I. Marshak, "A Sogdian Silver Bowl in the Freer Gallery of Art," Ars Orientalis 29 (1999): 101-110; Qi Dongfang, Research on Tang Gold and Silver (Beijing, 1999) 249-289, 306-369, 372-382 (in Chinese with an English summary). 24 Amriddin Berdirnuradov and Masud Samibaev, Khram Dzartepa II (The Temple of Jartepa-II: the problems of cultural life of Sogdiana in the 4th_sth c. A.D.) (Tashkent, 1999) 44, 45, plates 84, 86, 2; Qi Dongfang, op. cit., 378-382, figs. 3-83. 25 Marshak, "Le programrne iconographique," op. cit.

STRANGE BEASTS IN HAN AND POST-HAN IMAGERY

Jessica Rawson Introduction Strange beasts, dragons, phoenixes, and the grimacing face we call the taotie are the hallmarks of ancient Chinese imagery, most especially in the Han and post-Han period. They have continued to decorate buildings, tombs, clothing and porcelain dishes down to the present day. Most commentators have treated the animal imagery of China as a single, continuous tradition. However, this it was most evidently not.

Between the Shang (ca.1600-ca.1100 B.C.E.) and the Han periods (206 B.C.E.-220 C.E.), we can identify three principal phases. The first (the Shang and the early Zhou period, ca.1500-ca.850 B.C.E.) was a time during which finely cast bronze vessels provided the most striking images. The monster face, or taotie, was the defining element (fig. 1). lt was usually shown from the front but

g

Fig. 1. Rubbings of taotie designs of the Shang and Western Zhou periods, c. 1500-900 B.C.E„ after Jessica Rawson, Chinese Bronzes, Art and Ritual, London: British Museum Publications Ltd„ 1987, p. 9.

24

NOMADS, TRADERS AND HOLY MEN

Fig. 2. Drawing of a design on foundry debris from Houma in Shanxi province, showing griffins entwined with a taotie-like face, 6th_5tb century, B.C.E., after Houma zhutong yizhi. 2 vols. Beijing:Wenwu chubanshe, 1993, vol. 1, fig . 72.

might also be viewed as two confronted dragons. 1 These designs were confined to square or rectangular panels created in response to relatively standardised vessel shapes and the casting system in ceramic piece-moulds. 2 A second phase, starting in the eighth century B.C.E., witnessed the popularity of a different category of bronze design that allowed continuous horizontal borders of pattern, especially on bronzes, but also in other contexts. These borders might embrace interlaced dragons and tiger-like versions of the taotie. Sometimes griffins and winged creatures (probably derived, ultimately, from western Asia) entwined their claws and bodies with these dragons and faces (fig. 2). 3 In both of these phases, the majority of the animal motifs were disposed so that their settings were the vessels, or other bronzes, themselves. The creatures were not given a context that implied a represented space, such as a landscape. Tue third phase concerns us here. Animals and strange birds depicted in this latest phase were often shown in conflict with each other or pursued by humans (fig. 3).

1

For a general discussion of bronze designs and the relationship with vessels, see Lothar Ledderose, Ten Thousand Things, Module and Mass Production in Chinese Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000) 24-49. 2 For a detailed discussion of the relationship between bronze designs, vessel shapes and casting techniques, see Robert Bagley, Shang Ritual Bronzes in the Arthur M. Sackler Collections, vol. I of Ancient Chinese Bronzes from the Arthur M. Sack/er Collections (Washington DC and Cambridge, Mass., 1987) 15-30. 3 For comments on the Western Asian origins of some elements of Eastern Zhou bronze motifs, especially those from Houma, see Jessica Rawson, Chinese fades From the Neolithic to the Qing (London: British Museum Press, 1995) 64-66.

STRANGE BEASTS

27

Fig. 4. Drawing of a plaque showing a beast with horns tipped with birds' heads attached by a wolf and bear; Han dynasty, 2nct century B.C.E., from Shizishan at Xuzhou, Jiangsu province, after Jessica Rawson, "Eternal Palaces of the Western Han: A New View of the Universe," Artibus Asiae 59, no.1/2 (1999): 5-58, fig. 21.

Craftsmen probably took the types and forms of such animals from many sources. Some creatures clearly derive from the animal scenes shown on earlier bronzes, mentioned above. Others were taken from artefacts made in the southern state of Chu, for many strange and elegant beasts were depicted on Warring States (475-221 B.C.E.) and Han period lacquers from Hubei and southern Henan. 10 At all stages during the evolution of animal imagery of this descriptive genre, creatures that reproduced features of beasts from Central and West Asia seem to have been especially popular. 11 These creatures appear by themselves and in combination with others. Scenes that show two or more animals in conflict are some of the most obvious borrowings. A Western Han period gilt belt-plaque from the tomb of an imperial prince shows a crouching beast attacked by a wolf and a bear. The crouching

10 Lacquer painted artefacts from the tomb of the Marquis Yi of Zeng (d. 433 BC) and from a major tomb at Baoshan, both in Hubei province, provide many examples of painted lacquers: Hubeisheng Bowuguan, eds. , Zeng Hou Yi mu, vol. 2 (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1989) colour plates 2:6, 13, 16; Hubeisheng Jingsha tielu kaogudui, ed., Baoshan Chumu, vol. 2 (Beijing: Wenwu chubanshe, 1991) colour plates 2:3-5, 4, 6:3. 11 For goldwork with Iranian styles and subjects, see Wenwu (1981.1): 18-22. Early examples of Bactrian type omament in Inner Mongolia in the form of golden animal heads with small pendants, see Wenwu (1984.1): 81-83, 29. For discussion of foreign creatures and winged beasts, see Li Ling, "Rushan yu chusai," Wenwu (2000.2): 87-95; Li Ling, "Lun Zhongguode you yi shenshou," Zhongguo xueshu 5 (2001.1): 62-134.

28

NOMADS, TRADERS AND HOLY MEN

animal has horns wound along the edge of the plaque, with tiny bird's heads along the tips, a feature borrowed from southern Siberia (fig 4). 12 Belt-plaques with such exotic subjects seem to have been popular with the Han elite. Another exotic item is a pair of strange, lion-like creatures standing on birds from the tomb of the King of Zhongshan, Liu Sheng (died 113 B.C.E.), reminiscent of small portable figures of the Egyptian Goddess Tauert, usually shown as a pregnant, standing hippopotamus. An intermediary may have been a hybrid creature, such as the feline-headed, pregnant animal figure, probably from lran. 13 lntellectual Background As indicated above, it is possible to find similar creatures shown in Han tombs and artefacts from many sources, both local and exotic. But this imagery would not, in all probability, have taken hold had not the Chinese court of the day been preoccupied with understanding the territory that they inhabited and the beasts found there. By understanding, 1 refer to attempts to provide a general, or even theoretical, account not just of the immediate area directly controlled and administered by the emperor, but of the world as a whole. This concern with what might be called topography or geography was set within wider theoretical interests in the structure or system of the universe or cosmos. There is no space here to document the basic philosophical developments of the fourth to second century B.C.E. that gave rise to what is known in English as correlative thinking. This term merely touches on one aspect of a complex set of ideas derived from several sources and which seem to have changed the ways in which the universe was viewed. 14 The concepts now integrated into a single system embraced the divisions of time and space, using the system of ten stems and twelve braches, the movement of the heavenly bodies, the five elements or phases-wood, fire, earth, metal, water-and the correlations of seasons, colours, bodily organs, and musical tones with these. 15 Aspects of this system could be set

12 For material

excavated at Pazyryk in South Siberia, see Sergei Rudenko, Frozen Tombs of Siberia: The Pazyryk Burials of Jron-Age Horsemen (London: J.M. Dent & Sons LTD, 1970) plate 142, where a stag-like animal head was found with homs tipped by bird' heads. 13 Jessica Rawson, "Strange Creatures;' Oriental Art XLIV, no. 2 (1998): fig. 6. 14 Recent discussions are found in Aihe Wang, Cosmology and Political Culture in Early China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000) and Michael Puett, To Become a God: Cosmology, Sacrifice and Self-Divinization in Early China, HarvardYenching Institute Monographs Series 57 (Cambridge, Mass. and London: Harvard University Press, 2002). 15 Angus Graham, Disputers of the Tao, Philosophical Argument in Ancient China (LaSalle, IL,:Open Court 1989) 313-370.

STRANGE BEASTS

29

out in a chart, such as that found on a diviner's board, in a divination diagram, or an a "TLV" mirror. 16 Among texts that refer to this system or structure, the Huainanzi is one of the most important. 17 Same of these views are today further illuminated by documents recently excavated from third and second century B.C.E. tombs. 18 The animals of the four directions and those representing the twelve divisions of the zodiac are examples of the use of creatures as part of a system of signs to enable the features of the cosmos to be visualised. 19 Omens and portents by which the heavens expressed changes in the events of the world were frequently made manifest in the form of miraculous animals and birds. 20 In parallel with this careful charting of the heavens and the geometric framework of the universe as a whole, a schematic topography of the Earth was developed also. The Shi ji provides brief references to the framework of sacred mountains, and to spirits and deities linked with mountains and rivers. 21 The fu, which described the imperial parks as replicating the formal topography of the earth, including the sacred mountains of Kunlun and the mountains of the immortals on Penglai, have already been mentioned. 22 Each sector of the world presented in a park had its particular creatures. Animals and birds identified particular geographic regions. These fu seem to continue the tradition of several of the poems in the Chuci, the poetry of the state of Chu. Several of these poems, and most

16

A good summary is found in Donald Harper, "Warring States Natural Philosophy and Occult Thought," in The Cambridge History of Ancient China, from the Origins of Civilization to 221 BC (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) 831-852. 17 John Major, Heaven and Earth in Early Han Thought, Chapters Three, Four, and Five of the Huainanzi (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1993) 28-43. 18 Excavated texts, such as the Xingde texts from Mawangdui, often refer to a single aspect of the system of the universe. However, the information that they contain implies a much wider range of structures than the single aspect described. See Marc Kalinowski, "The Xingde Texts from Mawangdui;' Early China 23-24 (1998-1999): 125-202. 19 Characters or figures of creatures could be used interchangeably. For a discussion of the zodiac creatures, see Judy Chungwa Ho, "The Twelve Calendrical Animals in Tang Tombs," in Ancient Mortuary Traditions of China, Papers on Chinese Ceramic Funerary Sculptures (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum and University of Hawaii Press, 1991) 60-83. 2 For representations of omens in the form of creatures, see Wu Hung, "A Sanpan Shan Chariot Ornament and the Xiangrui Design in Western Han Art," Archives of Asian Art, vol. 37, 1984, pp. 38-59. 21 Burton Watson, trans., Records of the Grand Historian of China, vol. 2, 28-29. 22 Lothar Ledderose, "The Earthly Paradise: Religious Elements in Chinese Landscape Art;' Theories of the Arts in China (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983) 168-169.

°

30

NOMADS, TRADERS AND HOLY MEN

especially the Zhao hun, or "Summoning the Soul," describe the world in terms of the creatures found in the different quarters: In the south you cannot stay, There are coiling snakes there, and the great fox that can run a thousand leagues, And the Nine-headed serpent who darts swiftly this way and that.. .. . . . Climb not to the heaven above, For tigers and leopards guard the gates, with jaws ever ready to rend up mortal men; ... Go not down to the Land of Darkness, where the Earth God lies, nine-coiled, with dreadful horns on his forehead. 23 Such verses suggest that a directional and topographical view of the known world was among the shared concepts of the time. And within that account, descriptions of the creatures of each area helped to enlarge, or even validate, these notions. Illustration of actual sections of the land appeared in maps in the Qin and Han periods, usually made for military purposes. 24 A number of other surviving sources also convey a strong interest in geographic information, most especially the Shanhaijing. This text describes direction and location in very detailed terms. Here, too, regions were identified by their strange inhabitants, usually hybrid creatures. 25 Other accounts specifically linked strange creatures to deities. For example, the Queen Mother of the West, popular in the mid- to late-Han period, was thought to be accompanied by a hare, a fox, and a three-legged toad. 26 In addition, those wishing to reach the lands of the Queen Mother would have to cross a mountainous terrain inhabited by the treacherous hu, or non-Chinese peoples, and strange beasts. This wide range of preoccupations with the universe, especially with the topography of the earth and its inhabitants, seems to have been among the factors

23 David Hawkes, trans., Ch 'u Tz'u, The Songs of the South, An Ancient Chinese Anthology (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1959) 104. 24 Yan Ping, et al., China in Ancient and Modern Maps (London: Sothebys Publications, 1998) 24-27. 25 Anne Birrell, trans., The Classic of Mountains and Seas (London: Penguin Books, 1999). 2 6 For a discussion of the Queen Mother of the West, see Riccardo Francasso, "Holy Mothers of Ancient China: A New Approach to the Hsi-wang-mu Problem," T'oung Pao 74 (1988): 1-46.

STRANGE BEASTS

Fig. 5. Drawing of a panel from the coffin ofYu Hong, from Taiyuan in Shanxi province, dated AD 579, after Wenwu 2001.1, pp. 27-52.

31

32

NOMADS, TRADERS AND ROLY MEN

that gave rise in the Ran period to a need to depict animals. One context in which animals and birds frequently appear is the tomb. Ran and later tombs seem to have been intended to provide universes for the afterlives of their occupants. 27 As strange beasts were an aspect of the universe, and often a very important one, it is not, therefore, surprising that they figure in the decoration of tombs and their contents. The later images of the post-Ran period continued this tradition. Interestingly, the decoration of such extraordinary monuments as the sixth-century coffin of Yu Rong from Taiyuan carries forward many of the themes seen in Ran art. Animals in combat and strange creatures, which may have been read as omens, are carved on this coffin (fig 5). Many of the detailed features of this sixth-century imagery were dependent on newly imported designs from Central Asia, such as the winged horse with a fish's tail. lt seems likely that this interest in strange creatures is simply an extension of the practice developed in the Ran. Furthermore, it seems probable, that the Ran tradition, reinforced by the sixth-century imports, gave rise the Tang period's (618-906) engagement with animal models and pictures for the tombs of the elite. While it is possible to view the horses and camels of the Tang as simply a record of court life, without the developments of the Ran and the post-Ran period, it is unlikely that they would have been so favoured for tombs. This account has suggested that we cannot view any major development or change in a decorative scheme or style as being produced by one set of impulses. In the Ran the following factors were key: the conquest of territory, an exploration of the universe in both scientific and literary terms, and the borrowing of animal figures from local traditions of many areas, most especially from Chu and from Central Asia. Similarly, during the sixth century, the Ran foundation was a necessary condition, and this was enhanced by new contacts with the West. While for the Tang, the last period in which animals had a large role in tombs decoration, we might argue that we see the domestication of a tradition that initially addressed a much more mysterious context, when the borders of the known world were less familiar and inextricably linked with the strange lands of spirits and deities.

27

Jessica Rawson, "Eternal Palaces of the Western Han: A New View of the Universe," Artibus Asiae 59, no. 1/2 (1999): 5-58.

THE NOMADS OF THE FIFTH CENTURY: THE TUOBA XIANBEI Shing Müller The Tuoba (Tabgac), one of the invading northern nomads (the so-called "Five Barbarians"), established the Northern Wei Dynasty in 386 C.E. 1 From the middle of the fifth century until its fall in 534, the Northern Wei was the supreme power of the East. Recent archaeological finds of foreign artifacts from West and Central Asia near Datong in Shanxi, where the Northern Wei capital Pingcheng stood for nearly 100 years (398-494), as well as the long known foreign motifs and flower scrolls in the Buddhist art of this dynasty confirm the unprecedented openness of the Tuoba especially during the fifth century. Foreign artifacts were not only evident in the everyday life of the Tuoba, but different cultural elements were also transformed and formed into a new Tuoba culture. 2 This paper will explore different modes of cultural transfer as they were shown in Tuoba burials and describe briefly the formation of the Tuoba culture. Pre-dynastic and Early Dynastie Tuoba Burials The Tuoba were a branch of the Xianbei, probably originating in Manchuria and southeastern Inner Mongolia. The earliest burial sites to be associated with the Tuoba by Chinese archaeologists are located at Zhalainor, near the Hulun Lake, and are dated to the first and second century C.E. 3 These people were, similar to the Xiongnu, riders, hunters and herders, as manifested by bits of bridles,

1 For an overview of the history see Otto Franke, Geschichte des Chinesischen Reiches, vol II (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1936) 118-227. Li Ping's Beiwei Pingcheng shidai (Beijing: Shehui kexue wenxian chubanshe, 2000) is a comprehensive survey of the Northern Wei history during the 5th century. For abriet discussion of older excavations see Su Bai, "Dongbei, Neimenggu diqu de Xianbei yiji - Xianbei yiji jilu zhi yi," Wenwu (1977.5): 42-54; idem., "Shengle, Pingcheng yidai de Tuoba Xianbei - Beiwei yiji Xianbei yiji jilu zhi er," Wenwu (1977.11): 38-46; idem., "Beiwei Luoyangcheng he Beimang lingmu - Xianbei yiji jilu zhi san," Wenwu (1978.7): 42-52; and Albert E. Dien, "A New Look at the Xianbei and their Impact on Chinese Culture," in Ancient Mortuary Traditions of China: Papers on Chinese Ceramic Funerary Sculptures (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum ofArt, 1991) 40-59. 2 See e.g., the descriptions of court lives of the Tuoba in Chapter 57 ("Records of the Wei Barbarians") of the Chronicles of the Southern Qi, Xiao Zixian, comp., Nan Qi shu (Beijing: Zhonghua shuju, 1972) 985-986.

34

NOMADS, TRADERS AND HOLY MEN Fig. la.

] ~--+---

r.. „.

:

:

. -.•

*'" •

-J,

]

~ · · --.:@ ~1 1 Fig. lb.

1;

Fig. 1. Burials at Zhalainor, Inner Mongolia, ca. !51 to 2nd century C.E. a. a trapezoidal grave pit with sacrificed animal skulls; b.-d. grave goods: bits, arrow heads, bone overlays (after Kaogu (1961.12): 674, fig. 2.1, 2.3, p. 678, fig. 10, 11; Neimenggu wenwu kaogu (1994.2): 29, fig. 4.8-4.12); e. belt plaques (after Wenwu (1961.9): 17, fig. 1, 3)

THE NOMADS OF THE FIFTH CENTURY

35

.. j. I V •!

'f, . :,, ·1, ; 1

1P !:;:

Fig. le.

Fig. ld.

arrow heads, bone overlays for bows, and crania of sacrificed horses, cattle, and sheep/goats. The grave pits as well as the wooden coffins have a trapezoidal shape. 4 Some of the deceased wore bronze, iron, or golden keyhole-shaped belt plaques, which were used to indicate the tribe and the status of the individuals. (fig. la-e) These two features, however, distinguished the burials from the Xiongnu. 5 While the trapezoidal form was Xianbei-specific, the keyhole-shaped belt plaques were also observed in Central Asia during the first century C.E„

3 The

Zhalainor burials lie on the eastern bank of the Mutunaya River in southeastern Inner Mongolia. The early cultural forms of the Tuoba, or the Xianbei in general, are far more complicated than the discussions of Su Bai (see note 1). But a detailed treatment is beyond the scope of this paper. Only generalized features of the Tuoba/Xianbei will be mentioned here. 4 These were in fact wooden structures on the walls of the grave pits. They usually did not have a wooden bottom, and the deceased was laid directly on the ground. 5 See e.g„ Emma Bunker et al., Ancient Bronzes of the Eastern Eurasian Steppes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections (New York: the Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, 1997) 76-97.

36

NOMADS, TRADERS AND HOLY MEN

indicating that some members of the Tuoba, or in general, of the Xianbei, had early contacts with Eurasian tribes. 6 The trapezoidal coffins and keyhole-shaped belt plaques dominate even in sites of different burial customs of the third to the fourth century from the western slope of the Greater Xing' an to south of the Yinshan Ranges, areas which, according to written sources, were then occupied by the pre-dynastic Tuoba. This coffin form persisted even into the dynastic era and became the major characteristic of the Northern Wei burials. Keeping in mind that the Tuoba were a confederation of nomadic tribes, the acceptance of this coffin form indicates that certain cultural appearances were reinforced by the leading groups. Although written sources state that all of northern China stood under Tuoba control after the annexation of Hexi (modern Gansu) in 439, only a few Northern Wei burials from the first half of the fifth century have been discovered outside the capital area. 7 These burials were obviously extensions of regional cultures from the previous Sixteen Kingdoms period (304-438). 8 Again, the trapezoidal coffins in these tombs bore witness to Xianbei influences. Most burials of the Tuoba seem to be concentrated near Pingcheng. 9 Meanwhile, the old sepulchral tradition of using simple grave pits and Xianbei-type metal belt-plaques, began to wane.

6 A pair of belt plaques of this type was found in Orlat, Uzbekistan (from the 1st century B.C.E. to the 1st century C.E.). The burials are believed to have been of the KangjuSaka culture; see Jangar Y. Ilyasov and Dmitriy V. Rusanov, "A Study on the Bone Plates from Orlat,'' Silk Raad Art and Archaeology 5 (1997/98): 107-159 and plates IV, VIII. According to these two authors, such belt plaques were rather common in Central Asia. A find further west was made in a Sarmatian site in Porogi, West Ukraine (the 1st century C.E.); see Aleksandr V. Simonenko, "Der linkshändige Sarmatenfürst von Porogi und die vornehme Dame aus dem Nogajcik-Kurgan," in Rolle et al., Gold der Steppe. Archäologie der Ukraine (Neumünster: Karl Wachholtz Verlag, 1991): 215-220, and cat. no. 155b on page 404 (color plate ). 7 E.g., the tomb in Caochangpo, Xi'an (Kaogu (1959.6): 285-287), the tombs in Chang'anxian, Xianyang (Kaogu yu wenwu (1990.5): 57-62), the tombs in Xinji, Pengyang, Ningxia (Wenwu (1988.9): 26-42), the tomb in Meidai, Inner Mongolia (Kaogu (1962.2): 86-87, 91), and the tomb of Liu Xian in Chaoyang, Liaoning (Kaogu (1984.7): 615-621). None of these can be dated directly because of the lack of any textual finds, with the exception of the tomb of Liu Xian, which can be dated after 452 according to the epitaph. There are also some stray finds in Inner Mongolia, e.g. the Guyang tombs (Kaogu (1987.1): 38-41, 4). 8 Cf. Shing Müller, "Die Gräber der Nördlichen Wei-Zeit (386-534),'' (dissertation, University of Munich, 1998): 92-117.

THE NOMADS OF THE FIFTH CENTURY

37

\ Q,

1

1

1

1

1

1

t

1

1* 1

Fig. 2. Simple earthen grave (M109) with short ramps excavated in a southern suburb of Datong, Shanxi, ca. middle to end of the 5th century (after Wenwu (1992.8): 2, fig. 3)

The Influx of Foreign Cultures The defeat of the Rouran in the 450s had two impacts: first, freed from threats on the northern frontiers, the Tuoba rulers began major building projects, such as the palaces in Pingcheng and the great Buddhist temples and grottos in Yungang. 10 These large-scale works intensified after the 470s and reflected a strong, highly-organized state. 11 Secondly, facilitated by the proximity of

9 This is a wide spread burial pattern among pastoral tribes in China. Their cemeteries were concentrated in the vicinity of power centers. This differs totally from the more family-based Chinese pattern. The results of most of the excavations near Datong are not published and were only mentioned in other archaeological reports or articles. The best published report thus far, though still of preliminary nature, is from the Shanxisheng Kaogu Yanjiusuo and Datong Bowuguan, "Datong nanjiao Beiwei muqun fajue jianbao," Wenwu (1992.8): 1-10. The date of the first occupation of this cemetery can be sei back to the beginning of the 5th century according to the typology of the ceramic finds. 10 See Thomas Barfield, The Perilous Frontier. Nomadic Empires and China 221 BC toAD 1757 (reprint, Cambridge: Blackwell Publishers, 1989) 120-124. 11 Dien, "A New Look," 44. Although great famines and natural catastrophes continued to strike the northem provinces since the 470s, these great building projects did not seem to be affected, judging from the dimensions ofYungang and several great tombs like the tomb of Sima Jinlong and his wife and the mausoleum of the Empress Dowager Wenming.

38

NOMADS, TRADERS AND HOLY MEN

Fig. 3. Bronze chin straps from Ml07, excavated in a southern suburb of Datong, Shanxi, c. middle to end of the 5th century (after Beichao yanjiu (1999.1): 156, fig. 15)

Pingcheng to the steppes, 12 envoys and merchants from Khotan, Kashmir, or even Persia came to the court of the Tuoba. 13 How goods and ideas entered the Tuoba society can be illustrated by two major burial types near Pingcheng after the second half of the fifth century. The first type consists of simple earthen graves of different constructional details. The graves usually have relatively short ramps, mostly under 10 meters (fig. 2). Some wooden coffins of trapezoidal form were painted in polychrome with favorite West Asian

12 Maeda Masana, Pingcheng lishi dilixue yanjiu, trans. Li Ping, Sun Yao, Sun Lei (Beijing: Shumu wenxian chubanshe, 1994) 115-156 (in Chinese). 13 Cf. the tables in the chapter "Embassies" in Hans Bielenstein, "The Six Dynasties, vol. II," The Museum of Far EasternAntiquities 69 (Stockholm, 1997) 79-124.

THE NOMADS OF THE FIFTH CENTURY

39

Fig. 4. Silver bowl and Sassanian glass from M107, Datong (after Beichao yanjiu (1999.1): 151-2, fig. 9 & 10)

scenes, such as feasting and hunting. Walnuts, jujubes, or fruit seeds were deposited inside the coffins of some of the female burials. Metal chin-straps (fig. 3) were used on some children and male and female adult burials both to decorate the face and to prevent the mouth from gaping open in the course of decomposition. These features strongly suggest a Western origin of the tomb occupants, since nuts as grave goods for females can only be traced from Xinjiang westwards to the northern regions of the Caucasus from the second to sixth century, if not later. 14 No chin straps of any material were evidenced in China proper before this time, 15 whereas golden ones-though different in form, but similar in function--existed already in ancient Bactria, e.g., in the burials of Tillya-tepe in Shibarghan of northern Afghanistan, dated between the first century B.C.E. and the first century C.E. 16 No figurines, models of household utensils, epitaphs, or any grave forms reminiscent of a home for the after-life were recovered in these burials. Jade artifacts, although highly valued by the Han Chinese, do not occur among the grave inventories, either. Silver vessel, probably of West Asian origin, and Sasanian glass (fig. 4) were found in these graves. Western burial habits associated with valuable artifacts

14 Müller, Die Gräber, 121. For finds in Caucasus see e.g. Anna A. Ierusalimskaja, Die Gräber der Moscevaja Balka: Frühmittelalterliche Funde an der Nordkaukasischen Seidenstraße (München: Editio Maris, 1996) 30-31.

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suggest that some of the occupants were high-ranking tribal members of the Tuoba confederation. Burials of this type are concentrated in the southern suburbs of Datong, where several gilded bronze vessels of West Asia or North India and Chinese imitations were found in the 1970s under the architectural foundations of Pingcheng.1 7 The rather intensive finds of foreign-styled metal vessels, both in settlements as in these nearby tombs, may not be coincidental, and might give a clue about the settling mode. 18 Besides, these vessels may have possessed ritual functions in funerals since they do not seem to have been placed randomly in tombs. 19 The burials of another major type are rather uniform and Chinese-like. A tomb has either an earthen or a brick square chamber with a cloister vault, normally not exceeding three meters in length, width, and height, and with a very long ramp (over 20 meters) to the earth surface. There are only a few tombs of this type, and they are located mainly in the eastern and southeastern suburbs

15

The mummies from Xinjiang (from the 2nct millennium B.C.E. to the 3rct century C.E.) wore textile chin-straps (see Elizabeth Barber, The Mummies of Ürümchi (New York, London: W.W. Norton and Company, 1999) 28-30, and Wenwu (1999.1): 4-16). This region was not under the Chinese control until the Western Han and even then for only a short time. The totally different burial customs of the mummies also indicate that this area was far beyond the reach of the Han Chinese, although there were intensive contacts between them and the Chinese as manifested by the Chinese-styled silk and Chinese mirrors. There are no archaeological finds of chin-straps in China proper thus far. One may claim that the materials were not preserved, but e.g., in the section referring to funerals in the Yili, a ritual text compiled in the Han times, does not mention the binding of jaws while it does give detailed descriptions about covering faces and eyes, stuffing the nostrils and ears, and filling mouths; see Seraphin Couvreur, 1-li Ceremonial (Leiden: Cathasia, 1951) 444-450. 16 Cf. Viktor Sarianidi, The Golden Hoard of Bactria (Leningrad: Aurora Publishers, 1985) photo on page 12, cat. nos. 3.23, 4.23, 5.5. But these seem to be single finds for Central Asia at this early date. In the Greek archaic and the classical period, on the other hand, metal chin-straps, often of gold foil, appear tobe a common burial custom and were called othonai; see Donna Kurtz and John Boardman, Creek Burial Customs (London: Thames and Hudson, 1971) 144. 17 Jessica Rawson, The Ornament of Chinese Silver of the Tang Dynasty (AD 618906), British Museum Occasional Paper No. 40. (London: British Museum, 1982) 2; idem., Chinese Ornament. The Lotus and the Dragon (New York: Holmes and Meier Publishers, 1984) 39, 114. Carter indicates that the gilt bronze footed cup with inlaid glass and semi-precious stones from Datong cannot be dated later than the 2nd century C.E. and came most likely from Bactria, where it was probably a part of treasures in Buddhist monasteries; see Martha L. Carter, "A Note on Metalwork from the Hellenistic East," Bulletin of the Asia Institute, n.s., 9 (1995): 262-263.

THE NOMADS OF THE FIFTH CENTURY

43

the Mediterranean world and well documented in Tillya-tepe, was also used on the early metal plaques of the northern nomads of the fourth century. 24 In these tombs of the later half of the fifth century, the motif was integrated into the ageold Chinese animal masks and was imbedded in a Buddhist context. The new masks were used to decorate coffins, the facade of a sarcophagus in the form of a house or a tomb chamber, 25 and thus most likely have an apotropaic function.26 For the first time stone sarcophagi in house forms and stone funerary couches occurred in tombs of this second type. 27 Their sources remain enigmatic. Parallel funerary furniture has thus far neither been witnessed in southern dynasties, nor in areas along the Chinese part of the Silk Road. 28 This costly funerary furniture was clearly manufactured locally and, from similarities in decor and style to the early Yungang grottos, most likely by Liangzhou craftsmen. The tomb occupants also seem to stem from the Hexi or the Guanlong region. 29 The stone couches are decorated with ornaments in a strong Buddhist style. This suggests

24 Sarianidi, The Golden Hoard, plates 45-47, cat. no. 27, and Rolle et al., Gold der Steppe, cat. no. 155b and color plate on page 404, for the find near the Black Sea. This motif can be traced back to Minoan period, c. 1700 B.C.E. Compare the find from Aegina; seelewelry through 7000Years (London: British Museum Publications, 1976) 51, cat. no. 32. 25 For an example, see the stone sarcophagus of Song Shaozu (died in 477), excavated in Datong, Shanxi, Wenwu (2001.7): 24, fig. 8. The decoration of a tomb chamber with such animal masks can be illustrated by a find in Huangzhong, Qinghai; see Zhongguo wenwu bao (June 21, 2000): 1. 26 According to Zhang Li (note 18) a hoard of gilt bronze animal masks and openwork was also found in the vicinity of the above-mentioned architectural site where the West Asian and Indian bronze vessels were recovered. But their practical use is still not certain. Of the use of such masks and their relationship to tomb types near Datong, see Müller, Die Gräber, 151-155. 27 For stone sarcophagi in the form of a hause see the find of Song Shaozu, Wenwu (2001.7): 24, fig. 8, and another one with polychrome painting, Wenwu (2001.7): 40-51. For stone couches see the one from the tomb of Sima Jinlong and wife (died in 484 and 474, respectively), Wenwu (1972.3): 22, fig. 4., from the tomb of Song Shaozu, Wenwu (2001.7) 26, fig. 13. An earthen chamber tomb (M112) contained a stone platform but with a similar stone slab of a couch was found south of Datong, Wenwu (1992.8): 4, fig. 6. 28 Shing Müller, "Sima Jinlong muzang de chongxin pinggu" (paper read at the 7th International Conference of the History of the Northern Dynasties, Datong, August 8-11, 2001) 11 pages. Funerary stone couches (klinai) and tomb chambers in house form were observed in Macedonian tombs of the Hellenistic period, which were probably influenced by Asia Minor; see Kurtz and Boardman, Greek Burial Customs, 273-283.

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that the couches were linked with certain Buddhist cults. 30 Thus, the Hexi and Guanlong heritages, material as well as spiritual, seem to be decisive in the formation of the new Tuoba tradition. This second type of tombs and Buddhist art works give the first clues to the types of garb wom by the Tuoba (high headgear, caftan, trousers, and boots; see fig. Sc, left). Also, these burials in the capital showed a somewhat "standardized funerary art" (i.e., the use of this type of chamber tombs, of clay figurines, and of new forms of animal masks). With this new style the regional traditions ended abruptly. The tombs in Guyuan and in Hohhot (both garrisons of the Northern Wei) could be considered as examples of this new style, though not completely. High-ranking tribal members of the Northem Wei adopted this centralized standard funerary form after the capital was moved to Luoyang, although they still kept part of their own traditions, such as the use of chin-straps and the burial of valuable metal vessels. Conclusion The burials near Datong reflect the ways foreign cultural elements were received by different members of the Tuoba. But the tradition that was closely associated with the Hexi and Guanlong regions became dominant at the end of the fifth century. Use of clay figurines, funerary couches, stone sarcophagi in the form of wooden coffins and houses, as well as square stone epitaphs (from the sixth century onwards), established a new funerary tradition of the Northern Wei and was influential even up to the Tang Dynasty.

29

See Müller, "Sima Jinlong." See e.g„ the couch from the tomb of the Tuoba aristocrat Sima Jinlong and his wife Jichen, Wenwu (1972.3): 22, fig. 4. The ownership of this stone couch is still not clear. 1 proposed-according to the historical framework and the analysis of the grave goodsthat it belonged to Jichen, whose father was the Prince of Western Qin Hedouba, also known as Yuan He (Cf. Müller, "Sima Jinlong"). The other similar stone couches seem to have Buddhist ornaments, too. But the data have not as yet been sufficiently published; Müller, Die Gräber, 132-33. 30

BUDDHIST STELES FROM THE GANSU/NINGXIA REGION Dorothy Wang Introduction The Gansu-Ningxia region in Northwest China was an important regional center of Buddhist art in the fifth and sixth centuries, nurtured by the international traffic and cultural exchanges between East and West along the Silk Road. The concentration of Buddhist cave temples in the region attests to the widespread practice of Buddhism and prevalent artistic influences from the West. External influences, however, also interacted with local traditions, giving rise to innovations and independent developments. The Chinese Buddhist stele, or stone slabs carved with Buddhist images, is an art form that represents a synthesis of both Chinese and Indian Buddhist traditions. Buddhist steles were made in large numbers in Northern China from the late fifth through the early seventh century. The majority of them take the form of the Chinese commemorative tablet, usually surmounted by pairs of dragons, although some are also derived from Indian prototypes. Accompanying this synthesis in visual form was also interchange in functions, symbolism, and patronage practice. This paper examines the group of Buddhist steles originating from the Gansu-Ningxia region. 1 The northwest region was peripheral to the core area of stele production that concentrated in the central plains of Shanxi, Henan, and Shaanxi provinces, but nonetheless has yielded a small but significant group of these monuments. 2 The stone steles from Gansu and Ningxia fall into two groups. The first group, from the Maijishan cave temples in Tianshui, Southeastern Gansu, has relatively fewer Chinese features in form, and might be based on Indian prototypes. In iconography and style, they exemplify the uniform idiom of late Northern Wei (386-535

1 The paper presented at the "Nomads, Traders and Holy Men Along China's Silk Road" conference discussed Buddhist steles from both the Gansu/Ningxia region and Sichuan. This paper covers only steles from the Gansu/Ningxia region; for discussion of the Sichuan steles see this author's "Four Sichuan Buddhist Steles and the Beginnings of Pure Land Imagery in China," Archives ofAsian Art LI (1998/99): 56-79. 2 See this author's Adaptation and Transformation: Chinese Buddhist Steles of the Period of Northern and Southern Dynasties (forthcoming).

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·-

...

Fig. 1. Longitudinal section of Maijishan Cave 133, showing placement of stone steles. After Michael Sullivan, The Cave Temples of Maichishan, 33.

C.E.) Buddhist art established throughout the North in the first few decades of the sixth century. The second group has stronger affinities with Chinese commemorative tablets both in form and in function . As such they are more closely associated with other Buddhist steles from Northern China. Exhibiting different degrees of adaptation of foreign and indigenous Chinese elements, these two groups of Buddhist steles from the northwest offer excellent opportunities to examine the formation of Chinese Buddhist art and the processes of localization during the Northern dynasties period. Maijishan Stetes The largest group of Buddhist steles in Gansu comes from the Maijishan cave-temple site. 3 Founded by the eminent dhyana master Xuangao (401-444 C.E.), the site had been a major Buddhist center since the fifth century. In the tradition of Buddhist cave chapels from the Tarim Basin in Central Asia to Dunhuang and other sites in Northwest China, the sculptures at Maijishan, with

3

Major studies of the Maijishan cave-temples include: Michael Sullivan, The Cave Temples of Maichishan (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of Califomia Press, 1969), and Research Institute of the Maijishan Cave-temples, ed., Tianshui Maijishan (hereafter MJS), Zhongguo shiku series (Beijing: Wenwu Press, 1998). See also Annette Juliano and Judith Lerner, eds., Monks and Merchants: Buddhist Treasures from Northwest China (hereafter Monks and Merchants) (New York: Tue Asia Society, 2001) 136-138, cat. nos. 60-66.

BUDDHIST STELES FROM THE GANSU/NINGXIA REGION

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a few exceptions, were modeled in clay and then painted. These stucco images were usually placed in recessed niches excavated into the wall surfaces. However, there is also a group of Buddhist steles carved from stone. Not found in any other cave-temple sites in China, this group of stone steles is therefore quite unique. Besides, they represent some of the finest carvings from the region. Altogether there are eighteen slabs, and some fragments, currently kept in Cave 133 (fig. 1). Also known as the Hall of Myriad Bodhisattvas or the Cave of Steles, this is one of the largest cave chapels at Maijishan, measuring about fifteen meters wide, thirteen meters deep, and six meters high. The cave chapel was first excavated during the late Northern Wei period, and later restored in Song times. Several free-standing large statues inside the cave chapel, including the imposing statue of the standing Buddha of three-and-one-half meters tall, are of Tang (618-906) and Song (960-1279) dates. Otherwise the recessed niches with images along the walls all date from the latter part of Northern Wei period. The stone slabs, ranging in height between one and two meters high and one half to one meter wide, are standing against the walls around the interior of the cave chapel. lt is not clear whether they were intended for this specific cave chapel or were moved there from other places. The steles are rectangular flat slabs with either flat or round tops. Some of them have projections at the top though it is not clear if they might have been fitted with stele tops originally. With a few exceptions, most of the slabs are carved only on one side; perhaps they were intended to stand against the wall for worship. None of them bears any date or inscription (the inscriptions on some of them were added in later times). The Maijishan steles all date from the late Northern Wei period, consistent in style and iconography with Buddhist art of the period. Integrating Western elements with sinicizing characteristics, this innovative idiom has been called the Northern Wei national style. 4 Most likely products of local workshops, they highlight the fact that cave temples, as important centers of Buddhist art, exerted much influence on other types of free-standing sculptures. The carving of images in recessed niches on steles, for example, was clearly derived from cave-chapel practices.

4 See Annette Juliano's discussion of the Northern Wei style, m Monks and Merchants, 135-136.

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Fig. 2. Maijishan Stele no. 1, obverse; Maijishan Cave 133, c. 510-530; stone; H. 187 m, W. 59 cm, D. 13 cm. From MJS, plate 93.

Fig. 2a. Reverse of Stele no. 1. From MJS, plate 94.

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49

The majority of the Maijishan steles belong to the type called Thousand Buddhas steles (qianfo bei) because they represent row after row of identical seated Buddha images. 5 Stele no. 1 is one of the few steles carved on both sides (figs. 2, 2a), suggesting that it was intended tobe viewed from both the front and the back. The stele has a round top, carved on either side with a small recessed niche with a Buddha triad, flanked by monks. The front side also has a small, seated Buddha at the top. The top of the niche is shaped as an arch with scalloped rims, while the lower part has engraved silhouettes of overlapping hills, suggesting the scene of the Buddha preaching on the Vulture Peak. In traditional Chinese tablets, the top is usually fashioned with pairs of intertwined dragons, but here the Chinese symbols have been discarded in favor of Buddhist ones. The main body of the stele is carved on both sides with many rows of small images of the meditating Buddha. Steles nos. 12 and 13 are also Thousand Buddhas steles; they both have flat tops and are carved only on one side. 6 Two other Thousand Buddhas steles are Steles nos. 11 and 16, but they are more interesting because of the inclusion of larger niches with principal icons. The large niche in the middle section of Stele no. 11 portrays a Buddha, probably the Historical Buddha Sakyamuni, regally seated on a stepped throne, symbolic of Mt. Meru, the world mountain (fig. 3). The Buddha is flanked by two bodhisattvas, who stand on lotuses that emerge from the sides of the Buddha's throne. A pair of lions stands on two sides while an offering of a lotus is placed in front of the throne. Above, the arch-shaped canopy is beautifully carved with plant motifs, and hung with swaying tassels. The side panels portray two pairs of apsaras holding offerings. Facing opposite directions, the attenuated bodies and fluttering scarves of the apsaras impart a rhythmic sense of movement. Two small, seated Buddhas are depicted below, while rows of Buddha images occupy the remaining surface. On Stele no.16, the carving is arranged into four horizontal bands: six niches in the top section and a main niche in the third section, alternating with rows of small Buddha images in the second and fourth bands (fig. 4). The main niche portrays three Buddhas on a stepped throne. The central figure, seated with legs pendant in the Western fashion, represents Maitreya the Future Buddha. Maitreya, represented both as a bodhisattva and as a Buddha, was one of the most popular

5

The other main types of Buddhist steles are those carved with principal icons in one or more recessed niches, and complex steles that encompass multiple themes. Yet some others are determined by form such as the pillar-shaped four-sided steles. 6 MJS, plates 99, 100.

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Fig. 3. Maijishan Stele no. 11; Maijishan Cave 133, c. 510-530; stone; H. 188 m, W. 90 cm, D. 14 cm. From MJS, plate 96.

BUDDHIST STELES FROM THE GANSU/NINGXIA REGION

Fig. 4. Maijishan Stele no. 16; Maijishan Cave 133, c. 510-530; stone; H. 192 m, W. 89 cm, D. 13 cm. From MJS, plate 101.

51

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Fig. 5. South wall of the exterior ofYungang Cave 16, showing depictions of Maitreya Bodhisattva (seated with crossed ankles), Sakyamuni, Twin Buddhas, Seven Buddhas, and Thousand Buddhas; Northem Wei period, 4th quarter 5th century. From Yungang shiku, vol. 2, plate 145.

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Buddha land in a state of mental concentration, the chanting of Buddha's names, or circumambulation within a cave chapel. 11 Such motifs emblematic of early Mahayana thought were already popular in Gandharan art, but reached new heights in Northern Wei Buddhist art. In adopting Buddhism as a state religion, spiritual kingship became identified with secular kingship under the Northern Wei, and the dynasty's founding rulers were deified and worshiped like Buddhas. The state's assertion for dynastic lineage found in Buddhism a doctrinal justification. As a result, the succession theme was given grand passages and took on new meanings. At Yungang, the icons and themes of Sakyamuni, Maitreya, Twin Buddhas, Seven Buddhas, and Thousand Buddhas are represented in a variety of combinations (fig. 5). The interiors of Yungang Caves 15 and 16, for example, express in a grand fashion the eternity of Buddhahood, with numerous Buddhas covering wall after wall. 12 In Gandharan art, the Buddha of the Past is usually represented by Dipakara, but is replaced by Prabhutaratna in the popular Twin Buddhas motif in Northern Wei Buddhist art. As mentioned earlier, this motif is an indigenous Chinese iconographic innovation based on the eleventh chapter, the "Apparition of the Jeweled Stupa" of the Lotus Sutra. E.J. Thomas summarized the chapter as follows: A stupa of jewels appears, and a voice comes from it praising Buddha for uttering this sutra [the Lotus]. lt is the stupa containing the body of the past Buddha Prabhutaratna, which this Buddha wished to be present whenever the Lotus was being recited, and the Tathagatas from other Buddha fields are to be present as well. Buddha, therefore, darts a ray which makes millions of worlds visible in all directions with Buddhas preaching the Doctrine in each. They arrive in numbers like the sands of the Ganges, so that there is no room for any gods, and ask Buddha to open the stupa. He does so, Prabhutaratna is seen sitting cross-legged within, and Buddha sits down by him on half the seat. The rest of the sutra is a eulogy on its merits. 13

11 Ning Qiang and Hu Tongqing, "Dunhuang Mogaoku de 254 ku qianfohua yanjiu," Dunhuang yanjiu 4 (1986): 22-36; Stanley K. Abe, "Art and Practice in a Fifth-Century Chinese Buddhist Cave-temple," Ars Orientalis 20 (1990): 1-21; France Pepper, "The Thousand Buddha Motif: A Visual Chant in Cave-Temples Along the Silk Road," Oriental Art XLIV, no. 4 (1998/9): 39-45. 12 See James 0. Caswell, "The 'Thousand-Buddha' Pattern in Caves XIX and XVI at Yün-kang," Ars Orientalis 10 (1975): 35-54. 13 E.J. Thomas, History of Buddhist Thought (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1951) 183. For a discussion of the Lotus Sutra see the introduction to Leon Hurvitz, trans. Scripture of the Lotus Blossom of the Fine Dharma (New York: Columbia University Press, 1976).

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Fig. 6. Maijishan Stele no. 10; Maijishan Cave 133, c. 510-530; stone; H. 156 cm, W. 76 cm, D . 9 cm. From MJS, plate 95.

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jections at the top shaped in the form of stupas. In her study, Joanna Williams observed that these slabs, unlike the sculptural reliefs of Gandhära that adorn architecture, seemed to have been installed as major objects of worship against a flat wall. 17 She further pointed out that the slabs are smooth and unfinished on the back and that they are comparable in size to images that are the major objects ofworship. The Maijishan steles are similar in size and shape. They are mostly carved on one side, and are also placed against the walls of the cave chapel. The steles from Sarnath all depict scenes of the Buddha's life (fig. 7). The composition and iconography of these scenes continued those well-established in Gandhara and other earlier Indian schools such as Andhra and Mathura, as well as innovative elements developed locally. 18 Williams also suggested that the Sarnath steles date from the second half of the fifth century to the seventh and eighth centuries. 19 The Sarnath stone slabs are of similar size and shape as the Maijishan steles, and in one case close in contents (Stele no. 10). However, the Gupta sculptural style contrasts with the Chinese Buddhist style that emphasizes heavy robes and decorative treatment of drapery folds. Besides, the Gupta style is not known to have reached China until the middle part of the sixth century, evinced by sculptures from the well-known site of Wanfosi in Sichuan and the recent finds at Qingzhou, Shandong province. 20 While it may not be possible to establish direct connections between Gupta India and Maijishan, the existence of the Sarnath steles argues for the possibility of an Indian prototype that might have inspired the Maijishan steles. Notwithstanding, the visual vocabulary and stylistic character of the Maijishan steles are distinctively Northern Wei. Chinese-type Buddhist Steles Two free-standing Buddhist steles, from Southern Gansu and Ningxia, belong to the general northern-type stele that embodies characteristics of the Chinese commemorative tablet. The inscriptions and donor images of these two

17

Ibid., 171 n. 2. Ibid., 189. 19 Ibid., 191. 20 See Alexander Soper, " South Chinese Influence on the Buddhist Art of the Six Dynasties Period;' Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Art 32 (1960): 47-111; The Return of the Buddha: Chinese Buddhist Sculpture, New discoveries from Qingzhou, Shandong Province (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2002). 18

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Fig. 7. Buddhist stele, depicting the Buddha's life; Sarnath, lndia; Gupta period, second half of 5 th century; H. 96 cm, W. 49.5 cm, D. 8 cm; National Museum, New Delhi C(a)2. From Joanna Williams, "Sarnath Gupta Steles of the Buddha's Life," fig. 1.

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61

steles also offer a glimpse at the ethnic and cultural background of the patrons, their motivations for dedicating images, and the functions of these monuments. 21 The first one comes from Southern Ningxia, at the borders of Gansu and Shaanxi (fig. 8). 22 Rendered in sandstone, the stele is very modest in size, measuring about one-half meter tall. lt is dated to the second year of the Jianming reign of the Northern Wei period (531). The stele top is rounded in shape, and the obverse shows a standing bodhisattva with a flame-shaped mandorla in the main niche, flanked by pairs of subsidiary figures facing opposite directions. At the top are Sakyamuni and Prabhutaratna seated on a couch, surrounded by disciples behind. With squarish faces and sharp contours, the style of the figures is close to that of neighboring Shaanxi. The idiosyncratic symmetry of paired figures gives the stele a rustic charm. In the tradition of the commemorative tablet, the inscription on the side and reverse records the devotional act and identifies the donor as Jin Shennu. Jin originated from Jingzhou in Northern Shanxi, the power base of the Northern Wei. Jin was a sinicized surname of the Xiongnu, suggesting that the donor might come from a Xiongnu tribe who had joined the Xianbei confederation that founded the Northern Wei. 23 Because of the tribal organization of the nomadic state and the strong emphasis on the military, the elite military force within the Xianbei confederation often enjoyed aristocratic status. 24 The donor apparently had an illustrious career as a military commander, for he held the titles of Commissioner with Extraordinary Powers, General Defending the West, Defender General, and Commander-in-Chief in Conquering the West (shichijie jia zhengxi jiangjun zhenjun jiangjun, xizheng dudu ). He also held a noble rank and was enfeoffed as a dynasty-founding Viscount at Anyong Xian in the eastern part of present-day Qinghai. Lauding the individual's illustrious achievements through the recording of official ranks and titles was a custom well-established in traditional Chinese

21 On the diverse ethnic mix of the peoples who Jived in the northwest during the Northern Dynasties, see Albert E. Dien, "Encounters with Nomads," in Monks and Merchants, 55-66. 22 Cultural Relics Division of Guyuan County, "Guyuan xian Xinji Gongshe chutu yipi Bei Wei fojiao zaoxiang," Kaogu yu wenwu 6 (1944): 34-35, plate 5: 1, 2; Zhongguo meishu quanji, Wei jin Nanbeichao diaosu (hereafter ZMQ) (Beijing: Renmin meishu chuban she, 1988) plate 74; Monks andMerchants, 172-173, cat. no. 57. 23 Yao Weiyuan, Beichao huxing kao (Beijing: Kexue chuban she, 1955) 286-287. 24 For social organization of the nomadic groups see Wolfram Eberhard, A History of China, 4th ed. (London and Henley: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977) 118-121.

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Fig. 8. Jin Shennu Stele; from Guyuan Xian, Ningxia; Northern Wei period, dated 531, sandstone; H. 48 cm, W. 20.8 cm, D. 5.5 cm; Guyuan Municipal Museum, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region.

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tablets since Han times. 25 Once exposed to Chinese culture, nomads also adopted the use of steles to advertise their achievements and status. In this case, as in many other northern steles, the role of powerful generals as Buddhist patrons in a frontier region is strongly felt. The second free-standing stele is recovered from Southern Gansu. Dated to the fourth year of the Jiande reign of the Northern Zhou dynasty (573), the stele measures more than one meter tall (figs. 9, 9a). 26 The stele top is rendered in two pairs of intertwined dragons in the form of traditional Chinese tablets. Within the stele top there is a small Buddha image on either side. The principal icon on the obverse is Sakyamuni, flanked by two standing bodhisattvas. A canopy with drapery and tassels frame the niche. Below the niche are pairs of lokapalas and lions, while above the niche is a small image of the seated Buddha framed by the dragons. The reverse depicts a Maitreya Bodhisattva triad. The short sides also have small images of a seated Buddha with legs pendant and a cross-ankled, seated Maitreya Bodhisattva. (During the Northern Wei period, Maitreya Bodhisattva is usually shown with the legs crossed at the ankles, but by the second half of the sixth century it is quite common to see both Maitreya Bodhisattva and Maitreya Buddha shown seated in the Western fashion.) The figures are rendered with squarish faces and stout proportions, a style associated with the Northern Zhou. The details of the niche on the obverse, although resembling that of Maijishan Stele no. 16, is much simplified and sharply delineated. The carving lacks the sophistication and fluidity of the Maijishan style but possesses an unpretentious charm. The inscription records that the main donor, Wang Lingwei, dedicated the stone slab to his deceased children and parents, for their rebirth in the Pure Lands so that they would encounter all the Buddhas, and the opportunity to attend the first of the three assemblies of Maitreya Buddha. (When Maitreya attains enlightenment in the ideal kingdom of Ketumati, he will hold three assemblies to offer salvation to endless sentient beings.)27 Wang also prayed that his family and all sentient beings would be protected from disasters and suffering. The concept of transference of

25

See Patricia Ebrey, "Later Han Stone Inscriptions," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 40 (1980): 325-353. 26 Wu Yiru, "Bei Zhou Wang Lingwei zaoxiangbei;' Wenwu 2 (1988): 69-71; the stele is also published in ZMQ, plates 141-142; Monks and Merchants, 188-189, cat. no. 67. 27 In Northem dynasties dedicatory inscriptions, one of the most commonly expressed desires is to ascend (upon death) to Maitreya's paradise, the Tuita Heaven, and then descend with Maitreya into Ketumati and gain the opportunity to attend Maitreya's assemblies.

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Fig. 9. Wang Lingwei Stele, obverse; from Zhangjia Hui Autonomous County, Eastern Gansu; Northern Zhou period, dated 573; stone; H. 90 cm, W. 39 cm, D. 25 cm; Gansu Provincial Museum, Lanzhou.

BUDDHIST STELES FROM THE GANSU/NINGXIA REGION

Fig. 9a. Reverse of Wang Lingwei Stele

65

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Fig. 10. Rubbing of reverse of Wei Wenlang stele; Sanyuanxian, Shaanxi; Northern Wei period, c. 500?; limestone; H. 124 cm, W. 6672 cm, D. 29.5-31 cm; Yaoxian Museum, Shaanxi. From Yaosheng, "Yao xian shike wenji luezhi," Kaogu 3 (1965): fig. 1.2

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Fig. 11. Kushan donors flanking Maitrya Bodhisattva, image pedestal; From Paitava, Gandhara; Kushan period (1 st_3rd century); schist. H. 25.4 cm, W. 47 cm; Kabul Museum. From John M. Rosenfield, Dynastie Arts of the Kushans, plate 104. merit (parinama) in Buddhism enabled the donor to accrue merit for his deceased relatives, thus fulfilling his Chinese obligations in the Confucian sense. 28 Donor images are depicted in low relief in the lower half of the reverse. The names identify them as the beneficiaries of the donation: the donor's deceased daughters drawn in oxcarts and his deceased sons on horseback. Names of the deceased parents are inscribed below. Presented as the main donors making offerings to the Buddha, Wang's deceased relatives become the principal recipients of the merit gained from this dedication. One of the principal functions of Chinese tablets is to commemorate the deceased. Here the adaptation of the Chinese tablets for commemorative purposes was an appropriate one. What is intriguing about this stele is the manner in which the donors are represented. They are shown in profile as in a procession. This manner of representing donors is also found on other examples, such as a Buddho-Daoist stele from Shaanxi, showing an equestrian figure preceding an oxcart (fig. 10). The oxcart,

28

Gregory Schopen noted that the accruing of merit for deceased relatives was also practiced by Indian Buddhists, see his "Filial Piety and the Monk in the Practice of Indian Buddhism: a Question of "Sinicization" Viewed from the Other Side," in Banes, Stones, and Buddhist Monks (Honololu: University of Hawai' i Press, 1994) 56- 71.

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Fig. 12. Xianbei donors (lay and monastic) shown at the bottom of a pagoda; Yungang Cave 11, south wall; Northern Wei period, fourth quarter of 5th century. From Yungang shiku, vol. 2, plate 94.

BUDDHIST STELES FROM THE GANSU/NINGXIA REGION

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horse and groom, attendants, and fans and umbrella are all status symbols. 29 This mode of representation recalls the processional images in Han pictorial art, which portray human figures, horses, and chariots, in profile, proceeding in one direction. This Chinese mode of representing processional images contrasts with the Indian mode, which depict donors more or less frontally and naturalistically. In relief sculptures of Gandhara, the donors are depicted on two sides of the Buddha on the pedestal (fig. 11). However, the Indian mode has evolved into a rigid symmetry in Northern dynasty cave temple sites from Dunhuang to Yungang. In an example from Yungang Cave 11, two symmetric groups of donors are shown frontally and angling slightly toward the center (fig. 12). The unique costumes identify the donors as Xianbei noblemen and noblewomen. Donning tall headdresses, the men wear tunics, trousers, and boots while the women wear short coats over long pleated skirts. Monastic members precede secular donors. 30 Tue same mode of representing donors continued at Longmen (fig. 13). However, the costume for the Xianbei royal donors changed into the attire of the Chinese gentry, with long flowing robes and rendered in the linear mode. This change in costume occasioned Emperor Xiaowen's cultural reforms and the nomads' attempts to adopt Chinese culture and customs. On the Wang Lingwei stele, the reversal to the earlier Chinese mode is intriguing, perhaps suggesting a resurgence of more conservative elements. Nevertheless, it is important to note the incorporation of nomadic elements. Tue equestrian figures wear round hats with a rim, trousers, and boots, and they seem to have braided hair customary of nomads. From the inscription, we know that the main donor was the chief of a fortress (baozhu). During the Northern dynasties, it was common for towns and villages to build fortresses and to marshal their own militia groups for self-defense. One of the

29 A beautiful example of the use of oxcart and horse as status symbols for Chinese gentry donors is shown on a pedestal dated 524. The pedestal is now in the University Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania, and is published in Osvald Sin'Sn, Chinese sculpture from the fifth to the fourteenth centuries (London, 1925) plates 150, 151. 30 See Albert Dien, "A New Look at the Xianbei and their Impact on Chinese Culture," in George Kuwayama et al.,Ancient Mortuary Traditions of China (Los Angeles: Los Angeles County Museum of Art, 1991) 40-59; Monks and Merchants, 144-147, cat. no. 45. Identity markers such as costume, hairstyle, surname, etc., can also be used rhetorically; see this author's "Ethnicity and Identity: Northern Nomads as Buddhist Art Patrons during the Period of Northern and Southern Dynasties," in Political Frontiers, Ethnic Boundaries, and Human Geographies in Chinese History (London: Curzon Press, forthcoming).

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Fig. 13. Xianbei royal donors in Chinese attire, pedestal of image dedicated by Monk Fasheng; From Guyang Cave, south wall; Northern Wei period, dated 503. From Longmen shiku, vol. 1, plate 142

donor's sons, Songqing, was also a military commander. He held the titles of General Commanding Vast Territories and Adjunct Commander of the Palace Calvary (kuangli jiangjun dianzhong sima biejiang). Tue stele also records the names of the women who married into the family; they have surnames such as Liang, Zhang, and Huangfu. Although Wang is a common sinicized surname adopted by the Qiang people and other nomadic groups, without further evidence it is not possible to ascertain the donors' ethnic origins. Nonetheless, the costume of the equestrian figures and the military posts of the donors attest to the influence of nomadic culture and the strong military presence in Northern China, and this stele illustrates well the synthesis of Buddhism with both nomadic and Chinese cultures in visual terms. This small group ofBuddhist steles from Gansu-Ningxia exemplifies the synthesis of Buddhist and Chinese traditions in a variety of manners, including artistic form, style, motifs, interpretation of Buddhist teachings, and the manner of representing donors. The two slabs that record their donors, who all had military roles, give voice to the ethos of the society's military character and speak of the role of Buddhism in this time of turmoil.

THE MERCHANT WORLD OF THE SOGDIANS Richard N. Frye The history of Inner Asia has been characterized as a continual conflict between the steppe and the sown, and scholars have concentrated on this aspect. Yet the raiding of settled peoples by nomads, and the attempts to dominate the steppes by sedentary states, is not the dominant feature of relations between them. Rather it was trade, which provided the life-blood of both societies, those of the oases and those of the grasslands. A symbiosis of settler and nomad occurred, in which the exchange of articles of trade was complementary, and both sides benefited. When a !arge and aggressive empire, such as Tang China or Sasanian Iran, interfered with the nomad/oasis relationship, the result was strife and disruption of established patterns. In the relationship between nomads (or pastoralists) and oasis-dwellers, the merchants par excellence of the latter were the Sogdians. One might protest that they were not oasis-dwellers, except in their far-flung colonies in the east and north, but in reality the lands of Bukhara, Samarkand, Chach, and others really were !arge oases, subject to relations with surrounding nomads, as were the oases of Kucha, Turfan and others of present day Xinjiang. A century ago the names of Sogdiana, Choresmia (medieval Khwarazm) and Bactria were little known even to their settled neighbors in China, India, and Iran, much less to the West. Since the discovery of remains of all three languages, and archaeological excavations in the vast area between Iran and China, we now know that the three peoples, and others, represented a flourishing East lranian culture, greatly influenced by China, Iran, and India, but different from the great centers of civilization. One may always find differences between the various strands of this East Iranian/Central Asian culture, but it may be described as a separate entity, with distinctive architecture, art, society, and history. The principal carriers of this civilization were the Sogdians. With the launching of the Silk Route Project by UNESCO in 1990, Sogdians came into people's purview. Rather than giving a survey of the Sogdians in history, several matters that have attracted the attention of scholars may be of interest. Before retiring over eleven years ago, 1 gave a talk in which several questions about the Sogdians in Central Asia were raised, and 1 still find no satisfactory answers to them. These are the questions. Why did Khotan and Kucha become great Buddhist centers, whereas Kashgar and Turfan apparently did not? Is there a parallel in West Turkestan where the absence of Buddhist remains in Sogdiana contrasts with the great centers of Buddhism in Northern and Southern Bactria?

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What was the nature of Iranian Buddhism? What was the extent of Kushan rule in East Turkestan? What was the extent of Sasanian rule in the East and what kind was it? These are only general historical queries and are matched by many philological and archaeological enigmas, for Central Asia, between Iran and China, remains the least known area of the huge Eurasian land mass. Pre-Islamic Central Asia was a land of city-states, much like ancient Greece. Another feature they had in common was devotion to trade and colonization. Also, any time a unity of the city-states existed, it was imposed by outside force because, like ancient Greece, the Central Asian city-states were continually quarreling. We do not know how early Sogdian merchants in substantial numbers reached China, but a good guess would be about the time of the Kushan Empire, which flourished in the first two centuries of our era. Thereafter, trading colonies were established in the oases of the East, and in Chang-an and other sites in China. The main western barbarians (called Hu in Chinese) by the time of the Tang dynasty were Sogdians. Sogdian trading colonies were also established in the steppes, as far as Mongolia. The importance of trade and commerce for the Sogdians was matched by the nomads, especially the Turks, after their expansion. The Sogdians in some respects were teachers of the Turks, since they provided the nomads with an alphabet, as well as many cultural features, as evidenced by the plethora of Sogdian loan words in the Old Turkic languages. lt almost seems as though the Eastern Iranians, in rare agreement among themselves, divided long distance trade, with the Khwarazmians (present Khiva) taking care of trade with Russia up the Volga River, while the Bactrians concentrated on India, and the Sogdians, controlling the most lucrative commerce of all, with China. We have two fascinating books describing articles of trade over the Silk Route: Sino-Iranica by Berthold Lauter and The Golden Peaches of Samarkand by Edward Schafer. 1 I don't wish to repeat the list of articles being traded both ways but to simply remark that the silk cloths, lacquers, and other luxury objects from China far surpassed in value the natural imports of furs, honey and beeswax, which the Khwarazmians brought from Russia. Art historians have been intrigued by the number of Sasanian and Central Asian silver bowls, jugs and rhytons found in North Russia, but these objects were also much appreciated by the Chinese, for on the steppes and in the oases silver seems to have been more desirable than gold. In the ancient world the highest price for gold was always found in India; indeed, this is so down to the present. Silver, on the other hand,

1 Bertold Lauter, Sino Jranica (Chicago: Field Museum,1919); Edward H. Schafer, The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of Tang Exotics (Berkeley: UCLA Press, 1963).

THE MERCHANT WORLD OF THE SOGDIANS

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was the currency of the steppes and also of Germany, as Tacitus tells us. Most ancient governments debased their currency, but the Sasanian Empire maintained a high standard of purity in coinage throughout its existence. This was recognized in the bazaars of the East and explains why many Sasanian coins have been found in excavations in China. lt is fascinating to note that in Turfan and other oases of East Turkestan, the Near Eastern practice of weighing and biting coins to test their validity met the Chinese fashion of copper coins, which had no intrinsic value of the metal. 2 Since the Sogdians in their homeland adopted the Chinese form of copper coins with a square hole in the middle, probably other Chinese influences made their way westward as well. 3 In trying to envision what transpired in trade between China and Iran through Central Asia, let us imagine this scenario. The first emperor of the Sui dynasty in Chang-an, Yang Jien, wants to collect Sasanian silver plates, the silver content of which was purer than other plates. A Sogdian merchant in Chang-an is summoned and he asks if the emperor is willing to pay, say, ten rolls of silk for a plate. They agree and the Sogdian merchant sends the silk to his brother in Samarkand by a caravan, which was a large enterprise. On arrival, his brother either contacts a Sasanian merchant in the city or goes himself to Merv in Sasanian Iran to negotiate the price of a silver plate, offering three rolls of silk for a plate. Since the current price for a plate in Merv is two rolls of silk, the Sasanian dealer naturally accepts. If the customs duties are low, the transfer is legal. If they are too high, the merchant goes by a desert route to a village in the Merv oasis to conclude the transaction. This scenario is completely hypothetical, but it is plausible. 1 do not know the answers to the questions posed earlier, but guesses might offer some suggestions for future research. Torephrase the first question, why did Kashgar and Turfan not become great Buddhist centers like the other oases? Buddhists certainly existed in the two oases, but they did not dominate the culture. One possible answer might be the Sogdian traders who settled in the two towns, for both were important sites on trade routes, and they, as merchants, like nomads, were generally tolerant about religions, and not fanatic or devoting themselves to one at the complete neglect of others. 4 That is, they were practical and would prefer to spend money on houses, such as those in Panjikent in

2 Cf. Jonathan Skaff, "Sasanian and Arab-Sasanian Silver Coins from Turfan: Their Relationship to International Trade and the Local Economy," Asia Major 11 (1998): 67-113. 3 Cf. 0. 1. Smirnova, Svodnyi Katalog Sogdiiskikh Monet, bronza (Moscow: Nauka, 1981). 4 Hans-Joachim Klimkeit, Die Seidenstrasse (Cologne, 1988).

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Sogdiana, rather than on religious structures or monuments. The second question, on the absence of Buddhist remains in Sogdiana, may be answered in a similar fashion. Neither Sogdians nor Khwarazmians upheld one religion, for Manicheans, Christians, local Zoroastrians, and even shamanists existed in their homelands, and Buddhism was too unworldly for activist merchants. The Bactrians, on the other hand, had close contacts with lndia and were not avid traders like the Sogdians and so were more inclined to Buddhist teachings of repose and unworldliness. Buddhist missionaries had more success with Bactrians, more bound to their soil, than they had with the more peripatetic Sogdians.5 lt is interesting to note that later some Sogdians in East Turkestan and China did convert to Buddhism, as we surmise from the Sogdian Buddhist texts translated from Chinese. 6 One wonders whether conversion had an economic purpose of pleasing Buddhist customers.

Iranian Buddhism, as exemplified by Buddhist remains found in Bactria along with meager textual materials, was more syncretic as well as more active, especially in promoting the religion in the East. Kushan rule surely at times extended into East Turkestan, but how far and when are moot points. 7 The same may be said of Sasanian rule in Bactria, but it must have been more durable than occasional forays into Sogdiana, for the Persian tongue became widespread in Bactria before Islam, whereas it was only the Arab conquests in Central Asia that extended the language to Sogdiana and beyond. 8 But then the Sogdians adopted the Islamic faith much sooner than even the Bactrians, not to mention the majority of Persians. This is another topic, which cannot be detailed here, but suffice it to say that the role of the Sogdians in the creation of an international Islamic culture, rather than one bound to Arab Bedouin mores, was paramount. 9 The Sogdians were a remarkable people, and the last vestiges of their language are preserved in the Yaghnobi tongue, still spoken by the Pamirs in several villages high in the mountains.

5 B.A. Litvinsky, Outline History of Buddhism in Central Asia (Moscow: Nauka, 1968), and B. J. Stavisky, Die Volker Mittelasiens im Lichte ihrer Kulturdenkmaler (Bonn, 1982). 6 R.E. Emmerick, "Buddhism Among Iranians," in The Cambridge History of Iran, vol. 3, part 2 (Cambridge, 1983) 961. 7 R.N. Frye, The History of Ancient Iran (Munich: Beck Verlag, 1983) 259. 8 R.N. Frye, The Heritage of CentralAsia (Princeton: Markus Wiener, 1998) 147-9. 9 R.N. Frye, The Golden Age of Persia (London: Whitefield & Nicolson, 1975) 150-174.

THE ROLE OF THE SOGDIANS AS TRANSLATORS OF BUDDHIST TEXTS

Guanuda Zhang According to early Chinese literary records, Buddhism passed through the main oasis city-states around the Tarim Basin to China in the first century C.E. We know little about this earliest phase of the eastward transmission of Buddhism along the international commerce route. But we are better informed about the role played by the Iranians in its eastward spread, especially their contribution by translating Buddhist scriptures into Chinese. Chinese hagiographic records show that most of the early Buddhist translation work from the Central Asian languages into Chinese was dorre by the Parthians, Bactrians, Sogdians, and Saka-Khotanese in collaboration with Chinese literates. The first missionary known by name was An Shigao. He was a Parthian prince who had renounced the throne to become a Buddhist monk and arrived at Lo-yang, the Later Han's capital, in 148 C.E. 1 The surname An in Chinese seems tobe derived fromArsak-, the name of the Parthian ruling house, Arsacids, and was later adopted by other missionaries from eastern Iran, such as An Xuan and An Faxian (Darmabhadra). This surname, first referring to the missionaries of eastern lranian extraction, was to be transmitted to denote the Sogdians coming from Bukhara. Towards the second and in the third century more translators bore the surname of Kang, such as Kang Mengxiang (active at Lo-yang from 194 to 199), Kang Senghui (?-280, active in Wu of the Three Kingdoms), Kang Ju, Kang Sengkai (Samghavarman, arrived at Lo-yang in 252), Kang Falang, Kang Fachang, and Kang Sengyuan, among others. The translation of The Buddha of limmeasurable Life Sutra, one of the three basic canons of Pure Land Buddhism, was ascribed to Kang Sengkai (Samghavarman). 2 lt was rendered into Chinese in 252. Evidently Kang is also an ethnic surname, and the monks bearing such a surname in Chinese were of Sogdian origin. 3 The fact that these early translators bore a surname associated specifically with Kang (Samarkand) or An (Bukhara) in later times can hardly be regarded as evidence for the early establishment of Buddhism in Sogdiana. The famous Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang (602-664) passed by Samarkand in the early seventh

1

Eric Zürcher, The Buddhist Conquest of China The Spread and Adaptation of Buddhism in Early Medieval China, 2nct ed. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1972) 32-33. 2 Taisho Tripitaka12, no. 360 3 0. Hansen, "Die buddhistische Literatur der Sogdier," Handbuch der Orientalistik, I-4-2-1: Iranistik, Literatur (Leiden, 1968) 85.

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century and found no significant Buddhist monuments, if any at all. A century later, the Korean monk Huichao who visited Samarkand in the 720s found only a solitary Buddhist monastery with a solitary monk. Moreover, no archeological works at the ancient sites Varakhsha near Bukhara and Afrasiab near Samarkand brought to light any early Buddhist monuments. Nor have the archeological finds from the temples of the site Er-Kurgan in South Sogdiana (fourth to sixth century, according to B. 1. Marshak) or in the two temples of Panjikent given evidence in favor of the early presence of Buddhism north of the Oxus region. The images worshipped there have not survived. 4 lt is interesting to note nearly all Buddhist texts or fragments written in the Sogdian language have been found in Turfan (with a few fragments from the Tarim Basin) and Dunhuang cave. All these texts are dated from a comparative late period, from the sixth to the eighth or even ninth century. Just as there is no significant Buddhist monument that has ever been found in Sogdiana proper, there is no specific Buddhist text the real Sogdian provenance of which has been clearly identified up to the present moment.

According to the testimony of the Arabic annalist At-Tabari, the fifth to seventh century witnessed the rapid growth of the cities and towns in Sogdianna. In the 60s of the sixth century, in alliance with the Sasanian Persians, the Turks took Samarkand from the Ephthalites. This gave rise to a new Sogdian emigration wave during the period of Abrui, a ruler of Sogdiana, 5 which made the Sogdians the greatest merchants of Eurasia and the Chinese borderlands for the next four centuries. Following the establishment of the Sui (581-589) and Tang (618-906) dynasties, a steady stream of Sogdian emigrants pushed eastward along the Semirechie, Tarim Basin, and Hexi Corridor. In the early Tang, except for the two capitals Chang-an and Lo-yang, the cities favored by the Sogdians were Qocho (Gaochang, the chief town in Turfan), Qomul (Ha-mi), Dunhuang, Suzhou (Jiuquan), Ganzhou (Zhang-ye), Liangzhou (Kc'n in Sogdian and Guzan in Chinese transcription, present-day Wuwei), Jicheng (Lanzhou), Yuanzhou (Guyuan). As is evident from the Turfan and Dunhuang documents, an enormous amount of Sogdian personal names figure in a great variety of texts. Turfan documents show that a great number of Sogdian Buddhists lived in Qocho as well as the Mazdean, Manichean, Nestorian adherents. A register of census dated from 707, for example, listed the Sogdians by households

4 Boris 1. Marshak, "Sogdiana," part I, History of Civilizations of Central Asia, vol. III, (UNESCO Publishing, 1996) 243, 245. 5 J. Marquart, Erdnsahr nach der Geographie des Ps. Xorenac'i, (Berlin, 1901) 309; Marshak, "Sogdiana," 236.

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inhabited in the canton of Chonghua, which can be approximately interpreted as "Township that advocates an [Imperial] Upbringing." 6 An even more densely-populated Sogdian township, An Cheng, existed in Dunhuang. Three Dunhuang documents (P.3018, P.2657, and P. 3559 in the Pelliot Collection kept in Paris) listed corvee labor and local service assignments to the Sogdian adults of a Sogdian community in the eastern suburb of the Dunhuang in the mid-eighth century.7 Similar to the canton of Chonghua in Qocho, this canton took the name of Conghua that stressed its "Submission (cong) to [Imperial] Enlightenment (hua)." With their remarkable adaptability to new surroundings and local needs, many inhabitants in the Sogdian settlements or colonies were affiliated with the Buddhist faith, as seen from their names in the Turfan and Dunhuang texts. In the wider spiritual milieu of China, many Sogdian inhabitants became Buddhist practitioners and monks. Let us cite a few names in the eminent circles of Buddhist monks, for example. Jizang (549-623) attained great renown for his extensive learning, especially about the Mädhyamika school. He laid down the solid foundation for the Three Discourses (Sanlun) sect. He was of Bukhara origin. Fazang (642-712), the third patriarch of Huayen sect, was of Samarkand origin. The eminent Buddhist practitioner Ho Samgha must be a descendant from Kushanika or its colony in the Semirechie. Bukong (Amoghavajra, 705-77 4), the great patriarch of the esoteric Buddhism in Tang China, was also a descendant of Kang (at least his mother was from Samarkand). He was well received by the Tang Emperors. Under Emperor Daizong's patronage, he procured at least two times imperial permission to initiate Sogdian Buddhist novices into monkhood. Five Sogdians (two Bi, one Kang, one Cao and one Shi) were tonsured respectively in 767 and 768 by his requests in honor of Emperor's birthday. 8 Considering the historical background, it is probable that Sogdian Buddhist scriptures found in eastern Central Asia are almost all translations from the Chinese versions. 9 The Sogdians did not bring Buddhism with them from their

6

Tulufan chutu wenshu, vii (Peking, Wenwu chubanshe) 468-485. Zheng Binglin, "Tangdai Dunhuang Sute ren yu Guiyijun zhengquan," Dunhuang yanjiu (1996.4). 8 TaishO Tripitaka, vol 52, no. 2120, 835c-836a (Amoghavajra's Memorial requesting for permission to tonsure three practitioners and two novices in honor of His Majesty's birthday in 767); 836c-837a (another similar memorial submitted in 768). 9 Frederich Weller, "Bemerkungen zur soghdischen Vajracchedika," Acta Orientalia 14 (1936): 134. 7

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original home, but acquired it in the East. Their Buddhist canons were translated from the Chinese versions as a result of the religious contact between the Sogdians and Chinese during the seventh to ninth century. The Dirghanakhasutra, for example, has been established to be a faithful translation of Chinese original. 10 Another example is a Sogdian Zhüta text. 11 lt is found to be a word-to-word rendering of an apocryphal Chinese Chan (Zen) version also from the Dunhuang collection-Fo wei xinwang pusa shuo toutuo jing (Dhutasutra Explained by the Buddha for the Bodhisattva Citraraja.) 12 Perhaps we have an exception. A Sogdian text entitled the Intoxicating Drink Reproaching Sutra has a colophon which states that the canon had been rendered from Sanskrit in Lo-yang in 728. According to D. N. MacKenzie, it was actually translated from a Chinese version. 13 From the colophon of these scriptures we know the institutionalized translation work was done in the great religious centers, such as Loyang, Chang'an, and Dunhuang.

I'd like to make my cordial acknowledgment to the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation for its support of my research at Princeton.

10

Frederich Weller, "Bemerkungen zum soghdischen Dirghanakha-sutra," Asia Major 10 (1935): 221-228. 11 British Museum Or. 8212 (160). Facs.ed. in D. N. MacKenzie, The Buddhist Sogdian Texts of the British Library, Acta Iranica 10 (Tehran-Liege, 1976) 33-51, plates 37-66. 12 A. Ibuki, "Shinnökyö ni tsuite," Komazawadaigaku zenkenkytl-sho nenpo 4 (1993): 12-39; Fang Guangchang, ed., Cang wai fojiao wenxian, I (Peking: Zongjiao wenhua chubanshe, 1995) 251-318; Y. Yoshida, "The Sogdian Dhüta Text and its Chinese Original," Bulletin of the Asia Institute 10 (1996): 167-173. 13 MacKenzie, The Buddhist Sogdian Texts, 7-11, plates 4-7

WHEN GLASS WAS TREASURED IN CHINA

Anliayao From the Han (206 B.C.E.-220 C.E.) to the Song period (960-1279) glass was treasured in China, not only because the Chinese enjoyed the material's clearness and transparency but because glass was mysterious to the Chinese. The Chinese were responsible for many important inventions - silk, paper, porcelain, fireworks - but not glass. The earliest glass, in the form of beads, seems to have been made in Mesopotamia in the mid-third millennium B.C.E., while glass vessels do not appear until the middle of the second millennium, in both Mesopotamia and Egypt. 1 Western glass spread to China around the fifth century B.C.E., at the end of the Spring and Autumn Period (771-476 B.C.E.) or the beginning of the Warring States Period (475-221 B.C.E.). Soon the Chinese were making their own glass with local materials and developing their own designs. 2 The first glass appeared in China as beads and small pieces of glass inlay for metal objects. Eye beads are the most elaborate form of glass, as shown by these examples, that were unearthed in a noble's tomb in Hubei province (fig. 1). 3 Similar eye beads were excavated by Japanese archaeologis ts in Iran; they can be dated a little earlier than the Chinese ones, to the sixth century B.C.E. 4 In the Xinjiang area, a meeting point between the East and the West, some eye beads were unearthed at Luntai; they date from the eighth to the fifth century B.C.E.5

1 Chloe Zerwick, A Short History of Glass (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. in association with The Corning Museum of Glass, 1990). 2 Jiayao An, Glass Eye Beads in China, the Silk Roads and the Cultural Exchanges Between the East and West Before the 101h Century (Beijing: New World Press, 1996) 351-67. 3 Hubei Provincial Museum, The Tomb of Zenghou Yi (Beijing: Cultural relics Publishing House, 1989). 4 Shinji Fukai, Persian Glass (New York: Weatherhill, 1977) plate 40. 5 The information from the Xinjiang Archaeological team, the Institute of Archaeology, CASS.

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Fig. 1. Glass beads from an early Warring States Period tomb, Leigudun, Hubei

Although the east-west trade raute was not open at the time, these discoveries in Iran, in Xinjiang, and in central China indicate cultural and economic exchange. The nomadic tribes in Central Asia played an important role in this and other forms of exchange; glass beads, in particular, were admired by nomadic peoples, and beads are easily portable over great distances. In spite of this trade, imported glass beads were perhaps too rare to meet demand. Soon after glass eye beads reached China, imitations were made, typically in ceramic with a glaze overlay, as with some examples from a Warring States Period tomb. 6 However, ceramic imitations still could not satisfy demand and this impelled Chinese craftsmen to make their own glass eye beads. During the middle part of the Warring States period (around the fourth and third centuries B.C.E.), large numbers of glass beads appeared, in both nobles' and commoners' tombs. These finds are distributed all over China, but are concentrated in Central China, Hunan, Henan and Hubei provinces. The beads on the right, for example, are from Henan province, dated to the fourth century B.C.E., and, although they resemble the

6 From a Warring States Period tomb in the collection of the Chinese Historical Museum .

WHEN GLASS WAS TREASURED IN CHINA

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Fig. 2. Two cups from a Western Harr princess's tomb, Xuzhou, Jiangsu province

earlier beads, they are lead-barium glass. 7 This kind of glass composition is unique to China. In Western Asia and Egypt, glass was made of soda; perhaps because China had limited resources of soda, glassmakers had to try other materials. The Chinese were not just satisfied to copy Western eye beads, but soon began making typically Chinese objects. Using glass, they imitated traditional jade objects, such as jade discs or bi. 8 Jade has a special meaning in Chinese culture; translucent glass looks like jade but is less costly. Glass vessels were also made in the Harr dynasty. The two cups pictured here (fig. 2) are from a Western Han prince's tomb, in Xuzhou, Jiangsu province, and dated to 128 B.C.E. 9 They are the earliest glass vessels made in China. The double-handled cup (fig. 3) was found in another princely tomb in Mancheng, Hebei province; it was buried in 113 B.C.E. 10 This is a typically Chinese form. During

7

An, Glass Eye Beads, 363. Zhixi Gao, "A Glass Bi and a Decorated Sword from Hunan Province," in Scientific Research in Early Chinese Glass (New York: Corning Museum of Glass, 1991) 119-124. 9 Meiguang Shi et al., "Some New Glass Finds in China," Journal of Glass Studies 34 (1992): 23-26. 10 Institute of Archaeology, CASS, and Bureau of Cultural Relics, Hebei Province, Report on the Excavation of the Han Tomb at Mancheng (Beijing: Cultural Relics Publishing House, 1980) 212. 8

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Fig. 3. Double-handled cup from a Han princely tomb, Mancheng, Hebei

the Han, vessels of this type were usually made of lacquer or ceramic; this one, however, is of lead-barium glass. Available archaeological data indicates that although glassmaking was not one of China's major industries in antiquity, it experienced a slow but sustained development. Although lead was the indigenous material for glass, the techniques used by glassmakers were influenced by western glass technology. Blown glass appears no later than the Northern Wei period (386--535) and the pontil technique in the Sui dynasty (589-618). 11 We have seen that glass was treasured in China, but only glass that came from far away was treasured - and not until the importation of Roman glass was glass truly treasured. Roman glass, that is, glass manufactured in the Roman Empire from the first century B.C.E. to the fifth century C.E., was exotic and considered of special quality. Early Roman glass coincides with the flourishing of the Han Empire. The emperor Han Wudi (140-86 B.C.E.) sent emissaries to the Southem Sea to buy such glass.

11

Jiayao An, "Early Chinese Glassware," The Oriental Ceramic Society Translations No.12 (1987) 23 .

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Fig. 4. Roman glass bowl from a Western Hau tomb, Guangzhou

A glass bowl (fig. 4) was found in Guangzhou, in a Western Hau tomb and is dated to the early first century B.C.E. 12 lt was cast and its surface is crude. When held to a light, the surface is a beautiful deep blue color. X-ray fluorescence analysis shows that it is soda-lime glass. This is the earliest Roman glass found in China. Since Guangzhou is near the South China Sea, it is possible that this glass bowl came along the maritime trade raute. Similarly, fragments of a Roman mosaic-glass ribbed bowl may have come via the sea raute. They were found in a prince's tomb near Nanjing.13 They belang to a type that was popular thraughout the Mediterranean in the first centuries B.C.E. and C.E. The tomb dates to 67 C.E., not much later than the bowl 's manufacture in the West. Hau Wudi also opened the Western Regions, and contacts with the West entered a new phase. Roman glass began to be imported into China via the overland desert or Silk Raad. A bottle with opaque white streaks (fig. 5) was discovered in an Eastern Hau tomb in Luoyang, the capital of the Eastern Hau

12 Guangzhou Committee of Cultural Relics, et al., The Han Tombs of Guangzhou (Beijing: Cultural Relics Publishing House, 1981). 13 An, "Early Chinese Glassware," fig. 1.

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Fig. 5. Roman glass bottle from an Eastern Han tomb, Luoyang

dynasty.14 Chinese written records tell of many Western Asian traders settling in Luoyang at this time.

14

Luoyang Cultural Relics Work Team, Ancient Treasures of Luoyang (Beijing: Morning Glory Publishers, 1990) 72.

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Fig. 6. Roman glass cup found at Nanjing

The political and social disruptions that characterized the period after the fall of the Han and the rise of the Tang (the period covered by the exhibition Monks and Merchants) promoted cultural exchange. Among the upper classes, glass vessels, especially those from the West, were treasures to display. More and more Roman glass was imported via both the sea and desert routes. Among some examples is a cut glass cup (fig. 6), excavated at Nanjing, and dated to 322 C.E. 15 Fragments of this glass, colorless with a yellow tinge, were found at several other places. Two decades ago, archaeologists could not recognize what they were: they were thought to be modern and were discarded. Analysis shows that they are, in fact, typical Roman soda-lime glass.

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Fig. 7. Sasanian glass bowl from a Western Jin tomb, near Beijing An example of the distances that glass traveled is a glass bowl that was unearthed in a Northern Wei tomb at Jingxian, Hebei province. 16 lt is blown glass. Its network decoration marks it as a type that was popular along the Black Sea coast. Four glass vessels were excavated from the tomb of the noble, Feng Sufu, who died in 415 C.E. and was buried in Chaoyang, Liaoyang province. One of the vessels is a transparent bowl, but the most interesting one is a duck-shaped bottle.17 The animal shape and the technique of manufacture resemble Roman ones, although we have not found exactly similar pieces in Roman collections.

In addition to Roman glass, glass from Sasanian Iran was brought to China. Although Sasanian glass manufacturing was influenced by Roman glass, it achieved a distinctive style during the course of its production, from the third to the seventh century. Typical Sasanian glass vessels have been excavated in China. Two decades ago, archaeologists excavating a Western Jin tomb, dated to 307 C.E„ in Beijing reported finding glass fragments that may have formed a plate

15

An, "Early Chinese Glassware," 3, fig. 3. National Museum of Chinese History, Exhibition of Chinese History (Beijing: Morning Glory Publishers, 1998) 105, 6-5-3. 17 An, "Early Chinese Glassware," 4, fig. 5. 16

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Fig. 8. Sasanian glass bowl from a tomb at Jurong, Jiangsu.

witb eigbt feet. I bad wondered wbat kind of sbape tbat was, and wben I bad a cbance to look at tbe fragments, I identified tbem as Sasanian glass. I bad tbe piece restored (fig. 7). 18 Tbe "feet" are actually bosses. Japanese arcbaeologists excavating in Iran found tbe same type of glass bowl, dated to tbe tbird century. 19 A Sasanian bowl, found in a tomb at Jurong, Jiangsu, wbicb is dated to 439, 20 is decorated witb cut facets, a cbaracteristic of Sasanian glass (fig. 8). Tbe facets overlap, creating a boneycomb design. Tbe most famous glass bowl in tbe Sbosoin in Japan is also a Sasanian bowl witb tbese boneycomb designs. Imported Sasanian glass is also known from several wall paintings in tbe Dunbuang grottos in Gansu. In all, tbere are eigbty glass vessels depicted in tbe more tban 400

18

Ibid., 173. Fukai, Persian Glass, plate 15. 20 Jiayo An, "A Discussion of the Masterpieces from Zhenjiang," Journal of the National Museum of Chinese History 9 (1986): 28-29. 19

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Fig. 9. Dunhuang cave painting

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Fig. 10. Sasanian glass bowl from a Northern Wei tomb, Datong

caves; of these eighty, nearly twenty can be identified as Sasanian glass bowls (fig. 9).21 The bowl pictured here (fig. 10) was found in Datong, in a tomb of the Northern Wei dynasty, and was dated to the middle of the fifth century. The design has changed somewhat, but the bottom is still decorated with cut facets. 22 Datong was the Northern Wei capital; this bowl further shows that the Northern Wei had close contact with Western Asia. Circular faceting in relief was another popular way to ornament glass in Sasanian Iran, as seen in the bowl from the tomb of the Northern Zhou general,

21 Jiayao An, "Glass Vessels Pictured in the Wall Paintings of Mogao Grottoes," Collection of Papers an Literature of Dunhuang and Turfan 2 (Beijing: Beijing University Press, 1983) 425-64. 22 Yintian Wang et al., Excavation Report an the Northern Wei Tomb No. 107 at the Southern Suburbs of Datong, Researches an the Northern Dynasty 1999 (Beijing, Beijing Yanshan Publishing House, 2000) 151-152.

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Fig. 11. Glazed ceramic bowl, Northern Wei

Li Xian, who died in 569, and included in Monks and Merchants. 23 This type of glass bowl was considered very special, and Chinese craftsmen made imitations in glazed ceramic (fig. 11).24 This bowl and many others like it come from market sites of the Northern Wei dynasty in Luoyang.

The cut glass bottle pictured here (fig. 12) was unearthed in a Sui dynasty tomb in Xi'an. 25 The technique of carving is the same as Li Xian 's bowl, as is the circular faceting in relief. A similar bottle in the Metropolitan Museum of Art has been dated to the ninth century and thus considered Islamic. 26 But I think that the

23 Annette L. Juliano and Judith A. Lerner, Monks and Merchants: Silk Raad Treasures from Northwest China, Gansu and Ningxia, 4th_7'h Century (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 2001, 97, cat. no. 30. 24 Information from the Institute of Archaeology, CASS. 25 Zheng, Houchun. "A Tomb of the Sui Dynasty at the Eastern Suburbs of Xi'an," Wenwu yu Kaogu 1 (1988). 2 6 Marilyn Jenkins, "Islamic Glass," Bulletin ofThe Metropolitan Museum ofArt (Fall 1986): 25.

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Fig. 12. Cut glass bottle from a Sui tomb, Xi'an

dating may be incorrect. Although we do not know when this bottle was made, it was buried at the end of the sixth century. Therefore, it must have been made before the end of the sixth century and is Sasanian, not lslamic. Blown glass began in China under the Northern Wei; the Wei history gives an account of Bactrians manufacturing glass in Datong. From the early Tang dynasty are cantaloupe-shaped cups, found in the tombs of Shi Hedan (d. 669)-seen in the exhibition-and of his brother, Shi Daoluo (d. 655). 27 They are both made of

27

Juliano and Lerner, Monks and Merchants, 263, cat. no. 89a.

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Fig. 13. Glass fish pendant excavated at Xi' an

glass blown into a metal casing, although the cup in the exhibition has lost its metal case. Such glassware with metal casing was depicted in the Dunhuang wall paintings.28 Shi Hedan's tomb also contained a lot of glass fragments. Some look like flowers made of blown glass and metal, which perhaps are decorations for women's hairpins. Three samples were analyzed and they are lead glass. 29 lt is hard to say whether the green glass ball in the exhibition was a gourdshaped hu or something else.30 In the later Song dynasty, this shape was very popular, but it is not found in the Tang. This glass ball reminds me of a globular glass container, from the Xi' an tomb ofthe princess Li Jingxun, who died in 609.3 1 The shape of the glass container was based on those in porcelain for cosmetics. The glass container's mouth was polished; before polishing, it would have been a blown glass ball as the one in the exhibition.

When Buddhism spread to China, the way of enshrining sarira relics started to change in order tobe accepted by the Chinese. The practice of using glass bottles, made in China, for sarira relics was established in the Tang. The small glass bottle that sits in the innermost of the nested reliquaries from the Great Clouds Temple, Jinchuan, Gansu - on display in the exhibition - is a good example of a Chinese glass sarira bottle.32 The reliquaries date to 649; a similar set of reli-

28 An, "Glass Vessels," 425-64. 29 Information from the Institute

of Archaeology. Juliano and Lerner, Monks and Merchants, 263, cat. no. 89. 31 An, "Early Chinese Glassware," 14, fig. 33. 32 Juliano and Lerner, Monks and Merchants, 328-330, cat. no. 120. 30

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quaries with two glass bottles was found at Lintong, Shaanxi, and is dated to 741.33

Why were glass bottles chosen as the innermost containers for relics? 1 think they were because glass is so transparent that people could see what is inside the bottle. People believed that the relics were magical. Another reason is that glass was one of the seven treasures in Buddhist scripture. A glass pendant of a fish was unearthed at the site 1 am currently excavating at Xi' an, the capital of the Tang dynasty (fig. 13). 34 Of my several excavations, 1 have found only this complete glass artifact. lt came from a famous temple site of the Tang and is also evidence of glass as one of the seven Buddhist treasures. 1 began my lecture stating that glass was treasured, not only because the Chinese enjoyed the material's clearness and transparency, but also because western glass was mysterious to the Chinese. They wondered whether western glass was a natural or an artificial material. This debate began in the Han dynasty and continued into the Tang. 35 Most thought western glass natural material, like jade, crystal, or precious stones. Even during the Tang dynasty, some people believed that in the West, ice on high mountains became glass over thousands of years. 36 This misunderstanding continued to the Song dynasty. When, in the Song, the Chinese knew that glass from the West was as artificial as indigenous glass, they did not love glass as much as before. Chinese people like natural things, something pure, for example, like jade without any stain, or 24K gold; this is true even today. 1 conclude with the poem, TheArtificial Jade Cup, written by the great tenthcentury Song poet Su Dongpo: They melt lead and smelt the mineral, Making jade you could mistake for genuine. 37

33

Paris-Musees, Chine, la gloire des empereurs (Paris, 2000) 312-313, cat. no.122. Tang-city Team, IA, CASS, "Excavation of the Site of the Ximing Temple at Old Chang'an of the Tang Dynasty," Kaogu 1 (1990) 45-55. 35 Hanshu Xiyuzhuan (Han History, Chapter of foreign countries), Zhonghua shuju, (Beijing, 1962) 3885. 36 Yiqiejingyinyi (a Buddhist dictionary of the Tang dynasty), Bailian She Ban Keben, vol. 48. 37 Yanfanlu, Chengshi Songben, vol.3. 34

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Fig. 14. Glass bowl from a Northern Song stup

From bis poem, we know he did not enjoy the artificial material that is glass. Thus, after the Song dynasty, glass was no longer treasured. This is one of the main reasons why glassmaking did not develop further in Chinese history. While excavating a stupa of the Northern Song dynasty,38 we found the glass bowl (fig. 14). Perhaps it is the kind of "artificial jade cup" that Su mentions in bis poem.

38 An,

"Early Chinese Glassware," 21, fig. 46.

IRANIAN LUXURY VESSELS IN CHINA FROM THE LATE FIRST MILLENNIUM B.C.E. TO THE SECOND HALF OF THE FIRST MILLENNIUM C.E.

P.O. Harper In recent decades the unexpected discoveries in China of a number of Iranian luxury vessels dating from the late first millennium B.C.E. to the second half of the first millennium C.E. have raised some interesting questions about the nature and significance of interchanges between China and the eastern Mediterranean world in a period of growing cultural exchange. 1 The luxury materials recovered by chance and in the course of controlled excavations are only a small part of what must have been a much larger phenomenon, a rich trade in precious objects made in the broader lranian world. As it is used here, the term "Iranian" refers to a large area occupied by lranian-speaking peoples and includes not only presentday Iran but also neighboring lands in the West (Mesopotamia, parts of Armenia and Georgia) and territories adjacent to modern Iran in the East: Afghanistan, Southern Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tadzhikistan (ancient Bactria and Sogdiana). During the millennium under consideration an increasingly multicultural environment developed from the Mediterranean to China, an environment that existed not only in the urban-centered dynasties having settled populations in China, Iran, and Byzantium but also in the camps and settlements of nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples moving across Eurasia where commercially active, tradecontrolling communities prospered in the regions bordering on the established urban-centered states of China, Iran, and Byzantium. The settlements and courts of the so-called nomadic states established by Yuezhi, Hephthalites, and Turkic peoples were often powerful and wealthy centers of culture and cultural exchange.

1 One of the earliest illustrated surveys of the material appeared in 1983: Shih HsioYen, "Gold and Silver Vessels Excavated in North China: Problems of Origin," New Asia Academic Bulletin 4 (The Chinese University of Hong Kong, 1983): 63-82, and plates. Since then the bibliography has become extensive and can be found in articles in the Bulletin of the Asia Institute and in A.L. Juliano and J.A. Lerner, Monks and Merchants, Silk Raad Treasures from Northern China (New York: Asia Society, 2001 ).

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The period we are considering begins in Iran and Mesopotamia with the era of early-Parthian Arsacid rule in the second century B.C.E. To the east of Iran (in the area that is now northern Afghanistan, eastern Uzbekistan, and Tadzhikistan), the Greco-Bactrian kingdom established its independence from Alexander's Macedonian Greek successors, the Seleucids, in the third century B.C.E. but then collapsed in the second century B.C.E. under the pressure of Iranian tribes, the Saka, from the north. These tribes subsequently in the first century B.C.E. moved south into the Indian subcontinent under pressure from another people from the east, the Yuezhi. Same of the Yeuzhi, the Kushans, created in the first centuries C.E. another great kingdom in Bactria and northern India from which Buddhism was introduced to China. Most of the luxury products considered in this paper were found in northern and western China. A map published by Francois Thierry of sites in China where Sasanian silver coins have been found provides a good indication of the regions where Iranian luxury objects of other sorts have been unearthed. 2 This is not surprising as it appears that the Sasanian coins found in Central China were not valued as coinage or currency but rather as a form of silver treasure and are, therefore, a form of luxury goods directly comparable to the Iranian luxury vessels. In one rare instance, Sasanian coins of Khosro II described by Thierry appear to have been part of a varied collection of an early Chinese numismatist. 3 The collection also includes early Chinese, Japanese, and Byzantine coins and provides a fascinating and regrettably rare insight into the nature of the Chinese appreciation of and interest in Western artifacts and culture. There is almost no comparable evidence that might elucidate the meaning or significance of the decorated silver vessels that reached China from the Iranian world or provide an indication of how they functioned in China in terms of daily usage. An exception is a bowl with a modified form of Late Antique wavy-line decoration, a pattern adopted on vessels made in western Asia andin Sogdiana in western Central Asia in the early first millennium C.E. 4 Pound in an Eastern Wei, mid-sixth-century tomb in Hebei Province, the vessel was placed in the tomb as part of a typical Chinese wine set, an indication that in death, as perhaps in life, the owner had incorporated luxury items into his daily life and ceremony. 5

2 F. Thierry, "Sur !es monnaies sassanides trouvees en Chine," Res Orientales 5 (1993): 90, carte 1; 125, carte 7. 3 Thierry, "Sur les monnaies sassanides," 106. 4 K. Matchabeli, Argenterie de 1 'ancienne Georgie, (Tbilisi, 1983) 104, nos. 36-37; 106, nos. 40-41. 5 "Excavations of Tomb of Li Hsi-Tsung of the Eastern Wei Dynasty in Tsanhuang County, Hopei Province," Kaogu 6 (1977): 382-390.

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Fig. l. Drawing of covered box, Yunnan Provincial Museum, found in a 2nd century B.C.E. tomb (after Yunnan Jinning Shizhaishan gumqun fajue baogao (Beijing, 1959), vol. 1, p.69, fig. 21).

The earliest foreign vessels to be considered are a well-known series of small (11 cm. tall), hammered, lobed or embossed silver and bronze lidded containers (fig. 1) found in Shandong Province in north coastal China, in Guangdong Province at Guangzhou on the south China coast, a major center of sea trade in the Han dynasty, and, finally, in Yunnan Province. 6 All the vessels belonged, apparently, to non-Han Chinese petty rulers, elite persons nominally under the control of the Han emperors. The addition in some Chinese workshops of cast feet and, on the lids, of small cast animals visually and practically transformed the foreign, hammered vessels into a recognizably Chinese vessel shape. Many Chinese and other scholars have suggested that the distant prototype for these unique, hammered, and lobed vessels is the royal Achaemenid phiale or open shallow bowl, an elite royal vessel in the Achaemenid world from the sixth to fourth century B.C.E. 7 Sometimes inscribed with royal names, the shallow phiale decorated with deep egg-shaped bosses was a distinctive type that was well-known throughout the Achaemenid empire: a prestigious luxury product associated with the Persian court and king. On the western edge of the Iranian world, in modern Georgia, as late as the early first

6 E.J. Laing, "Recent Finds ofWestern-Relate d Glassware, Textiles and Metalwork in Central Asia and China," Bulletin of the Asia Institute 9 (1995): 11-16, figs. 18-21. 7 For a recent discussion of this vessel type and bibliography see A.C. Gunter and M.C. Root, "Replicating, Inscribing, Giving: Ernst Herzfeld and Artaxerxes' Silver Phiale in the Freer Gallery of Art," Ars Orientalis 28 (1998): 3-38.

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Fig. 2. Relief from Persepolis, Iran, probably Artaxerxes III (359-337 B.C.E.), The Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. no. 34.158. Purchase, Dick Fund 1934.

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millennium C.E., silver vessels were still decorated in this fashion, derived from the prestigious Achaemenid embossed court originals made almost a millennium earlier.8 By the Parthian period in Iran, the egg-shaped bosses had been transformed into a continuous meander pattem. The lobing on the Parthian bowls, dated to the second to third century C.E., is less pronounced than on the Achaemenid prototypes and this is true as well of similarly decorated sixth-century vessels found in the eastern Iranian world, in Sogdiana. 9 Achaemenid, Seleucid, or early Parthian vessels typologically similar to the covered containers found in China are rare. We can assume however that the small, hand-held, covered vessel brought with materials for the royal banquet to the palace of Artaxerxes III (mid-fourth century B.C.E.) and depicted on a relief at Persepolis in Southern Iran is made of precious metal and represents the same kind of lidded container (fig. 2). 10 A similar lidded, circular vessel shape is also found somewhat later in the Caucasus, in first-century C.E. graves of Sarmatians, an Iranian people who had followed the Scythians moving west along the steppes from the region of Bactria. 11 lt is not impossible that the covered vessels found in China, made in the third to second century B.C.E. (without the cast feet and the animals on the lid) are Seleucid or early Parthian works of art. The high relief of the embossed pattem is still close to the deep Achaemenid lobes and quite different from the later Parthian and Sogdian rather two-dimensional meander designs. lt remains unclear whether these lidded, lobbed containers were made in Iran or Bactria. Tue second century B.C.E. is a period in which there is little comparable, excavated evidence from Iran and Mesopotamia. The luxury items that are known generally lack an archaeological context but their appearance suggests that in Parthia as in Bactria the art of the second century B.C.E. was characterized by a mixture of Greek and lranian element.12 Such a combination of Iranian and Greek decorative elements is apparent on one of the lobed vessels found in China where a stylized plant ornament borders

8

P.O. Harper, "Parthian and Sasanian Silverware," Mesopotamia 22 (1987): fig. 95. Harper, "Parthian and Sasanian Silverware," fig. 101; B.I. Marshak, Sogdiiskoe Serebro, (Moscow, 1971) 23-24 (T 1) 10 Limestone relief, Persepolis, Iran, 4th century B.C., Metropolitan Museum, accession no. 34.158, Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1934. 11 M. Yu. Treister, "New Discoveries of Sarmatian Complexes of the lst century AD.; A Survey of Publications in VDI," Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia 4, no. 1 (1997): 93, fig. 25. 12 For a discussion of the material and bibliography see M. Pfrommer, Metalwork from the Hellenized East (Malibu, 1993). 9

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both halves. This pattern is based on a popular Hellenized garland motif: laurel with lancelot leaves, a decorative feature that is widespread and persistent in the art of the Greek Hellenistic and later Roman worlds. This motif is combined with the Iranian embossed pattern on the bowl found in China. How the small lobed containers reached the various locations where they were found in China (north and south, interior and coastal) is a question that cannot be answered without knowledge of the original place of manufacture. Two possibilities exist: by sea or by overland routes. Tue export of the vessels in the second century B.C.E. from west to east predates the explosion of sea trade that came with the Roman and Iranian utilization of the monsoon winds to expedite travels between the West and East at the turn of the first century. But west-east sea trade had proceeded in the centuries before the Christian era in the hands of Arab middlemen and of Chinese traders, who came west to the Indian Ocean as a result of maritime explorations as early as the Former or Western Han dynasty in the second century B.C.E. Tue vessels might have moved from north to south passing to the Persian Gulf or to the Indus ports and to the west coast of India, to Barbaricon and Barygaza, as containers for precious medicines, perfumes, or spices and then continued on by sea, land, and river routes to inland Yunnan and to the south China coast. 13 Along the land routes, this was an unsettled time. Saka, Yuezhi, Xiongnu, and Chinese interests were at conflict in the Tarim Basin and western Central Asia. Nevertheless, it is precisely at this time in the second century, 138-126 B.C.E., that a Chinese emissary to the Yuezhi tribes, Zhang Jian, journeyed to the West, a trip that led to the development of the Silk Route trade and to an awareness and exchange of embassies with the Anxi (Parthians). That at least some of the small, lidded containers traveled along this land raute to northern China is also a possibility. In the same royal elite category of Iranian silver vessels, but in this case decorated with elite figural imagery, is a series of gilded silver and bronze cups found in China (fig. 3), derived ultimately from another Achaemenid vessel shape, a deep bowl with flaring rim, seen on reliefs at Persepolis and known from many extant examples. 14 The vessels found in China, decorated with medallions framing heads or busts, are, it is generally agreed, works of art dating from between the second and fourth century C.E. They must originally have been made in the

13 V. Begley, R.D. De Puma, eds., Rome and India: the Ancient Sea Trade (Madison, 1991); X. Liu, Ancient lndia and Ancient China, Trade and Religious Exchanges AD. 1600 (Delhi, 1988) 14 Laing, "Recent Finds," 5, 10; figs. 15, 16.

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Fig. 3. Drawing of bronze bowl, Datong, Shanxi Province, ca. 4th century C.E. (after Wenwu (1990.5), p. 5, fig. 17).

mixed Greek and Iranian environment of the Kushan, Bactrian realm. In China the cups have been found in a tomb near Datong in northern China and in what may be the remains of a Buddhist monastery in a southern suburb of Datong, which was the capital until 493 C.E. of the Northern Wei, a Toba-Turk dynasty. These contexts suggest a fifth-century date for the cups' burial in China. The Northern Wei rulers succeeded in unifying northern China in the late fourth century C.E., and a new period of extensive trade and exchange of embassies over the great land routes to the West was initiated from the fifth to sixth century. The prestigious use of the medallion image is weil known in the art of the Roman and Iranian worlds in the third century C.E. 15 The medallion "portrait" was the first royal icon selected for representation on Sasanian court silver in the third century C.E. and it continued to be a significant and popular motif on silver vessels made north and east of Iran in Bactria under Kidarites and Hephthalites in the fourth and fifth centuries. At this later period it became in Iran the chosen royal icon on Sasanian silver vessels by the image of the hunter king.

15 P.O. Harper and P. Meyers, Silver Vessels of the Sasanian Period (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1981) 24-39.

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We cannot know what this particular, prestigious, Western-derived image meant, if anything, to a Chinese owner. The medallion portrait had no apparent impact as a significant icon an the art of the Sui (581-618 C.E.) or early Tang dynasties. In contrast, the influence of the floral designs an these and other foreign luxury objects was considerable in the art of China and is more easily documented. Jessica Rawson, in a number of studies, has traced foreign plant designs as they were adapted and transformed in the hands of Chinese artists and appear in the art of the early Tang dynasty. 16 The floral designs an the Datong vessels illustrate a stage in the transmission of such Western designs to Asia. In the exhibition Monks and Merchants, a tiny gold strip from the first century B.C.E. to the first century C.E. (a foreign import into China found in a suburb of Guyuan, Ningxia province) provides evidence of an earlier phase in the development in western Central Asia of the floral pattern an the Datong cups, a design that has a lang history in the Bactrian realm as well as in the art of China. 17 On the gold strip a floral bud is incorporated into a continuous meander of heart-shaped forms. On the fourth-century C.E. medallion bowl found at Datong, a similar single heart is formed by branching leaves that converge in a floral bud. 18 The border of the Datong cup is decorated with the familiar Hellenistic laurel-leaf garland seen an one of the lidded, lobed circular containers described above, another indication of the tenacity of adopted foreign motifs in the art of Bactria and of their passage over a period of centuries to China. Other silver-gilded vessels imported into China from the Iranian world celebrate court life, seasonal festivities, and the fecundity and prosperity of the realm that, in Iran as in China, was the responsibility of the king. lnto this category fall vessels decorated with what might be loosely called "Dionysiac" imagery: grape and leaf patterns, dancing maenadic figures. On a Sasanian ewer of the late fifth or early sixth century in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (fig. 4), there is a typically Sasanian adaptation of this kind of generalized "Dionysiac" figural imagery, a reference to Zoroastrian seasonal festivals and to the fecundity of the earth. 19

16 J. Rawson, Chinese Ornament, The Lotus and the Dragon (London: The British Museum, 1984). 17 S. Beningson in Monks and Merchants, 42, 43, cat. nos. 5a-c. 18 Laing, "Recent Finds," 12, figs. 16a, 16b. 19 P.O. Harper, "The Sasanian Ewer, Questions of Origin and Influence," Near Eastern Studies dedicated to H.I.H. Prince Takahuto Mikasa, Bulletin of the Eastern Cultural Center in Japan 5 (1991): 67-84.

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Fig. 4. Silver-gilt ewer, Sasanian, Iran, ca. 6th century C.E., The Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. no. 67.10 a-b. Purchase, Mr. and Mrs. Douglas Dillon Gift and Rogers Fund 1967.

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Fig. 5. Drawing of frieze on a silver-gilt ewer found in the tomb of Li Xian (d. 569), Guyuan, Ningxia Province (after Zhong Ri Yuanzhou Lianhe kaogudai (Beijing, 1999), p. 20, fig. 11). A typologically comparable vessel is a silver-gilt ewer made in the West, in Hephthalite-controlled Bactria, but found in the sixth century tomb of Li Xian (d. 569) near Guyuan in Ningxia province. 20 The ewer had been placed beside the coffin of his wife who died in 547. Li Xian was a man of power whose career included time as a general and a governor of Dunhuang and who was of sufficient rank and prestige to entertain his monarch, the Northern Chou (557-581) ruler. Whatever the scenes on this ewer (fig. 5) meant to a Chinese viewer, it is evident that the imagery is not derived from Sasanian "Dionysiac" motifs but rather draws on themes from another source, Homer's Trojan epics. 21 The major images on the body are not part of a single narrative scene but consist of three discrete groups of paired figures. The generally erotic appearance of the scenes must have symbolized for the personnage in Bactria who commissioned the vessel not heroic prowess or military victory but life, fecundity, and fertility. If this is the true significance of the images, then the Sasanian ""Dionysiac" motifs and the Bactrian Homeric subjects have a similarly propitious theme, expressed by different icons meaningful to the particular society, Sasanian or Bactrian, for which they were intended.

20 21

Juliano and Learner, Monks and Merchants, cat. no. 31. B.I. Marshak in Monks and Merchants, 98-100, cat. no. 31.

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Without the figural scenes the ewer found near Guyuan would inevitably have been designated a true Sasanian work of art found in China. The shape of the ewer, derived ultimately from ewers made in the Late Antique, eastern Mediterranean world, is distinctly Sasanian, a form standardized within the Sasanian realm perhaps as early as the late fifth century and produced in some quantity through the seventh century. This is not a Sogdian ewer shape or a Tang dynasty ewer shape. lt is a Sasanian shape and, we now know, also a shape made at about the same time east of Iran, in Bactria, presumably under Sasanian and/or Late Antique influences. The emphasis on fluting and beading on the Bactrian ewer found in China and the figural scenes, arranged in the large register in three thematic groups and decorating the body of the ewer in a two-register composition, are features that correspond more closely to the decoration of precious metal vessels in the late Roman and early Christian world of the fourth century C.E. than to any developments in Sasanian Iran. 22 lt is not impossible that this distinctive shape of ewer, so well known from Sasanian examples, may in fact have developed in the Bactrian lands east of Sasanian Iran and from that source had been adopted in Sasanian Iran. However, the absence of meaningful archaeological contexts for both the Iranian and Bactrian ewers makes a precise dating impossible and the original source of the form difficult to trace. The Bactrian ewer was found between the coffin of Li Xian's wife and the wall of the tomb. With the ewer, outside the coffin, was also found a facetted glass vessel of pure Sasanian type, and within the wife's coffin was a gold ring, inset with a Sasanian agate seal on which a nude, dancing, female figure is represented. 23 If the significance of the imagery on the ewer and seal for a Chinese patron is unclear, there is nothing obscure about why these objects from the Iranian world were valued by Li Xian and his wife. The works of art associated with the wife's grave had a value that was both material and spiritual. Of the Seven Treasures of Buddhism (sapta ratna, a list compiled before this period and reflecting in its composition the increasing trade in precious foreign luxury goods ), the finds from the looted tomb include four: gold, silver, glass or crystal, and agate. The wife carried with her in death precious and propitious materials, expressions of the profundity of her veneration of the Buddha and symbols of the Buddhist paradise.

22

L. Kötzsche in The Age of Spirituality (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1971) 431-432, cat. no. 389. 23 J.A. Lerner in Monks and Merchants, 101, cat. no. 32. For discussions about the sapta ratna see Monks and Merchants and Liu, Ancient China and Ancient Jndia, 92 ff.

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Fig. 6. Drawing of gilded silver(?) plate found at Beilan, Jingyuan, Gansu Province, ca. 2nd-3rd century C.E. (after Wenwu (1990.5), p. 2, fig. 1).

The presence of Dionysiac imagery on objects associated with the Iranian world that have been found in China is also evident on a large and heavy, silvergilt plate (fig. 6) on which Dionysos, resting on the back of a feline, appears as a central focus. 24 This work, a chance find during road construction in Jingyuan

24

J.A. Lerner in Monks and Merchants, 331-332, cat. no.115.

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county, Gansu Province, was probably made in the second or third century C.E. presumably in some late Roman, eastern Mediterranean center or from molds derived from that source. The plate has a third-to-fourth-century C.E. Bactrian inscription on the reverse giving the name of an owner, evidence that the vessel was in use at some point in its history in Bactria. Dionysiac imagery of a similar nature is seen earlier in pre-Kushan and Kushan Bactria, notably at Tillya Tepe in northern Afghanistan, where an image on a gold belt found in a man's grave dating from the first century B.C.E. to the first century C.E. may represent Dionysos riding on a feline. 25 What is of more interest, however, than the Dionysiac imagery in terms of later artistic developments in Tang dynasty China is the wonderfully rich and rigidly composed, creature-inhabited vine tree or scroll that decorates a major part of the interior surface. Perfectly symmetrical, the vine inhabited with birds, reptiles, and insects is essentially composed of an interlocking, inverted heart-shaped plant designs. This is a variation of the motif seen on the Han dynasty golden strips mentioned earlier and on the medallion cups found at Datong, which were other luxury works from the Bactrian realm that reached China. The arrangement of the decoration on the silver plate in two concentric circles around a central medallion is a composition that was employed centuries later on a silver-gilt eighth-or-ninth-century Tibetan plate seen in the Miho Museum in Japan. This appearance is another indication of the conservatism that characterizes foreign designs and compositions adopted in the art of Bactria, Tibet, and China. 26 Familiar now with the heart-shaped plant motif, we see this floral design with upward point on the dress of court ladies (fig. 7) represented with Xianbei, nonHan Chinese, donors on the embroidered Buddhist temple banner dated to 487 C.E. 27 Found at Dunhuang in the far northwest of Gansu Province, the banner is the gift of a princely donor, the grandson of the Northern Wei dynasty emperor. The warnen on the banner are led by a Buddhist nun and are members of the elite of the royal family wearing traditional Xianbei dress. Heart-shaped petals and rosettes have a lang history throughout westernAsia as propitious and elite textile designs. On a beautiful example of the third century C.E. excavated at Dura-Europas in Syria, the petals are horizontally divided by

25

G.A. Pugachenkova and L.Z. Rempel, "Gold from Tillia-tepe," Bulletin of theAsia Institute 5 (1991): 18, fig. 5. 26 B.I. Marshak in Ancient Art from the Shumei Family Collection (New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1996): 80-83, cat. no. 33. 27 AL. Juliano and A.E. Dien in Monks and Merchants, 145-147, cat. no. 45.

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Fig. 7. Drawing of Xianbei female donor embroidered on Buddhist silk banner, Dunhuang Mogao Caves, Gansu Province, 487 C.E. (after Wenwu (1972.2), pl. 11).

colors in the same way the heart petals are divided on the fifth-to-sixth-century western Central Asian Balalyk Tepe painting, illustrated in the Monks and M erchants catalogue. 28 Heart-shaped petals of the Dura type with the point of the petal at the bottom also Ornament elite clothing of the third-century C.E. Kushans (fig. 8). The same heart-shaped petal patterns, horizontally divided, cover the royal silks carved in the dynastic rock reliefs at late Sasanian Taq-i Bostan. 29 The heart petal adopted in China differs from the form of the Syrian Dura Europos heart petals and of those examples found in Sasanian Iran: it is inverted and Jacks the horizontal color divisions. lt is derived from another plant design, one that we

28

R. Pfister and L. Bellinger, The Textiles, The Excavations at Dura-Europos, Final Report IV, Part 11 (1945), frontispiece, cat. no. 140; Monks and Merchants, 146, fig. D (Balalyk Tepe painting). In the Balalyk Tepe painting the heart petals are reversed, with the point upward in contrast to the Mediteranean, Iranian, and Kushan examples. However, in the paintings as restored in publications the petals appear to have horizontal divisions rather than the Bactrian vine-like form.

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Fig. 8. Terracotta painted panel, Kushan, 3rd century C.E., Tue Metropolitan Museum of Art, acc. no. 2000.42.3. Purchase, Raymond and Beverly Sackler Gift, 2000.

29

Terracotta painted panel, Bactria, Kushan, 3rd cent. A.D.; Metropolitan Museum acc. no. 2000.42.3 ; Purchase, Raymond and Beverly Sackler Gift 2000; M.L. Carter, "Preliminary Notes on Four Painted Terracotta Panels," SouthAsianAr chaeology (19951): 573-588, fig. 3. S.A. Yatsenko, "The Costume of the Yuech-Chihs/Kushans and its Analogies to the East and to the West," Silk Road Art and Archaeology 7 (2001 ): 73-120, plate 12; S. Fukai and K. Horiuchi, Taq-i-Bustan ! , (Tokyo: University of Tokyo, 1969), plate LI.

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Fig. 9. Monomachos crown panels (courtesy of Hungarian National Museum, Budapest)

have seen was traditionally used in eastern Iran and Bactria. But the visual effect and propitious, elite associations of the heart motif were the same and led to its adoption and usage in the court arts across the steppe world and Asia. Turning briefly westward, we see the later use of a similar inverted heart pattern in the garments depicted on the eleventh-century Byzantine crown (fig. 9) of Constantine IX Monomachos (1042-1056), the so-called Crown of Hungary. 30 The figural and plant patterns in the arched panels of this later work of art are derived from well-known ancient Near Eastern and Mediterranean prototypes and illustrate the complex and continuing interaction between the art of Byzantium and the Near East. The ornamented textiles and the gestures of the two side attendants, labeled Truth and Humility, are particularly relevant to this

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Fig. 10. Drawing by S. A. Shendrik of a silver-gilt plate found in the Malaya Ob river region, west Siberia, ca. 8th-9th century C.E. (after Archaeology, Ethnology

andAnthropology of Eurasia 4 (4) 2000, p. 144, fig. lb).

°

3

For recent comments and extensive bibliographical references see E. Kiss, "The State of Research on the Monomachos Crown and Some Further Thoughts," in Perceptions of Byzantium and Its Neighbors (843-1261), (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000); H. Maguire, "Davidic Virtue: The Crown of Constantine Monomachos and its Images," JewishArt23/24 (1997/98): 117-123.

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discussion. The image of Truth has one hand raised to the mouth with a finger outstretched and the image of Humility has the arms crossed at the ehest. The figural composition on the Monomachos crown panels, including a central primary personage and attendant figures, is an ancient elite icon. lt is similar to the representations on an east lranian, silver-gilt plate (fig. 10) made two centuries earlier in the eighth or ninth century. 31 The plate, found on the Lower Ob River in the northern part of western Siberia, has been published recently by A.V. Baulo of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences (to whom I owe thanks for introducing me to the vessel). The two attendant figures, crowned and of royal status (the female wears an arcaded crown typologically similar to the Monomachos crown) make familiar Iranian gestures of respect: the female has her arms crossed as on the later crown, and the male has one hand upraised with two fingers outstretched. Martha Carter traced this last gesture to the art of the Iranian Saka world, and from that source it spread first into the art of Gandhara and Bactria and later to Sogdiana and to Khorasan, eastern Iran, in the sixth century. 32 King David, the central enthroned figure on the silver plate sings as he plays an oddly shaped lyre that appears to incorporate architectural features drawn from Christian or Jewish shrines. Both David and the attendant male royal figure wear crowns which are modified versions of Sasanian crowns known from coins and other silver vessels attributed by Darkevich and Marshak to Khorasan in east Iran. The composition of the scene on the Ob River plate is quintessentially Sasanian royal imagery although details such as the shape of the columns and capitals are influenced by Sogdian designs. The great Sasanian rock monument of the sixth to early seventh century at Taq-i Bostan in northern Iran, a site on the Khorasan road which led into the urban centers of the Near East from the silk roads of Asia, provides an example of the use of this significant three-figure divine and royal icon. 33 On a later, post-Sasanian silver plate of the seventh or eighth century found in Iran at Qazvin the same royal motif is repeated. 34 Baulo sees the Ob River plate as intended for a Christian community. But the images included in this royal icon, the winged figures with their hands raised in the Buddhist gesture of respect (or the Christian attitude of prayer), may not have had a specific religious significance and simply have been under-

31

24 cm. diameter, 3 cm. height, 1000 grams weight. A.V. Baulo, "Silver Plate from Malaya Ob," Archaeology, Ethnology andAnthropology of Eurasia 4, no. 4 (2000): 143153. 32 M.L. Carter, "A Gandharan Blessing," Bulletin of the Asia Institute 1 (1987): 4563. 33 S. Fukai and K. Horiuchi, Taq-i-Bustan II (Tokyo: University of Tokyo, 1972), plate 1. 34 Harper and Meyers, Silver Vessels, 115-117, plate 34.

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stood (as at Taq-i Bostan) as essential elements in this prestigious, royal icon. One question that can be raised is whether the David plate was commissioned by a Jewish or a Christian ruler. In this period in the late eighth century, another great and powerful state in Eurasia was ruled by the Khazar Turks, who controlled vast regions in the northern steppe world as well as important trade routes. The Khazar ruler converted to Judaism in the mid-eighth century, and a Khazar princess in the early eighth century married the future Byzantine emperor, Constantine the Fifth. 35 These powerful steppe rulers might well have adopted the prestigious artistic language of the Sasanian and Byzantine courts as well as the practice of commissioning silver plates, by this time a symbol throughout Asia of royal majesty and splendor. The Monomachos crown and the Ob River plate are works of art that complement the evidence from China and illustrate a process of exchange, adoption, and adaptation of elite motifs at a time when extraordinary cross-cultural currents permeated the art of the steppe world and Eurasia. The exhibition Monks and Merchants beautifully displayed the debt owed by contemporary cultures, from China to Europe, to the great steppe confederations of the first millennium C.E., the nomadic and semi-nomadic peoples of Eurasia. The passage of forms and motifs, of iconographic patterns and of compositional schemes across immense spaces and over a considerable span of time was possible because of the movements of peoples whose cultural heritage lay in increasingly distant homelands and who were open to cultural influences from the various, rich, urban-centered kingdoms on their borders. Until its doors shut in the eighth century, China was as much a part of this multicultural world environment as Sasanian Iran, Byzantium, and the Europe of Charlemagne and Constantine Monomachos.

35 M.I. Artamanov, /storia Khazar (Leningrad, 1962) 517-521; English summary in P.B. Golden, "The Khazars," in The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (Cambridge, 1990) 263-270. For early David iconography in Jewish art see the third-century-A.D. Dura-Europos synagogue paintings: C.H. Kraeling, The Synagogue, The Excavations at Dura-Europas, Final Report 8, no. 1 (New Haven, 1956) 214-227; P.C. Finney, "OrpheusDavid: A Connection in Iconography between Greco-Roman Judaism and Early Christianity?," Journal ofJewishArt 5 (1978): 6-28. David was the pious king, author, and singer of psalms in the Jewish tradition. At Dura his image is in the central area above the Torah shrine.

WAISTED DRUMS IN ANCIENT CHINA AND EURASIA Bo Lawergren Musical Migrations into China In historical times the Silk Road provides the best example of a conduit of Western instruments into China. 1 Lutes and harps arrived and became indispensable to Chinese music. But diffusions in and out of China occurred earlier. Their dates and processes are hazier, but the end results are no less significant. One example is tuning pegs, which arose in China and the West at about the same time (fifth century B.C.E.), but Chinese pegs carried definite Western traits. 2 Early Waisted Drums in China Between ca. 3500 and ca. 2350 B.C.E., China had pottery with manmade holes. 3 Below the rim was a row of evenly spaced bosses ("inverted eagle's claws" in Chinese terminology). Some storage jars had such bosses which were used to tie down lids. But lids are pointless on pottery with holes. Most likely, they were drums: the bosses would hold the stretched skin, and the vents would let air in and out4 . No drum skins have survived, but later bronze drums of the Shang dynasty (ca. 1600-ca. 1100 B. C.E. )had patterns which represented alligator and python skins. 5 Perhaps the earlier drums also had reptile skins.

1 For details on harps and lutes, see Bo Lawergren, "Distinctions among Canaanite, Philistine, and lsraelite Lyres, and their Global Lyrical Contexts," Bulletin of theAmerican Schools of Oriental Research 309 (1998): 41-68; and idem, "Lutes along the Silk Road: a First Millennium A.D. Migration" (paper presented at the conference Musical Journey Along the Ancient Silk Road, University of California, Berkeley, April 22-23, 2002) respectively. 2 Bo Lawergren, "Strings," in Music in the Age of Confucius (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press in association with the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, 2000) 77-78. 3 Tianlin Gao, "On the Neolithic Pottery Drum in the Yellow River Valley," Kaogu xuebao (1991.2): 125-129 [in Chinese]. 4 Some storage jars without holes also had bosses. They served to tie down the lid, cf. Kaogu (1976.6): 356. 5 Song Zhenhao, "Shang Musical Politics," ChinaArchaeology andArt Digest: Music and Ritual 2: 2-3 (December 1994): 43.

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Fig. 1. Waisted drums. a. Pottery drum from Majiayao culture, Eastern Gansu, China, ca. 3000 B.C.E. Single drum head. Length: more than 40 cm. Upper and lower diameter: 22 and 12 cm, respectively (Yin, "Clay Drums," no. 47251). b. Pottery drum from Leshnping village, Yongdeng county, Gansu province, China, ca. 2350 B.C.E. Single drum head. Height: 32 cm. Upper and lower diameter: 22.5 and 9 cm, respectively (Gao, "Neolithic Pottery Drum," fig. 2). c. Pottery drum from Beycesultan, Anatolia (Turkey), 1900-1550 B.C.E. Single drum head. Height: ca. 56 cm. Upper and lower diameter: 40 and 10 cm, respectively (Lloyd and Mellaart, Beycesultan II, fig. 23A; plates P.8. no. 17; P.23. no. 6; P.29. no. 3). d. Bronze drum from Northeast China, eight and seventh century B.C.E. Single drum head(?). Height: 29 cm (Bunker, Fan Collection, xxx). e. Bone drum (two pieces joined) from Pazyryk, ca. 350 B.C.E. Single drum head. Height: 18 cm (Sergei 1. Rudenko, Frozen Tombs of Siberia: The Pazyryk Burials of IronAge Horsemen (Berkeley: University of California, 1971) xx). f. Drum on a strap (shallow stone relief) from Bharhut, North India, 1-200 C.E. Double drum heads and double drum sticks. Estimated length: ca. 20 cm (Walter Kaufmann, Altindien, Musikgeschichte in Bildern, 2, 8 (Leipzig: VEB Verlag, 1981) fig. xx) g. Glazed porcelain drum from Duandian village, Lushan county, Henan Province, China, ca. 800 C.E. Double drum heads (Lü Chenglong, "Splendid Tang Dynasty huayou Porcelain,'' ChinaArchaeology andArt Digest: Music and Ritual 2:2-3 (December 1999) 390). h. Hourglass drum (deep stone relief), Chengdu city, Sichuan province, China, 918 C.E. Double drum heads and two bare hands. Estimated length: ca. 40 cm (Wen Dingguan, Wang Jian mu shi ke yi shu (Art of stone carvings ofWang Jian's tomb) (Chengdu: Sichuan ren min chu ban she: Sichuan sheng xin hua shu dian fa xing, 1985) 47; Anne Birrell, "An All-Female Band from lüth Century China: Stone Sculptures from the Imperial Tomb of Wang Jian,'' OrientalArt 39 (1993): fig. 5).

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The shapes of the drums varied with date and location. 6 Some were nearcylindrical with the top slightly wider than the bottom, others looked like two prolate spheroids joined to make a waist near the middle. 7 The idea of a waisted shape took hold in the upper reaches of the Yellow River. Pottery drums in that region had a narrow tube-like section in the middle. The body continued upward with a conically expanding section and downward with a bulbous open end. Chinese archaeologists call it a trumpet-shaped drum. Presumably, the drum was held around the tube with the skin more or less upward (figs. la, lb), 8 but two loop-handles allowed the drum to hang comfortable from a strap around the player's neck. 9 Trumpet-shaped drums were localized to the eastern Gansu and Qinghai provinces. Gao listed about a dozen dated ca. 2350 B.C.E„ lü but dozens more (mostly unexcavated) have recently been published, dated between the Majiayao, ca. 3100 B.C.E. 11 (fig. la), and the Machang, ca. 2280 B.C.E. (fig. lb), phases. Of the six given by Yin, 12 lengths vary from (above) ca. 50 cm to 18 cm, and on the largest one the upper and lower diameters are ca. 50 and 30 cm, respectively. The drum of the Majiayao phase (fig. la) has the curvilinear pattern typical of this ware 13 ; it covers the central tube and the lower part of the bulbous surface. Our drum of the Machang phase (fig. lb) has horizontal bands and triangular patterns typical of this later period, and the motifs are also present on other drums of the late third millennium.14

6

Gao, "Neolithic Pottery Drum," fig. 3. Jessica Rawson, ed„ Mysteries of Ancient China (New York: George Brazillier, 1996) no. 9. 8 They are usually shown upside down in Chinese archaeological publications. 9 Cf. fig. lffrom India, which also may be a (much later) trans-Asian migration. Most Indian drums had a symmetrical barre! shape and heads at both ends. These first occurred on Indus civilization seals and still dominate. The waisted drum was rare in 100 CE and is still so today; see Harold S. Powers, "India," The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan Publishers, 2001) 7: 249. 10 Gao, "Neolithic Pottery Drum," fig. 2. 11 Noel Barnard, "Further Evidence to Support the Hypothesis of Indigenous Origins of Metallurgy in Ancient China," in The Origins of Chinese Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983) fig. 9.1. 12 Yin Desheng, "Research on Newly Discovered Clay Drums from Gansu Province," Kaogu yu wenwu (2001.2) 31-35 [in Chinese]. 13 Kwang-chih Chang, The Archaeology ofAncient China, 4th ed. (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986) 146. 14 Yin, "Clay Drums," fig. 2. 7

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The drum, well-established in the eastern parts of the Gansu and Qinghai provinces during the third millennium, was probably used by shamans. In a review Chang pointed to several manifestations of shamanism in the GansuQinghai region during this time.1 5 Drums are a well-attested accouterment of shamans. 16 This is also the time and place of the first illustration of dance in China. A bowl shows a row of five dancers performing a ring dance "holding hands and wearing what appears to be penis sheaths." 17 Since shamans-at least contemporary ones-move greatly during a seance, the strap and the loop-handles come in handy. Early Migration from China: Waisted Drums in Eurasia There are no traces of trumpet-shaped drums elsewhere in China but, oddly, many similar drums appeared in Beycesultan, Anatolia, 1900-1550 B.C.E., i.e., the period of the Hittite Old Kingdom (fig. lc). The chasm between Gansu and land of the Hittites is deep. The site lies some 7,000 km west of Gansu, and there are no intermediary finds; at least 500 years had elapsed since the last Chinese sighting. Yet, it was not a one-time curiosity in Beycesultan. Many trumpet-shaped drums were found throughout three strata dated between 1900 and 1550 B.C.E. After this period it disappeared from the West too. The details of the designs in China and Beycesultan agree. First, the general shape and size is similar. The earliest Anatolian one is 56 cm high and has 40 cm diameter at the top (later examples are 46 and 38 cm high). Both the Chinese and Anatolian drums have a narrow tube in the middle, expand toward the top, and have a bulbous bottom. Their have tops encircled by inverted claws. But there are two differences; the Hittite drum is not vented and its two loop handles are placed near the bottom. The excavators of Beycesultan concluded that "a skin was evidently stretched across the mouth of the drum and fastened round the numerous 'horns.' The presence of two handles at the lower end of the vessel is unexplained. The vessel will not stand by itself and must have been played by a seated person holding it on his lap." 18 Now, 37 years after that passage was written, and 14 after the famous scene of musicians on the nandiktepe was published, one can explain

15

16

Chang, Ancient China, 150.

Mircea Eliade, Shamanism, Archaic Techniques of Ecstacy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964) xx. 17 Chang, Ancient China, 150. 18 Seton Lloyd and James Mellaart, Beycesultan II, British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, Occasional Publications 8 (London: The British Institute of Archaeology at Ankara, 1965) 93.

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the odd placement of the two handles. The scene shows a parade of lyre players; one is played by a tall person and held at its lower end by the two hands of a short person. 19 Such a two-person team may also have been in charge of the drum at Beycesultan. With a short person holding the loop-handles, the drum could hardly have been involved in shamanistic performances. Because of the striking similarities, the Hittite waisted drum seems to have migrated from China. Late Waisted Drums in China After 2350 B.C.E. there are no trumpet-shaped drums in the heartland of China, and the disappearance may be due to its close association with early shamanism. Shamanism probably survived, but had no place in the rites of the Shang elite, and their customs prevailed. "By late Shang, [the kings] had so routinized and ordered their meditations with the Powers that they would have found the impromptu qualities of shamanistic ecstacy and inspiration inimical to their religious and political authority." 20 However, waisted drums survived on the northern fringe where shamanism probably also survived. 21 These drums from the first millennium B.C.E. had symmetrically waisted bodies made of bronze and red pottery. 22 One has a pattern at one end (fig. ld) and the asymmetry probably implies that only one end had skin cover. The waist would have provided a convenient grip for a dancing shamanjust as the narrow tube on trumpet-shaped drums had done in the third millennium. Similar considerations apply to the drum at Pazyryk (fig. le) 500 years later and 2000 km further northwest. Waisted drums were brought back to the heartland of China by Buddhism (figs. lg, lh). They now have heads at both ends and the claws are gone. The skins are lashed to each other with long strings (fig. lh). The waisted shape allows the strings tobe squeezed inward during play, an action that changes the skin ten-

19

Lawergren, "Canaanite, Philistine, and Israelite Lyres," fig. 4Ab. David N. Kneightley, "The Shang: China's First Historical Dynasty," in The Cambridge History of Ancient China; From the Origins of Civilization to 221 B.C. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) 262. 21 A ritual implement from northwestern China which may be a "shaman's wand", 13llth century BCE, is shown in Emma C. Bucker, Ancient Bronzes of the Eastern Eurasian Steppes from the Arthur M. Sackler Collections (New York: The Arthur M. Sackler Foundation, 1997) 115. A pendant from western Inner Mongolia (third century BCE) shows a hedgehog considered a sacred animal in Siberian shamanism (Ibid., 237). 22 Emma C. Bucker, The Fan Collection (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2002) XX. 20

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sion and the pitch of the sound. lt was a major innovation, but it is not known where it occurred. These "hour-glass" drums became common in Chinese Buddhist orchestras during the Sui (581 - 589) and Tang (618 - 908) dynasties. Japan adopted them, and they still remain popular there 23 , but they disappeared from China. A recent survey of Chinese folk music has no waisted drums. What survives are barrel drums which-ultimately-descend from instruments introduced in the ritual orchestras of the second and first millennia B.C.E. 24 This constitutes the second extermination of waisted drums from China. Indeed, there had been many types of barrel-drums in China during the first millennium B.C.E. A poem in Shi jing dated ca. 900 B.C.E. observes: "There are blind drummers, there are blind drummers in the court of Zhou. Erecting stands, erecting racks with high flanges and mounted wings. The echo-drums, kettledrums, suspended drums, little-drums ... " 25 Judging from illustrations and extant material, all were barrel-drums with bulging sides. They had little in common with the waisted pottery drums more than a millennium older: shapes, sizes, mounting and striking devices were different. So was their societal role. The discontinuities in Chinese drum history-as demonstrated by waisted drumsshould caution us from seeing it as one long sweeping continuity. 26

23 An thorough description of a Japanese waisted drum is given by William P. Malm, Six Hidden Views of Japanese Music (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986). 24 E.g. Stephen Jones, Folk Music of China: Living Instrumental Traditions (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995) 104-106. 25 Edward L. Shaughnessy, "Western Zhou History," in The Cambridge History of Ancient China; From the Origins of Civilization to 221 B.C. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999) 333. 26 Contra Rawson, Mysteries ofAncient China, 43.

MUSICAL INTERSECTIONS: LOCAL FESTIVALS AS COSMOPOLITAN CENTERS OF EXCHANGE Sue Tuohy Celebrating the Silk Road's contributions to cultural exchange, many have emphasized the people and products moving through the region to Chinese urban centers and western lands. People also stopped along the road. More than places for traders to rest their camels, the intersections of the Silk Road were places in which people lived their lives and called home. Tens of thousands of people gathered in the grand Silk Road cities and temple complexes; others lived in smaller centers, remote outposts, villages, and nomadic camps. The Silk Road exerted a sustained influence on everyday life in these centers, contributing to the region's diversity and connecting its people to other centers throughout the centuries. Known today as Northwest China, the region has been for millennia one of diversity, change, movement, conflict, and shifting powers. Group after group of people migrated to the region; Chinese, Tibetan, and Muslim groups, and nationalities that no langer exist held regional and local power. Armies as well as traders and missionaries traveled the Silk Road. As early as 100 B.C.E., the Chinese government dispatched military expeditions to expand its imperial territory. At times, the region was a foreign land or a frontier zone for the Chinese empire; at other times that which once was foreign became Chinese merely by expanding the border. The paths and significance of the Silk Road, the borders of China, and the countries from which people came and went changed repeatedly. 1 This complex, unsettled history has shaped the cultures of Northwest China in the twentieth century as peoples and arts have been reconfigured in different

1 · Many

excellent studies on the history and peoples of the region have been published; among those most relevant to the processes discussed here are: Thomas J. Barfield, The Perilous Frontier: Nomadic Empires and China (Cambridge, Mass.: Basil Blackwell, 1989); Robert B. Ekvall, Cultural Relations on the Kansu-Tibetan Border, University of Chicago Publications in Anthropology, Occasional Papers 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939); Piper Rae Gaubatz, Beyond the Great Wall: Urban Form and Transformation on the Chinese Frontier (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996); Gail Hershatter, Emily Honig, Jonathan Lipman, and Randall Stross, eds., Remapping China: Fissures in Historical Terrain (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1996); and Jonathan N. Lipman, Familiar Strangers: A History of Muslims in Northwest China (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1997).

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forms within the local environment. Today as in the past, the Northwest is polycentric. Some grand cities now stand as archeological remains, while others have been transformed into urban centers. New industrial complexes stand next to Buddhist monasteries and mosques. Other traditions have developed within the organization of villages. In between the grand centers and small settlements, regional Northwest traditions also have emerged. These traditions were fostered in another type of center as people came together to interact temporarily in new social formations through trade networks, but also in large-scale performance events. Excavated from the soil along the Silk Road, some artistic traditions left enduring objects and ancient manuscripts that traveled once again to the Monks and Merchants exhibition in New York City. The sounds and contexts of past musical performance, however, are ephemeral and are preserved only in textual descriptions, notations, and visual representations. 2 The past tends to be preserved by centralized institutions of politics, religion, and, more recently, the music industry. Until the establishment of folksong research societies and performance troupes in the 1940s, however, few institutions were concerned with preserving and disseminating Northwest Chinese folk culture. Today's song festivals are characteristic of that culture, and as with visual arts historically, they reflect the role played by religions, ethnic groups, and cultural influences entering via the Silk Road in the formation and transformation of culture. Illustrating the longevity of cultural mixing, the festivals are a microcosm of much that characterizes Northwest China, enabling us to examine broad processes of cultural interaction as they are played out in local sites. Local culture often is considered to be native, territorial, and isolated and is put in opposition to the cosmopolitan or global. But in the Northwest, a local cosmopolitan culture developed out of and in relation to ongoing global, local, and metropolitan forces. Hua 'er is a name of a genre of folksongs sung throughout a wide region in Northwest China by Han Chinese, several Muslim groups (Hui, Salar, Bao'an,

2 The Monks and Merchants exhibition contains examples such as figurines of Xianbei musicians and ancient Central Asian dancers and wall paintings depicting musical performance; see Annette L. Juliano and Judith A. Lerner, Monks and Merchants: Silk Raad Treasures from Northwest China, Gansu and Ningxia, 4th-7th Century (New York: Harry N. Abrams, Inc. with the Asia Society, 2001) 50, 65, 92, 93, 191, 251, 255.

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and Dongxiang), Tibetans, and members of the Tu nationality. 3 Most songs are sung in regional dialects of Chinese, a common language of exchange in the region, but can be sung in other languages and in national standard Chinese. Some hua 'er scholars hear central Asian influences in the music; others note influences by the Qiang and Di peoples, 4 and still others consider it an amalgam of the musics of groups who have lived and still live in the region. Hua 'er songs have a somewhat "wild" reputation and, still today, most people will not sing them in their own villages and homes. The songs are associated with a series of seventy or so festivals held annually along the border of Gansu and Qinghai provinces. 5 Hua 'er festivals are a different type of locus, found outside of grand cities and small villages; they are held on the periphery of temples, the periphery of China, and the periphery of contemporary Chinese national music and the music industry. Yet they are multipurpose events that serve as centers of economic, cultural, and artistic exchange in this area of profound diversity. Hua 'er festivals are diverse as they adapt to local and historical conditions, transforming pre-existing holidays and spaces used for other purposes into festival grounds. Most festivals are held near Buddhist temples, and some are contemporary manifestations of trade and religious fairs of the past. Both songs and festivals mix the past with the present. Many songs begin with a line about historical events or from historical texts, but singers use these lines from the past to speak in the present, responding

3

· The word hua 'er (meaning, among other things, "flower") is the name of a musical genre that encompasses diverse types of songs previously called by other names. lt became prominent in the latter half of the twentieth century, particularly after the publication of Zhang Yaxiong's Hua 'erji in 1940. Similarly, I have listed contemporary names for these groups of people, particularly those used today in the People's Republic of China. But they are descendants or reformulation of groups of people who lived in or migrated to the area historically. An extensive Chinese-language literature on the songs, regions, and groups is cited in Sue Tuohy, "lmagining the Chinese Tradition: The Case of Hua'er Songs, Festivals, and Scholarship" (Ph.D. diss., Indiana University, 1988); and "The Social Life of Genre: The Dynamics of Folksong in China," Asian Music 30 (Spring/Summer 1999): 39-86. 4 For a discussion of the Qiang and Di peoples, see Albert E. Dien, "Encounters with Nomads," in Monks and Merchants, 54-66. 5· Although hua'er songs are sung in the Ningxia-Hui and Xinjiang-Uighur Autonomous regions, there they are not associated with large-scale festivals found in Qinghai and Gansu provinces. Hua 'er songs have become an emblematic musical genre of Qinghai, Gansu, and Ningxia and are featured as a representative folksong from those three provinces in nearly every anthology of Chinese folk and national minority music.

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to other singers and situations. Present views of the past also are part of the festival experience as participants pass ruins, murals, and famous historical sites accumulated over the centuries. The Lianhua Mountain festival in Gansu is one of the largest and lasts up to six days. Held in a mountainous region, the influx of as many as 50,000 participants transforms the area into a temporary urban center with tent housing, restaurants, and stores. Participants move between multiple centers. One is situated around an environmental station built in the latter half of the twentieth century. From there, participants move up the mountain to a Buddhist temple, rebuilt in the late 1980s after being destroyed during the Cultural Revolution. As participants climb further up the mountain, they pass Daoist shrines. Apart from singing hua 'er songs and attending staged performances, festival goers have access to entertainment from other parts of the People's Republic of China (PRC) and beyond, including Peking and local operas, kungfu movies, and tapes of wellknown hua'er singers and of popular singers from China, the United States, and Europe. They can participate in games of chance, play pool and video games, or attend religious events in or near the temple center. Some hua'er festivals, such as the Riyue Mountain Hua'er festival in Huangyuan county, Qinghai, have been "developed" by government offices, which make use of the festivals to promote tourism and trade. 6 The Riyue Mountain festival also has multiple centers to which people travel. One site, held in a more remote western area, has incorporated a traditional Tibetan festival day and, thus, activities such as horse races also occur. Other activities are held at a Buddhist temple in a small village and in sports arenas and parks in the county seat. Today's festivals involve distinctively twentieth-century contexts, institutions, and rhetoric, including that of the PRC government. After its establishment in 1949, the government initiated a range of nationality and cultural policies and promoted local arts, attempting to incorporate them more prominently within the Chinese national tradition. The official rhetoric interprets diversity through the lens of Chinese unity-the unity of the Chinese peoples. Hua 'er songs and festivals are seen as living, concrete examples of this generalized concept of unity in

6 An official Riyue Mountain site marks what is considered a boundary between the "Chinese" agricultural landscape and the Tibetan nomadic lands, lying between the city of Xining to the east and outposts further west, although no festival activities at held at this site.

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diversity. They are said to be the collective products of diverse groups that express a distinctively Northwest Chinese spirit. These local forms have been disseminated beyond the region. On most professional recordings with national and international distribution, singers sing in national standard Chinese and rely on harmony and instruments imported from the West during the twentieth century, although now the meaning of the "West" has shifted from Central Asia to Europe and the United States. While instruments such as the piano were not commonly shipped across the Silk Road, electronic music instruments, choral forms, and rock'n'roll have been incorporated into twentieth-century Northwest local musical performance. Hua 'er songs can be performed in different styles, adapting to their contexts of performance and changing along with the social life of which they are a part. The study of the cosmopolitan nature of local cultural forms of Northwest China contributes to our understanding of the Silk Road region and the transformation of Chinese culture. Local musics, including those in locales once considered foreign, are now in the mainstream Chinese musical tradition, and earlier Chinese exports to Japan and Korea have become foreign yet again. Some musical forms from the past died out or were assimilated into other more dominant forms. In spite of century after century of mixing along the sides of the Silk Road and of the spread of powerful systems of Buddhism and Islam, in spite of century after century of Chinese centralization through empire and nation, it may be a wonder that local forms can exist. Yet we can hear the regional musical culture of the Northwest as it assimilates new ideas within local contexts and circulates beyond its region. Along the Silk Road, people lived and continue to live in an area of diversity and change, one filled with possibility. As with the grand centers and visual arts, the festivals provide sites for the display of these possibilities today-and for their continued selection, assimilation, and development. They constitute musical intersections that have contributed to the formation of a cosmopolitan local culture.