The 'Myth' of the Silk Road

[Michael Kerr]

Nathan Ross wrote:

That's an ingenious theory! Although, as I said above, if these 'missions' were intended to actually reach their destinations for some reason, rather than just exploring an alternative route of getting there, then the established sea transport system might be a better way of doing it...

 I like to think of these missions as ancient "mercantile feasability studies" in an attempt to cut out some middlemen, both overland and maritime. Maes wrote his itinerary of stopovers (towns and oases), distances, travelling times etc and you can just imagine his merchant mind ticking over and crunching the numbers. Maybe when the information was processed his backers decided that the costs outweighed the benefits.

 Just on Maes and how quickly after Gan Ying he organised for his agents to travel through Parthia, Raoul McLaughlin in his book The Roman Empire and the Silk Routes had a theory that Maes Titianus due to the confusion about his origin (Macedonian/Syrian could have been a descendant of a servant who served Marcus Titius who was the Syrian governor in 13BC who helped Augustus facilitate an important peace settlement with the Parthian ruler Phraates IV who sent several of his sons and grandsons to Rome as wards of the Roman emperor. Marcus received the 4 children, 4 grandchildren and 2 daughters-in-law and took responsibility for them until their transfer to Rome. He would have sent some of his most trusted servants or freedmen to Ctesiphon to convey messages and arrange for the safe conduct of the Royal family, maybe some were granted Roman citizenship  for their services and they could have taken the name of their benefactor and used their new contacts in Parthia to create successful businesses for themselves and their descendants. His theory not mine but interesting nonetheless.

 The Antun delegation was probably thinking along the same lines although Rome was involved in a war with Parthia at the time they left Egypt  (how do I cut out the Indian merchants who had a hunger for Roman silver, let's get to the source of silk). According to the Hou Hanshu the Antun mission disappointed their Han hosts though with the poor quality of their gifts and were sent back on their way with the promise of further talks but we never hear of them again.

 As for Tsin-Lun he was probably a Greek called Leon and was recorded by the Liang-shu to have arrived in China in 226AD although the Chinese political situation had changed immensely to the one in 166AD where  the Han were overthrown and China was split into 3 rival kingdoms. He arrived at the kingdom of Wu and identified himself as a merchant specializing in long-distance trade. The Wu king selected a Chinese officer to accompany Leon back to Roman lands along with 20 extremely dark-skinned captives who the Wu king gave as a gift to the Roman emperor Severus Alexander. There is no record of the ship making it back to Roman territory.

 Don't know too much about the 284AD mission (only Wiki) but Rome was involved with a war with the Sassanids at the time and Carus would have been emperor at the time of their departure from Egypt.

Nathan Ross wrote:

I'm not so sure about the northern plains routes though, or the connections north of the Himalayas - is there any real evidence for them during this period?

The northern plains routes were probably used by the various Saka/Wusun/Sarmatian groups, can't recall the book but I read that there was an ancient fur route used which probably pre-dated the silk routes and roughly ran along the route of the trans-Siberian railway. As for the route north of the Himalayas that region was controlled by the Kushans even though it has a high altitude, again maybe more of a trail than a road for moving of livestock, even today seasonal nomadism is still pretty prevalent, another link to the Tarim basin. Just on different routes, Zhang Qian was surprised when he was visiting the bazaars of Bactria that they had bamboo products which he recognised as products of Yunnan and was told they were imported from India and he was quite shocked that Han subjects used a trade route for their wares that the Han officials were not aware of, this route used overland  to the coast and by sea to the coast of Burma and again by land to Han China so I wonder if at least in the 2nd to 1st century BC that the Han knew little about India and vice versa which indicates to me that the Indians got their silk from Central Asia.

Nathan Ross wrote:

At what point did the Chinese expel the Hsiung-nu?

 It was a long process, and my dates may be a bit rough but when Zhang Qian returned to the Han court 15 years after being sent by Han emperor Wudi to seek out allies against the Hsiung-nu they first expelled them from the Gansu Corridor in 123 BC, then it took them 23 years to control the Tarim Basin through diplomacy and force and the Hsiung-nu split by civil war and most became subjects of the Han around 51BC. In 36BC Chinese led troops defeat last Hsiung-nu warlord ZhiZhi at a now unknown city near Lake Balkhash. This is the battle where Homer Dubs thought, although the theory is discredited now, that Roman survivors from Carrhae fought for ZhiZhi as mercenaries. The Northern Hsiung-nu still posed a problem for the Han until decisively defeated by Ban Chao in about 89AD. The information about the Tarim cities bartering for silk came from a Nicola Di Cosmo paper "Ancient City-States of the Tarim Basin". The Chinese had plenty of silk and needed food for its armies in their wars to secure the "Western Regions" so it was mutually agreeable to both sides to barter this way.

Nathan Ross wrote:

Ball mentions Gan Ying - who he calls Kan Ying, presumably the same guy - but puts his mission to Iran at the end of the 1st century BC. This could be a typo (BC for AD), but is there some doubt about the date?

No,  Ball's date must be a typo. Between74-97AD Han Protector-General Ban Chao re-established Han control over the Tarim after it ceded due to dynastic troubles back in China 50 years earlier. He then defeated the Northern Hsiung-nu and then he defeated his former allies the Kushans due to a disagreement over Chinese brides. He made peace with them and subdued a few other regions and only in 97AD was he in a position where he send his envoy Gan Ying west.

Nathan Ross wrote:

We might also ask whether the risk of a sea journey on a well-established monsoon route China-India/India-Egypt would be lesser or greater than an overland journey to China of thousands of miles through virtually uncharted territory inhabited by largely unknown peoples!...

 This is true and I don't disagree with your statement that sea travel was probably the cheapest and most secure option for eastern Roman merchants. I just disagree with Ball writing that there was not a recognised land route to India and China. I will agree with one of his points and that is that under the Mongols travellers could travel safely from one end of their realm to the other (for a price I suppose) but that is not what the overland trade routes were about. Trade goods were not loaded onto camels to travel from China to Syria, they made their way westward piecemeal with lots of "horsetrading" to boot. There would have been lots of loading and unloading and passing of goods from one trader to another at the various towns and oases on the way.

 The viability of the land routes would have been seriously expensive and compromised many times due to the constant wars between Rome and the Parthians/Sassanids with a lot of the battles taking place near these overland trade routes. I don't think the Parthians were accomplished sailors relying more on Greek and Arab sailors although I think that changed during the later Tang periods where Persian, Arab and Indian sailors dominated the Indian Ocean trade routes.

Regards

Michael Kerr