Section 11 – Da Qin (Roman territory/Rome)

11.1. The kingdom of Da Qin 大秦 [Ta Ch’in] = Roman territory. The use of the exalted name “Da Qin” (literally, ‘Great Ch’in’ = ‘Great China’) for a foreign state is unexpected.

The Hou Hanshu states:

“The people of this country are all tall and honest. They resemble the people of the Middle Kingdom and that is why this kingdom is called Da Qin.”

While the Weilue claims:

“The common people are tall and virtuous like the Chinese, but wear hu 胡 (‘Western’) clothes. They say they originally came from China, but left it.”

This folk etymology, charming as it is, does little to really explain the origin of the rather surprising name, Da Qin. It is reminiscent of the rather similar names for Ferghana – Dayuan = ‘Great Yuan,’ and for Bactria – Daxia = ‘Great Xia’? Graf (1996), pp. 199-200 says:

“For Hirth and the initial interpreters of the HHS and WL accounts, the country designated as Ta-ch’in (“Greater Ch’in”) was to be identified with the Roman East. Although the term Ch’in referred to the Chinese as early as the second century A.D., the name Ta-ch’in perhaps is best understood as simply a reflection of Ch’in as the western region of China, i.e. Ta-ch’in represents the country beyond and comparable to Ch’in. It has also been observed, first by Shiratori and later by others, that the accounts of Ta-ch’in bear a deep resemblance to the Taoist Utopia and are therefore not to be completely understood literally, i.e. they present a fictitious religious world, not a real one. As will become obvious later, this fact did not prevent Shiratori from respecting the essential historical framework of the Chinese accounts of Ta-ch’in. For the most part, such mythological elements are so strikingly evident that they represent only a minimal problem.”

“In the Roman world stories, some based on fact though often much distorted in transmission, others completely fanciful, began to circulate about the Seres, that is, the Silk People. A little later the name Sinae based, like Sanskrit Cīna and our present China, on Qín 秦, the name of the short-lived dynasty that preceded Han and united China in 221 B.C.E., also appears in western sources. At the same time the Chinese began to hear about a country in the far west which they called Dà Qín, Great Qín, apparently thinking of it as a kind of counter-China at the other end of the world.” Pulleyblank (1999), p. 71.

“Moreover, as their geographical knowledge of the world grew with time, the Han Chinese even came to the realization that China was not necessarily the only civilized country in the world. This is clearly shown in the fact that the Later Han Chinese gave the Roman Empire (or, rather, the Roman Orient) the name of Great Ch’in (Ta Ch’in). According to the Hou-Han shu, the Roman Empire was so named precisely because its people and civilization were comparable to those of China.” Yü (1986), p. 379.

These place-names which begin with Da 大 may originally have been formed as attempts to transcribe foreign names into Chinese. Yu (1998) believes Daxia [dat-hea] stands for the Tochari (pp. 22, 35). and thinks it possible (ibid. p. 68) that Dayuan [dat-iuan] may have likewise represented the Tochari. It is just possible that Da Qin represents some similar process though, if this is the case, it is difficult to imagine what name it was originally intended to represent.
          Hirth, and many other scholars who followed him, have taken Da Qin to refer to the ‘Roman Orient.’ I think that the term is often clearly used in a broader sense than this to mean the Roman Empire, or any territory subservient to Rome. It is true that all the dependencies mentioned in the Weilue are probably found in the ‘Roman Orient,’ but it specifically mentions that it only lists a few of the dependencies of Da Qin, presumably the ones visited by the Chinese, or those reported on to the Chinese, because of their importance for east-west trade. These are, quite naturally, territories in the ‘Roman Orient.’
          Sometimes, the name is used more specifically: the Weilue gives directions across a ‘Great Sea’ (the Mediterranean) to “that country” (i.e. Da Qin) from Wuzhisan in Haixi, which is undoubtedly Alexandria in Egypt – see notes 11.5, 11.7 and Appendix C.
          This is rather similar to the situation today when it is commonly said that one is “entering China,” when one enters territory inhabited by other people, but controlled by the Chinese, such as Tibet, or Chinese Turkestan (Sinjiang). Similarly, ‘Mexico’ may be used to refer to either the city or the country.
          Therefore I have translated Da Qin as either ‘Rome’ the city, ‘Roman territory,’ or the ‘Roman Empire,’ as the context demands. The reader should remember, meanwhile, that in each case the Chinese text will have only ‘Da Qin’.

11.2. 黎靬 Lijian [Li-chien] – another name for Da Qin. Lijian [Li-chien – sometimes written Li-kan] is given here as another name for Da Qin or the Roman Empire.

“The pronunciation jian (鉅連反 or 鉅言反) [for the second syllable of Lijian] is indicated by Yan Shigu (Qian Hanshu, chap. XCVI, a, p. 6a).” Translated from Chavannes (1905), p. 556, n. 4.

“It becomes clear that, as first proposed by Brosset (1828) and accepted by a number of other scholars, including Markwart, De Groot, and Herrmann (1941), Líjiān is actually a transcription of Hyrcania, Old Persian Wrkāna, a country that existed in the second century B.C.E. on the southwest [sic – should read southeast] corner of the Caspian Sea; and that, surprisingly, it is Tiaozhi that is a good transcription of Seleukia. The difficulty with identifying Líjiān with Hyrcania is that, although it fits perfectly with the earliest account in the Shĭjì, the name was displaced when the passage was copied into the Hànshū and in later texts it reemerges as another name for Dà Qín. The latter identification led Pelliot to propose that it transcribed the name of Alexandria in Egypt, of which more will be said below.” Pulleyblank (1999), p. 73.

          “As for Líjiān, Hulsewé and Loewe, using Karlgren’s Old Chinese reconstruction, remarked that “although Liɘr-g’iän [for which they cite Yán Shīgǔ’s gloss to 靬 in the Hànshū which I believe is of doubtful authority in this case] could be said to resemble ‘Hyrcania’, it is a far cry to the original ‘Vehrkāna [i.e., Old Persian Wrkāna]” (1979: 118). In fact the sequence –rkan is common to both the Greek and the Old Persian and fits well with EMC lεj/li xɨan/kɨan, with Chinese l- <*r-. What is apparently missing is anything to correspond to Old Persian initial w-, represented in Greek by the syllable Hy- (the letter upsilon with spiritus asper). Note, however, that lí 利 EMC li^h ‘sharp, profitable’, the phonetic in lí 犁 and lí 黎, is composed of dāo 刀 ‘knife’ + hé 禾 EMC γwaa̭ < *wál ‘grain’, presumably as a phonetic indicator. A full discussion cannot be given here but, assuming that this analysis of the graph is correct, one may tentatively reconstruct lí 犁 as Old Chinese *wrǝ́l > EMC *wríj > EMC lεj. We find a similar alternation in initials in the xiéshēng derivatives of lì 立 EMC lip ‘stand’ which include the etymologically related word wèi 位 EMC wi^h ‘position’.
          The earliest occurrence of the name Líjiān (in the variant reading Líxuān 黎軒) is in Shĭjì 123 in what purports to be Zhāng Qiān’s report on the countries of the far west after his return to China ca. 125 B.C.E. It comes at the end of his account of Ānxí (Parthia) and reads:

. . .。其西則條枝。北有奄蔡黎軒。條枝安息西數千里 , 臨西海。

. . . To the west [of Ānxí] lies Tiáozhī and to the north Yăncài and Líxuān. Tiáozhī is situated several thousand li west of Ānxí and borders on the Western Sea. . . .

This is the standard and most natural pronunciation found, for example, in the Takigawa edition and the recent Zhónghuá shūjū edition. That is, the section on Ānxí ends with mention of three other more distant countries, after which a new section begins on one of these, namely Tiáozhī. Yăncài, already mentioned in the text as a country northwest of Kāngjū (at that time in the region of Tashkend), has long been identified with the Aorsoi of western sources, a nomadic people out of whom the well-known Alans later emerged (Pulleyblank [1962: 99, 220; 1968:252]). On the assumption that Líxuān (that is, Líjiān) was in roughly the same direction, the equation with Hyrcania on the southeastern side of the Caspian Sea fits perfectly.
          There are two other references to Líxuān in Shĭjì 123, neither of which contradicts this. In the first, which has a parallel in Hànshū 61 but is not referred to by Leslie and Gardiner, it is said that after Zhāng Qiān’s death “more envoys were sent to Ānxí, Yăncài, Líxuān, Tiáozhī and Shēndú (India)” 因益發使安息, 有奄, 黎軒, 條枝, 身毒 (Zhonghua ed., p. 3170). Though Líxuān again comes in juxtaposition to Tiáozhī, it also again comes immediately after Yăncài.” Pulleyblank (1999), pp. 74-75. [Note that Pulleyblank has considerably more detail on the name Líjiān in this article, if you wish to check it further].

GR No. 1611, gives discusses several possibilities for the derivation of the name Lijian in its various forms:

“[a] JIAN [CHIEN¹]

(Etymological) Skin of a dried animal

1. Piece of copper from the harness of a horse. 2. From 梨靬 or 犛靬 or黎靬 li² jian¹ [li² chien¹] (Historical geography – phonetic transcription of the ancient Greek Seleukidai) Li-chien: a. The Persian Hellenistic Empire of the Seleucides (365-64 BCE), of modern Afghanistan to the Aegean Sea; plus particularly : The Hellenistic Syria of the Seleucid kings (c. 358-93 BCE). At this period (dynasty: 西漢 Western Han 206 BCE – 8 CE) beginning, after the conquest of Bactria by the 月氏 Yuezhi, about 100 BCE, the exchanges, across the Pamir, between China and the West. B. All lands and kingdoms to the west of China; by extension : The Roman Empire (dynasty: 東漢 Eastern Han 25-220). – Cf. 大秦 da⁴ qin² [ta² ch’in²].

[b] QIAN² [CH’IEN²]

From 麗靬 or 驪靬 li⁴ qian² [li⁴ ch’ien²] (Historical geography) Liqian (Li-ch’ien) : ancient sub-prefecture situated in modern 甘肅 Gansu (Kan-su), instituted under the 東漢 Eastern Han dynasty to settle prisoners originally from territories designated under the name of 梨靬, 犛靬, 黎靬 “Lijian [Li-chien]” (Cf. supra), and abolished during the 北魏 Northern Wei dynasty (南北朝 period of the Dynasties of the South and the North, 420-589).” Translated and adapted from the French.

The character 黎 li is another form of 梨; both translated as ‘pear’ (although Karlgren gives ‘to plough’ for the first character and ‘pear’ for the second, and GR No. 6842, while giving ‘pear’ as the primary meaning, also gives, ‘old’, ‘aged’, ‘to divide’, and ‘dismember,’ as alternate meanings). All three forms of li show similar reconstructed pronunciations.

黎 – K. 519g * liər / liei; EMC lεj

梨 – K. 519h *li̯ər / lji; EMC li

犛 – K. 979j * li̯əg / lji; EMC lɨ / li

Hirth (1885), p. 159 ff., and 170, n. 1, suggested it represented Rekem, an old name for Petra – both meaning ‘rock.’

          Several scholars have suggested that it must have been originally derived from ‘Alexandria’ or ‘Alexander.’ See, for example: Dubs (1957), pp. 2-3, and Sitwell (1984), p. 213, n. 22. Leslie and Gardiner (1996), pp. XVIII-XXVI and 253-254 argue that Li-kan (Lijian) referred originally to the Seleucid Empire. Also – see quote from GR above and under GR, No. 6864. For detailed reviews of the many theories about the origin and various forms of the name, see CICA: 117, n. 275, and Dubs (1957), pp. 24-26.

“[Li-jien was also] used by the Chinese for Rome and the Roman empire. Their later name for the Roman empire was Da^4H-ts’in^2TU, the use of which begins in the Later Han period, when, in A.D. 166, a man came to the border of China, stating that he was an envoy from “the King of Da^4H-ts’in^2TU, An^1JZ-dun^1WA [Marcus Aurelius Antoninus].” Da-ts’in was used for the Roman empire until the Middle Ages, when the name Fu^25DZ-lin^3TS came to be used instead (for the Eastern Roman Empire). Prefacing the account of Da-ts’in in the History of the Later Han Dynasty, there is the statement, “The country of Da^4H-ts’in^2TU is also called Li^2MGDZ- jien^1MGG.” This statement is repeated in other Chinese accounts of foreign countries, so that there can be no reason for doubting it.

The name Li-jien was almost surely a Chinese transcription of the Greek word “Alexandria” and originally denoted the Alexandria in Egypt. We may even perhaps be able to tell how this word came into use in China.

          “Between 110 and 100 B.C., there arrived at the Chinese capital an embassy from the King of Parthia. Among the presents to the Chinese Emperor are stated to have been fine jugglers from Li-jien. The jugglers and dancers, male and female, from Alexandria in Egypt were famous and were exported to foreign countries. Since the King of Parthia obviously esteemed highly the Emperor of China, he naturally sent the best jugglers he could secure. When these persons were asked whence they came, they of course replied “from Alexandria,” which word the Chinese who disliked polysyllables and initial vowels and could not pronounce certain Greek sounds, shortened into “Li-jien.”. When they also learned that this place was different from Parthia, the Chinese naturally used its name for the country of these jugglers. No Chinese had been to the Roman empire, so they had no reason to distinguish a prominent place in it from the country itself. The Romans moreover had no name for their empire other than orbis terrarum, i.e., “the world,” so that these jugglers would have found it difficult to explain the name of the Roman empire! In such a fashion there probably arose the Chinese name Li-jien which, for them, denoted the Roman empire in general.” Dubs (1957), pp. 2-3. See also Dubs’ detailed discussion of the various forms of this name, ibid., pp. 24 n. 6.

“It is possible that Li-jien originally meant ‘the land of Alexander’, just as An-hsi meant ‘the land of the Arsaces’; and that, having first been applied to the Seleucid kingdom, it was then extended to cover the nations (including Rome) whose rulers regarded themselves as the heirs of Alexander. It was a convenient coincidence that one of the largest cities of the West also bore this man’s name; but, pace Dubs, it seems most unlikely that Roman soldiers would ever have described themselves as ‘Alexandrians’.” Sitwell (1984), p. 213, n. 22.

11.3. Dahai 大海 [Ta Hai] – ‘a great sea.’ I believe this must refer to what we now know as the Indian Ocean including the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea. For details refer to Appendix C.

11.4. The city of Angu 安谷 [An-ku] = Gerrha or modern Thaj.
          It seems probable that the ‘Angu’ of the Weilue refers to the ancient trading city of Gerrha, and its port on the Arabian coast of the Persian Gulf. We are told that to travel by boat from Angu to Haixi [= Egypt] with favourable winds took two months and with slow winds half a year. In Section 16 of the text it says that that, from Zesan, “can take half a year to cross the water, but with fast winds it takes a month” (to reach Lüfen, which is only a short distance by land and “across the sea” by a very long bridge from Haixi or Egypt). So, it is reasonable to deduce that Zesan was approximately half way between Angu to Egypt, and the northern part of Azania fits this description remarkably well.
          Gerrha admirably fits the statements in the Weilue that Angu is, “on the frontier of Anxi (Parthia)” and is in close communication with Zesan [= Azania].”

“There was more about Gerrha [in the Greek and Roman writers] than about any other place in Arabia, but even so it was not more than could be committed to a small piece of paper. Oddly enough, in Arrian’s description of Alexander’s preparation for a campaign against Arabia, including the coastal explorations of 323 B.C., there was not the slightest mention of Gerrha. But Eratosthenes, writing about a hundred years after Alexander, tells of the merchants of Gerrha carrying their spices and incense overland to Mesopotamia. This is contradicted by Aristobulus, says Strabo, who tells that the merchants travelled by raft to Babylonia. Strabo, who wrote in the last two decades B.C., quotes Artemidorus, of the previous century, as saying: “By the incense trade . . . the Gerrhaei have become the richest of all tribes, and possess a great quantity of wrought articles in gold and silver, such as couches, tripods, basins, drinking vessels; to which we must add the costly magnificence of their houses; for the doors, walls, and roof are variegated with inlaid ivory, gold, silver, and precious stones.”
          The historian Polybius about the same time tells of a campaign of the Seleucid king, Antiochus III, who took a fleet along the Arabian coast in 205 B.C., with the intention of conquering Gerrha; but he was persuaded by large presents of silver and precious stones, to leave the city unharmed.
          There was thus little doubt that in the first, second, and third centuries B.C. Gerrha was an exceedingly wealthy city, trading overland and by sea in aromatics, presumably the frankincense of the Hadramaut. Strabo even tells us where Gerrha lay, but his account is difficult to interpret. Gerrha, he says, is “a city situated on a deep gulf; it is inhabited by the Chaldeans, exiles from Babylon; the soil contains salt and the people live in houses made of salt. . . . The city is about 200 stadia” – about 60 miles [actually only about 37 km – as 1 Greek stadium = 185 metres] – “distant from the sea.” And you sail “onward,” he says, from Gerrha to Tylos and Arados, which are the Bahrain islands.
          The elder Pliny, writing in the middle of the first century A.D., is more explicit, and I knew the description by heart. Describing the Arabian shore of the Gulf he comes to the island of Ichara, which must be our Ikaros, and then the Gulf of Capeus, and then the Gulf of Gerrha. “Here we find the city of Gerrha, five miles [five Roman miles = 7.41 km] in circumference, with towers built of square blocks of salt. Fifty miles [74.1 km] from the coast, lying in the interior, is the region of Attene, and opposite to Gerrha is the island of Tylos, an equal number of miles distant from the coast; it is famous for the vast numbers of its pearls . . .”
          Tylos, we knew, was Bahrain, and the region of Attene fifty miles inland was normally believed to be the Hofuf oasis. . . .” Bibby (1970), pp. 317-318.

D.T. Potts has, I believe, convincingly identified the town of Gerrha with modern Thaj, and located the port of Gerrha near the modern port of al-Jubayl:

          “A recent attempt by W. W. Müller to deduce the Semitic origin of the Greek name ‘Gerrha’ has important implications for the solution to the problem of the site’s location. Müller postulates that the ancient Hasaitic designation for ‘the city’ would have been *han-Hagar, from which an Aramaicized ‘Hagarā’ could have developed. As the use of Aramaic in this area is well-attested (see ch. 5 below), this presents no difficulties. From the form ‘Hagarā’, then, the Greek form ‘Gerrha’ can be derived. The application of the term ha—ar to a walled city with towers and bastions was stressed by H. Von Wissmann in his final, posthumously published work on Sabaean history. If a similar usage obtained in north-eastern Arabia where, as we have seen, the South Arabian alphabet was used in the indigenous Hasaitic inscriptions, then one immediately thinks of Thaj as a likely candidate for the site of ancient Gerrha. Pliny’s statement that Gerrha ‘measures five miles round and has towers made of squared blocks of salt’ is, moreover, reminiscent of the white limestone city wall at Thaj discussed above; nor are there any other sites of the period in eastern Arabia which fit such a description. Finally, if we remember the admittedly rough calculation of the distance between Gerrha and Teredon which brought us to the region of al-Jubayl, it is interesting to note that this is in fact Thaj’s traditional and indeed only outlet to the sea. Thus, there exists at least a strong possibility that Thaj and al-Jubayl are the sites of the inland town of Gerrha and its coastal port.” Potts (1990), pp. 89-90.

“As we have seen, Androsthenes’ information on Tylos [modern Bahrain], and by extension that of Theophrastus, can be dated to the lifetime of Alexander. Some of Pliny’s material, such as the parts drawn from Juba, can be dated roughly to the time of Christ, around the middle of the Parthian period. When we move into the second century AD, an altogether different perspective on Bahrain is afforded by an important inscription discovered during the 1939-40 season of excavations at Palmyra. The text belongs to a group of Palmyrene texts known as ‘caravan inscriptions’, in which a prominent citizen was honoured by his compatriots for services rendered in the caravan trade between Palmyra and Babylonia. In this case, the text records that in AD 131 the Palmyrene merchants of Spasinou Charax erected a statue at Palmyra in honour of Iarhai, son of Nebozabad. What makes this text so important, however, is the added fact that Iarhai is said to have served as ‘satrap of the Thilouanoi for Meredat, king of Spasinou Charax’. Spasinou Charax, a city located near modern Basra in the southernmost Babylonian province of Mesene, was the capital of the small but important kingdom of Characene. Situated in the shadow of Parthia, this kingdom enjoyed commercial success and attendant fame out of all proportion to its size, since Spasinou Charax was the most important Babylonian port of call for ships arriving laden with luxury goods from the East during the first century BC and the first two centuries AD. Palmyrene traders, as purveyors of these Eastern goods to Roman Syria and ultimately to the wider Mediterranean world, had established permanent colonies at Babylon, Vologesias, and, most importantly, at Spasinou Charax.
          The Palmyrene caravan inscriptions leave us in no doubt that Palmyrene commerce with the kingdom of Characene was a great success. Given the close commercial ties between Charax and the Palmyrene community, therefore, it is hardly surprising that the king of Charax should have employed a citizen of Palmyra in a political capacity, as satrap of the Thilouanoi. For many years, however, scholars did not recognise the significance of the satrapal name implied here. It was not until 1968, when a collection of notes completed by E. Herzfeld in 1948 was published posthumously, that the meaning became clear. The Thilouanoi were the inhabitants of Thiloua or Thilouos, which name is clearly an Aramaicised form of ‘Tylos’ [modern Bahrain]. Thus, by the early second century AD Bahrain was a satrapy of the kingdom of Characene.
          Meredat will be dealt with in greater detail in Chapter 6 below, but it is important to note that, as we now know from a Graeco-Parthian inscription recently discovered at Seleucia-on-Tigris, he was a member of a high-ranking Parthian family. Thus, as a Parthian on the Characene throne, his rule represented an extension of Parthian influence over Charax and the Gulf. That he came into conflict with other branches of the Parthian nobility, however, is likely, and twenty years after he was mentioned in the inscription from Palmyra, he was driven off the Characene throne by the Parthian king Vologases IV and heard of no more. From this time on, a more purely Parthian political presence was established in the central Arabian Gulf. . . . ” Potts (1990), pp. 145-146.

Although modern Thaj is situated well inland, there are some recent indications that the town may, during historical times, have actually been at the edge of a large inlet that joined with the Persian Gulf itself (thus averting the need for a separate port), as the following abstract indicates:

“Holocene sedimentation processes at the Saudi Arabian Gulf coast”

Projekte unter Leitung von PD Dr. Hans-Jörg Barth

Funding: Deutsche Forschungs Gemeinschaft (DFG), National Commission for Wildlife Conservation and Development (NCWCD), Riyadh

Abstract

Eustatic fluctuations of sea level during Pleistocene and Holocene times resulted in remarkable shifts of the shoreline along the Arabian Gulf. But even after the establishment of the present sea level around 1000 years ago, the coastal geography experienced significant alterations. Satellite data indicate that a large territory west of Jubail might once have been part of the Arabian Gulf. Concerning the location of the lost city of Gerrha, which Alexander the Great was planning to invade shortly before his death, archaeological sources mention a large inlet east of the city. The ruins of Thaj 90 km west of Jubail in the middle of the desert are located directly at the western shore of the assumed inlet. That leads to the assumption that Thaj is the “lost city of Gerrha”. Recent accumulation in the Jubail area at the Saudi Arabian Gulf coast is dominated by terrestrial aeolian processes. Cyanobacteria which is abundant in the intertidal flats, were discovered below about 70 cm of terrestrial and marine sediments in a sabkha environment. This sabkha is located in a distance of more than two kilometers from the actual intertidal. ¹⁴C dating of the cyanobacteria provided an age of not more than 700 years. Sedimentation characteristics indicate a significant change in sedimentation processes from marine to aeolian accumulation of terrestrial dune sand some time after the cyanobacterial growth 700 years ago. Progradation at rates of more than three meters per year implies a considerable sand source as well as intensive sand movement. Therefore a reduction in vegetation cover seems most probable to have caused this development. Strong winds moved sandy substrate in southern to southeastern directions where it finally accumulated in the intertidal. Whether a climatic change or human impact or even both led to this reduction in the vegetation cover, is presently unknown.” Downloaded on 10 November 2003, from: http://www.uni-regensburg.de/Fakultaeten/phil_Fak_III/Geographie/phygeo/barth.htm

For more details on these identifications refer to Appendix H.

11.5. Haixi 海西 – literally: ‘West of the Sea’ = Egypt. Refer to Appendix B, especially subsection (a) “Haixi 海西 – literally: ‘West of the Sea’ = Egypt.”

11.6. “With favourable winds it takes two months; if the winds are slow, perhaps a year; if there is no wind, perhaps three years.” This account from the Weilue gives a somewhat different account of the time it can take to reach Da Qin from the Persian Gulf, than the story told to Gan Ying recounted in the Hou Hanshu:

“In the ninth Yangyuan year [97 CE], during the reign of Emperor He, the Protector General Ban Chao sent Gan Ying to Da Qin (the Roman Empire). He reached Tiaozhi (Characene and Susiana) next to a large sea. He wanted to cross it, but the sailors of the western frontier of Anxi (Parthia) said to him:

“The ocean is huge. Those making the round trip can do it in three months if the winds are favourable. However, if you encounter winds that delay you, it can take two years. That is why all the men who go by sea take stores for three years. The vast ocean urges men to think of their country, and get homesick, and some of them die. When (Gan) Ying heard this, he gave up his plan.” TWR.

The shorter time of 2 months to make the round trip from the Persian Gulf to Da Qin in the Weilue compared to the 3 months mentioned in the Hou Hanshu can be explained by the expansion of Parthia to include the port of Gerra, which was considerably closer to the Red Sea ports than Charax Spasinu, the port Gan Ying reached in 97 CE.

11.7. The city of (Wu) Chisan (烏) 遲散 [(Wu) Ch’ih-san] = Alexandria.

          “On the name of Alexandria in Indian literature, cf. in the first place S. Lévi’s paper of 1934, reprinted in Mémorial Sylvain Lévi (Paris, 1937, 413-423). Lévi concurs with the opinion I first upheld in 1914 (JA, 1914, II, 413-417) that the Alasanda of the Questions of King Menander was the Egyptian Alexandria. Moreover, ālisaṃdaga, the name of a bean, and ālakandaka, a name of the coral, must be nouns derived from Alexandria.
          In Chinese Buddhist texts, the Chinese version of the Questions of King Menander gives a form 阿茘散 A-li-san (* •Â-ljie̯-sân), nearer to the Greek original for the vowel of the second syllable than Pâli Alasanda. Lévi (loc. cit. 418) also thought he had found the name of Alexandria in the Chinese version of Nāgārjuna’s commentary on the Prajñāpāramitā; but he elicited it through a correction which I hold as very doubtful.
          Apart from Buddhist texts, I proposed in TP, 1915, 690-691, to identify with Alexandria of Egypt the name 黎軒 Li-hsüan (*Liei-χi̯ɐn), Li-kan 犂靬 (* Liei-kân), etc., known in China from the end of the 2nd cent. B. C. Although others entertain different views, I still think that the equivalence is substantially correct. It remains doubtful whether, in the first half of the 3rd cent. A. D., the name of Alexandria underlies the transcriptions 遲散 Ch’ih-san (* D´’i-sân) and 烏遲散 Wu-ch’ih-san (*·Uo-d´’i-sân) of the Wei lio; cf. HIRTH, China and the Roman Orient, 181-182 (but the equivalence has gained in probability now that we know for certain that 烏弋山離 Wu-i-shan-li [*·Uo-i̯ək-ṣǎn-ljie̯, still more anciently ·O-di̯ək-sǎn-ljia], certainly renders the name of another Alexandria; cf. ZDMG, 1937, 252; TP, 1938, 148). Chao Ju-kua, writing in 1225, has a whole paragraph on 遏根陀 O-ken-t’o (*·Ât-kən-d’â), and describes its Pharos with the wonderful mirror (HR, 146-147; cf. LE STRANGE, Nuzhat-al-Qulūb, transl., 239-241); this last transcription is made the Arabic form Iskandariya.” Pelliot (1959), p. 29.

          “A better phonetic correspondence to Alexandria in a western context [than Lijian] is provided by Chísăn 遲散 or Wūchísăn 烏遲散 EMC ?ɔ dr̮i san’ (or san^h), said in the Wèilüè to be the first place one reaches in Dà Qín and identified by Hirth as Alexandria. The first syllable wū 烏(truncated in the first case) is the regular equivalent in Han times for a foreign initial a-, replaced by ā 阿 EMC ?a, in the new-style transcriptions that appear in the early Buddhist texts. The few xiéshēng connections of chí 遲, which appears to have xi 犀 EMC sεj as phonetic, do not give the kind of clear-cut evidence for *l- as the source of the Middle Chinese retroflexed stop, dr̮, that we find in the cases of EMC d < *l cited above; but neither do they support a connection with Old Chinese dental stops. It is relevant that, as Hirth noted, Middle Chinese dr̮- was sometimes used in transcriptions of Sanskrit to represent the voiced retroflex stop ḍ, a sound that is rather close to [l].” Pulleyblank (1999), p. 76.

“Ancient Alexandria stood about twelve miles from the Canoptic branch of the Nile, with which it was united by a canal. The lake Mareotis bathed its walls on the south, and the Mediterranean on the north. It was divided into straight parallel streets, cutting one another at right angles. One great street, two thousand feet wide, ran through the whole length of the city, beginning at the gate of the sea, and terminating at the gate of Canopus. It was intersected by another of the same breadth, which formed a square at their junction half a league in circumference. From the centre of this great place, the two gates were to be seen at once, and vessels arriving under full sail from both the north and the south. In these two principal streets, the noblest in the universe, stood their most magnificent palaces, temples, and public buildings, in which the eye was never tired with admiring the marble, the porphyry, and the obelisks, which were destined at some future day to embellish the metropolis of the world. The chief glory of Alexandria was its harbor. It was a deep and secure bay in the Mediterranean, formed by the shore on the one side, and the island of Pharos on the other, and where numerous fleets might lie in complete safety. Without the walls of Alexandria, and stretching along the shores of the Mediterranean, near to the promontory of Lectreos, was situated the palace and gardens of the Ptolemies. They contained within their inclosure the museum, an asylum for learned men, groves and buildings worthy of royal majesty, and a temple where the body of Alexander was deposited in a golden coffin. It were endless to enumerate the many palaces, temples, theatres, and other buildings with which Alexandria and its suburbs were adorned.” Edwards and Brown (1835), p. 57.

“This position [as: “the most important commercial city of the Mediterranean world”] Alexandria owed to its natural advantages. There were two magnificent harbours, the Great Harbour to the east and the Eunostus (Harbour of Fortunate Return), with a smaller, artificially excavated harbour at its rear, to the west. The harbours were separated by an artificial dyke, the Heptastadium, linking the mainland to the island of Pharos on which the famous lighthouse stood. These accommodated an immense volume of maritime trade with the Mediterranean world and also made Alexandria an important centre of the shipbuilding industry. To the south of the city, Lake Mareotis, which itself had a harbour on its northern shore, was linked by canals to the Canopic branch of the Nile delta, giving access to the river valley. Not only did this make available to Alexandria as much of Egypt’s domestic produce as she required – the large-scale transport of grain from the valley was, of course, absolutely essential to feed the city’s populace – but it also linked her through the important entrepôt of Coptos to the ports of the Red Sea coast and a network of trading relations with India and Arabia, which reached its apogee in the Roman period. Great though the volume of imports through this route was, it was outweighed, as Strabo noted, by the volume of exports which Alexandria despatched to the south.” Bowman (1996), pp. 218-219.

“But to form an estimate of the number of Jews that statedly resided in Alexandria, it may be sufficient to mention that about the year of Christ 67, while the quarrel was going on between that people and the Romans, which ended in the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple, the subversion of their ecclesiastical polity and their ruin as a nation, fifty thousand of them were put to death at one time in the city of Alexandria! It is said that at the time this terrible event took place, there were not less than a million of Jews dispersed through the whole province of Egypt, in which they had a vast number of synagogues, and oratories which were either demolished or consumed by fire, for refusing to set up the statues of the Roman emperor, Caius Caligula.” Edwards and Brown (1835), p. 58.

For a discussion of the various Chinese transcriptions of Alexandria see: Pelliot (1959), p. 29.

11.8. The city of Wudan 烏丹 [Wu-tan] = Tanis? I believe that Wudan, Egyptian Ta-an, or Tsàn, refers to the Egyptian city of Tanis, capital of the Eastern Nile Delta.

烏 K. 61a *•o / uo; EMC ?ɔ

丹 K. 150a *tân / tân; EMC tan

“The Ancient Egyptian name of that place was “D’n.t”, in egypto-speak rendered Djanet. I suppose it rather sounded like *Dja’ane, for the Greeks heard it as Tanis (-is Greek ending), but the Hebrews heard it as Zoan, and the Assyrians heard it as Saanu. Perhaps someone else can give you the Coptic, which would be the most relevant for you.” Email correspondence from Aayko Eyma, 24/12/98.

It appears from the Weilue that one could sail all the way from Zesan to the city of Wudan. Assuming this identification of Wudan and Tanis is correct, then reaching Tanis via the ancient Nile canal to the Red Sea was possible. The canal had been recently re-dredged by Trajan and Hadrian. For more details, see Appendix M.

11.9. This text appears to refer to crossing the Sebannitus and then the Canopis branches of the Nile. For details see Appendix M.

11.10. fayudadusan 凡有大都三. “There are, in all, three major cities.” I understand this text to mean that there are three major cities that you meet with on the journey from the Pelusic branch of the Nile to Alexandria. These would have been, at the time, Daphnae, Tanis and Alexandria. In the Chinese text accompanying the translation by Hirth (1885), p. 111, end of line 12, he has the character xi 郤 – ‘interval,’ ‘gap.’ but he doesn’t include this word in his translation – “There are three great divisions of the country [perhaps : three great cities].” It is clear that it must be mistaken for the commonly confused character, que 卻 = ‘now,’ ‘meanwhile,’ etc.
          In fact, the use of the character xi does not make sense here and it was obviously intended to be attached to the beginning of the next sentence, as is made clear in the punctuation of the New China Library 1975 Edition. The translation then reads smoothly, with the following sentence beginning: “Now (or, ‘meanwhile’), if you leave the city of Angu. . . . ” 
          Also, Hirth’s suggestion that du 都 might represent a division of the country cannot be supported. The character at this period had the meaning of a large walled town, city, or a provincial capital; although much later – during the Song and Qing dynasties – it sometimes had the meaning of a small territorial unit. See GR, No. 11668.

11.11. The territory called 海北 Haibei ‘North of the Sea’ here must refer to the lands between Babylonia and what is now Jordan and/or Syria. Refer to Appendix B, especially under the subheading: (b) Haibei 海北 ‘North of the Sea.’

11.12. This text seems to imply that there was a journey of more than a day from Alexandria along the coast before actually sailing for Rome. This gives a total time of seven or more days from Alexandria to Ostia. Six days would seem to be about right for the sailing time from the neighbourhood of Appollonia in Cyrene (west of Egypt) to Ostia, the port for Rome.
          The total sailing times between Alexandria and Puteoli, to the south of Rome, are given in The Times Atlas of World History (1978), p. 91, as “15-20 days (fastest 9 days)”.

“Egypt sent 150,000 tons of annual grain tribute to Rome in the 1^st – 3^rd centuries CE. Sailing to Puzzuoli or Ostia took a month or more, and the return voyage 10-20 days.” Baines and Málek (1984), p. 54.

However, these figures relate to the ordinary voyages of merchantmen. If the winds were right, a fast ship could make it from Italy to Alexandria in less than six days as Priscus of Panium (5^th century CE) reported – refer to Appendix B, subsection (a) Haixi 海西 – literally: ‘West of the Sea’ = Egypt.

11.13. The overall description of the Roman Empire is self-explanatory and quite accurate: “This country (the Roman Empire) has more than four hundred smaller cities and towns. It extends several thousand li in all directions.”

11.14. wangchi 王治 [wang-chih] = ‘the king’s seat of government’ must undoubtedly refer here to the city of Rome, which is situated on the Tiber River some 24 km (15 miles) inland from the Tyrrhenian Sea.

11.15. 松 song = pine trees, bai 柏 = cypress (a generic name for cypresses, thujas, etc), 槐 huai = Sophora japonica L., 梓 zi = catalpa (Catalpa ovata G. Don.), 竹 zhu = bamboo, 葦 wei = reeds, 楊 yang = poplars, 柳 liu = willows, 梧桐 wutong = the “Chinese parasol” or “phoenix” tree (Firmiana simplex = Sterculia platanifolia). See: Schafer (1963), p. 186.
          While the name, Wutong [Wu-t’ung], was used to denote other species of trees (especially outside of China), it is of interest to examine some of the significance this name would have had for the Chinese reader:

“The desert poplar (Populus diversifolia), which is also called the unequal-leaved poplar, bears two kinds of leaves at one time; those on the new growth are narrow and lancet-shaped like the willow, while those on the older branches are broad and tooth-edged. The Chinese name for this strange tree is wutung. Hardy as it is, and able to endure both cold and dryness, it is yet the very first tree to feel the touch of autumn, change colour and cast its leaves. For this reason the Chinese have chosen to make the wutung symbolic of sadness, and the eldest son of a family should lean on a staff cut from the wutung when he follows his father’s coffin in the funeral procession. The bark of the tree carries masses of spongy growth called “tears of the wutung,” doubtless because of this association with sorrow. These trees rise to a height of seventy-five feet, and the branches, meeting overhead, form dignified arched alleys. The patches of woodland are as symmetrical as though they had been planted by hand, and the edge is a clear-cut line with no straggling growth.” Cable and French (1943), p. 280.

“Near the camp we reached that night was a clump of wu-t’ung trees, the first I had seen closely, though we had passed a few in the dark on one of the marches through Kuai-tze Hu – their most easterly range, so far as I know it. The caravan men call them “false” wu-t’ung for some reason of their own. The true wu-t’ung is the Dryandra of the upper Yang-tze, the tree from which is obtained wood oil, one of the most valuable exports of Hankow.¹ The Dryandra may have been originally a sacred tree of the aborigines of the Yang-tze valley, judging from the legends with which the later-coming Chinese adorned it. They say that the first fall of its leaf is the undeniable beginning of autumn – a fitting symbolism for a holy tree. It is yet more venerable because it is the only tree on which the phoenix will alight when it visits the earth. I have never seen the true wu-t’ung, nor do I know how the “false” wu-t’ung got its name, since I have heard Chinese say that it has not much resemblance to the Dryandra; the caravan men explain very simply that it is false because no phoenixes ever perch on it. The masquerading wu-t’ung is the toghraq or wild poplar of the Tarim desert. It is found throughout the half-deserts and desert fringes of Chinese Turkestan and Zungaria, and also, I am told, in India. One of its peculiarities is that parasitic willow shoots are often found growing in the notches of old trees; another is the great variation in the form of the leaf. On the Edsin Gol the leaf is fairly uniform, but in the Tarim basin it is sometimes very nearly round, with slightly serrated edges, and sometimes almost as deeply indented as a maple leaf, The wood is of no use for any carpentry, and burns rather weakly without giving an intense heat. It is impregnated, apparently, with salts of the deserts where it grows. A plentiful sap or pitch oozes out of it when burning, which is used like soda or yeast to raise bread; the camel men call it “wu-t’ung soda.

¹I now find that, according to Giles (Dictionary), the wu-t’ung associated with the phoenix is not the Dryandra but Sterculia platanifolia, while the oil-producing tree also is not Dryandra but Aleurites cordata (t’ung-yu-sha).”

Lattimore (1929), pp. 195 and n. 1; 196.

11.16. sangcan 桑蠶 [sang-ts’an].

“This passage can hardly be translated as anything other than, “The customs of the inhabitants are the following: they practice agriculture and plant the five types of cereals; as for domestic animals they have horses, donkeys and camels; they cultivate the mulberry tree and raise silkworms.” But it is evident that Yu Huan, the author of the Weilue, may have come under the influence, unconsciously perhaps, of the more ancient texts which he compiled.” Translated from Chavannes (1907), p. 180, n. 1.

The term 桑蠶 sangcan [sang-ts’an] is not really as clear-cut as Chavannes states, and the text certainly does not state that they: “cultivate the mulberry tree and raise silkworms” – only that they raise sangcan. The term sangcan is listed by itself immediately after the word 駱驼 luoduo – the normal term for camels.
          On its own like this, sangcan may indeed have meant ‘silkworms,’ but this is not certain – and may not have been the intention here. In the entry under GR No. 9430 we find three definitions: 1. (Entomological) another name for the larvae of the Capricorn beetle, which were used as a medical material. 2. mulberries and silkworms. 3. To feed silkworms with mulberry leaves.
          Additionally, the similar-looking Black Mulberry (Morus nigra L.) tree was native to the Mediterranean region, and may be what is referred to here. They could well have been confused unless they were fruiting, when the large black fruits of the Black Mulberry would have clearly distinguished it from the White Mulberry (Morus alba L.), the leaves of which are used to raise the cultivated silkworm, as it bears white fruits. See the discussion in Hirth (1885), p. 256.

11.17. See the quotes in note 11.2 by Dubs (1957), pp. 2-3, and the translated quote from Saint-Denys (1876), pp. 268-269, in Appendix B, subsection (a) “Haixi 海西 – literally: ‘West of the Sea’ = Egypt.”
          The Shiji chapter 123 – written about 91 BCE – records that when the first envoys from China reached Anxi [Parthia]; “the king sent some of the eggs of the great birds which live in the region [ostriches], and skilled tricksters of Li-hsüan, to the Han court as gifts.” Dubs (1944), p. 277. See also this same event recorded in the Hou Hanshu, Chap. 96A, translated in CICA, p. 117-118.

11.18. This appears to be nothing more than a fabulous story told of an ideal country far-away and is reminiscent of many such stories told by early European travellers to distant lands.

11.19. For an account of these extravagant descriptions of the Roman Empire and its people, see note 11.1.

11.20. This sounds like a sober description of the Parthians’ desire to keep control of and raise taxes on the lucrative trade between China and the Roman Empire. The net result of this policy was, predictably, the development of alternative routes, particularly the route that headed north around the Aral and Caspian Seas to the country of the Alans who had contact with the Romans via Black Sea ports, and the long maritime route from southern Chinese territory (in what is now northern Vietnam) to East Africa and Egypt. Some of this maritime trade could have taken place through the intermediaries of the Roman trading stations or “factories” set up around the Indian coasts and at Oc Eo near the mouth of the Mekong.

11.21. This may well record Chinese surprise at the number of ordinary people who were literate in the Roman Empire. In China, at this time, it was only the privileged elite and government bureaucrats who were able to read and write. This was partly due to the fact that it is easier and quicker to learn an alphabetically-based phonetic form of writing. In addition, Jews (and some of the early Christian groups), insisted that every male learn how to read and write – so they could study the holy scriptures themselves in the original. There was the long Greek tradition of teaching men, in particular, to read and write and this heavily influenced the later Romans to value literacy as well:

“Literacy in Greece was never a craft skill, possessed only by experts, from the start writing was used for a great range of activities, from composing poetry to cursing enemies, from displaying laws to voting, from inscribing tombstones or dedications to writing shopping lists. To be completely illiterate was to be ignorant, uncultured: but our evidence shows that there existed all levels of skill in writing, spelling, and grammar: only a society in which literacy is widespread can offer such a range of evidence from semi-literacy to illiteracy. There is of course no sign that women were expected or encouraged to read, although many of them could. To be cautious, we may say that in a city like Athens well over half the male population could read and write, and that levels of literacy in the Greek cities of the classical and Hellenistic periods were higher that at any period in western culture before this century.” Boardman, Griffin and Murray (1986), pp. 227-228.

After the rise of the Roman Empire, it was common for Greek slaves to act as tutors to the sons of well-to-do Roman families.

11.22. Haibei 海北 [Hai-pei], literally: ‘North of the Sea,’ must refer to the lands between Babylonia and what is now Jordan and/or Syria. Refer to Appendix B for details.

11.23. This passage has caused some confusion to modern scholars. A ting 亭 [t'ing] in China was basically a shed or simple lodge for travellers to stop at, which I have called a ‘stage,’ and a zhi 置 [chih] was a ‘postal station’ or inn that could provide shelter, fresh horses, food and supplies.
          The Roman and Parthian systems of postal relays were further developments of the famous Achaemenid system initiated by Darius I circa 515 BCE. The road from Sardis to Susa was 2,475 km in length, and had 111 postal stations [i.e. on average, one every 4 parsangs, or about one every 22 km]. At normal rates of travel, the whole could be covered in 90 days (average speed = 27.5 km/day). However, by changing mounts and couriers, over 350 km could be covered in a day, and messages could be taken the whole length of the route, from Sardis to Susa, in just seven days. From: Ciolek (2000). See also: Dandamayev (1994), p. 52.
In fact, the Chinese, Parthians, and the Romans all had well-developed systems of postal stations and relays which were quite similar to each other:

“The voyager, having picked a conveyance or riding and pack animals, having loaded up and got under way, next faced the problem of where to stop for the night, and, if he was travelling with hired gear, where to find a change of animals and equipment. As it happened, his choices were often determined by the network of inns and hostels that belonged to the cursus publicus, the government post.
Rome’s cursus publicus was created by Augustus, but the idea of such a service was hardly original with him; it is an essential tool for any government that rules extended areas. The earliest examples we know of go back to the third millennium B.C., when the city-states of Mesopotamia first began to build miniature empires. . . . By the third century B.C., China’s Han dynasty and the super-central