Silk, Slaves, and Stupas - Susan Whitfield

Скачать книгу

      The Zhao was the last kingdom of what is now known as the Warring States period (ca. 475–221 BC) to succumb to the army of the Qin, who declared a united empire of China in 221 BC. Chinese histories tell how around 209 BC, following the Qin’s successful expansion into the northern and western Ordos, the various pastoralist tribes on the borders of China were united under a leader called Modu; the histories refer to these tribes as the Xiongnu.22 Under Modu’s alliance they expanded, bringing other tribes to the north—in what is now Mongolia—into their confederation. They moved westwards toward the Tarim, pushing out the peoples whom the Chinese called the Yuezhi and asserting their rule in some of the oasis kingdoms of the Tarim.23 To the south they had easy victories over the forces of the newly founded Chinese Han dynasty (206 BC–AD 220), expelling them from territories the Qin had previously taken.24 The Han responded with an envoy sent to broker a peace treaty. Like many such treaties from this time onwards between the Chinese and their neighbors, this included a marriage alliance (heqin) between a Chinese princess and the foreign ruler.25 Both sides accepted the equal status of their respective empires and a border in part demarcated by the walls built by the Han and their predecessors; further, the Chinese agreed to provide the alliance with regular gifts of goods, including silk and grain. The Chinese historians record the words of the Xiongnu ruler: “According to former treaties Han emperors always sent a princess, provided agreed quantities of silks, coarse silk wadding and foodstuffs, thus establishing harmony and a close relationship [i.e., heqin]. For our part, we refrained from making trouble on the border.”26 Hyun Jin Kim characterizes this as Han China becoming a tributary state of the Xiongnu alliance.27

      The balance turned again with the Han emperor Wu, who embarked on a successful expansion policy northeastward into what is now Korea, westward into the Tarim basin, and southward to defeat the Nan Yue kingdom (see chapter 2). His plan to defeat the Xiongnu alliance was to find allies among the Yuezhi—themselves previously displaced from the Tarim according to the Chinese histories. The strategy was that the Yuezhi would attack from the west, while Chinese forces would attack from the southeast. However, the envoy sent to negotiate this, Zhang Qian, was singularly unsuccessful (although, having been captured by a member of the Xiongnu alliance on his way out and having been resident there with a local wife, he must have gained very useful intelligence).28 The Han went ahead anyway, and although they were successful the battles were costly and ultimately of limited value, as it was not possible to hold onto the steppe land. This was accepted by both sides in 54/3 BC in another peace treaty between one ruler of the now-divided Xiongnu and the Chinese, precipitated by the breakdown in the Xiongnu alliance. The positions of power were now reversed, with the southern Xiongnu ruler accepting the lower status. Yuri Pines argues that this encounter, because of the pastoralists’ strength and refusal to accept the settled way of life in China, “became the single most significant event in the political, cultural and ethnic history of the Chinese.”29

      Across Eurasia and during the Silk Road period, this encounter was by no means unique to the Xiongnu and the Chinese. Nor was there a single model of interaction. The nature of the relationships was complex, although often simplified by the historians of the settled into one of dichotomy and conflict. The Romans themselves struggled with incursions along their borders and, like the Chinese, built a network of defensive walls and forts.30 In Greek histories the northern equestrian nomads were the archetype of the “other.” Labeled as Scythians, their image as other continued to be perpetuated from Herodotus into Byzantine histories.31 Further east, the Persian Achaemenids (550–330 BC) were to be defeated by a group of pastoralists moving from their northeast who established the Parthian Empire (247 BC–AD 224). The Parthians successfully adopted a new settled lifestyle while retaining their military prowess, threatening even the borders of Rome.32

      So are these earrings Xiongnu or Chinese, or does it even make sense to try to label them in this way? To answer this, we need to explore some of the complexity hidden by the labels Xiongnu and Chinese and the aspects of their relationship that are revealed by the tombs—at Xigoupan—in which the earrings were found.

      THE XIGOUPAN TOMBS

      Xigoupan lies at the northeastern edge of the Ordos, where the Yellow River starts to turn south. It is roughly at the same latitude as Beijing to its east.33 The tombs were excavated in 1979. Unfortunately, the archaeological reports are not detailed, and drawings of most of the graves and details of the inventory are missing. The tombs are dispersed, suggesting they might belong to different burial grounds and have widely varying dates. The earliest tombs excavated here date to around 300 BC or possibly earlier, but later tombs and a settlement have also been discovered that date from the second century BC, the period of the Xiongnu confederation.34 The archaeologists date to the second century nine of the tombs, four of which have not been robbed.35 Among these, tomb M4 stands out because of the richness of its grave goods. The earrings are associated with this tomb.

      M4 lies in the south of the site less than a kilometer away from a site possibly identified as a settlement.36 Tomb drawings are missing, but it is described as a pit burial with a single supine female corpse with her head to the northeast. Gold objects were the most plentiful among the grave goods, but goods also included ornaments made of silver, bronze, jade, stone, and glass, among them necklaces of amber, agate, crystal, and lapis; dancers, tigers, and dragons fashioned from stone; bronze three-winged arrowheads; and bronze horses. The earrings themselves form part of a more elaborate head decoration placed on the head of the corpse (figure 1).37

images

      The earrings were made from two ovoid openwork carved jade plaques.38 The plaques are not mirror images of each other, but both show sinuous creatures, one with its head in profile and the other face on (figure 2).39 They are enclosed within a thin gold border decorated with granulation. A loop on the top attaches them to gold plaques, also with granulation around their borders and with inlaid stone moose. Sets of inlaid gold squares joined with fine chains hang to either side. Most of the inlays are lost, but those that have been found include mother-of-pearl, quartz, agate, amber, and glass.40

images

      FIGURE 2. The designs on the jade plaques from which the steppe earrings were made. After A. Kessler (1993: 62, fig. 35).

      The gold for the inlaid stones and the moose has been hammered into shape and decorated with beads of gold. Hammering is the simplest method of working gold and is found in both steppe and settled populations well before this time. Granulation—whereby beads of gold are joined onto a surface for decoration—is a more developed technique but is also found along the steppe and in the bordering settled cultures, such as those of the Greeks and the Chinese, well before this period.41 Zhixin Sun has suggested a possible route into China through maritime links with South Asia, based on gold decorative items with granulation found in the tomb of King Zhao Mo (r. 137–122 BC) of Nan Yue, a kingdom on the coast of what is now southern China and northern Vietnam.42 There is evidence of Nan Yue’s maritime links with South Asia—and further west (see chapter 2). However, granulation was used in ancient cultures of Egypt and Mesopotamia and is also found on the steppe before this period, so there are many possible routes of diffusion.43

      M2, like M4, contained gold and silver objects, including a belt plaque (see figure 3) and remains of a horse, a sheep, and a dog skull. The other second-century tombs at the site are not so richly endowed. Their grave goods consist of weapons, tools, and horse tack and decorations, along with animal bones. The presence of surface finds and agricultural implements might suggest a settlement and thus indicate a seminomadic society that also practiced agriculture. The richness of

Скачать книгу