Quote: (12-08-2018 09:40 PM)WalterBlack Wrote:
This is incredible - there was contact between ancients Greek and Chinese civilisations:
War of the Heavenly Horses
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The War of the Heavenly Horses was a military conflict fought between the forces of the Han Empire and the Kingdom of Dayuan in about 104–101 BC. The Emperor Wu of Han had received reports of the tall and powerful horses ("heavenly horses") in the possession of the Dayuan, which were of capital importance to fight the nomad Xiongnu. The refusal of the Dayuan to offer them enough horses along with a series of conflicts and mutual disrespect resulted in the death of the Chinese ambassador and the confiscation of the gold sent as payment for the horses.
In response, the Emperor sent out Li Guangli, the brother of his favorite concubine, with 6,000 horsemen and 20,000 infantry soldiers.[1] Li's army had to cross the Taklamakan Desert and his supplies soon ran out. After a gruesome march of over 1,000 miles he finally arrived to the country of Dayuan, but what remained of his army was exhausted and starving.[1] Li lost many men along the way in petty fights with local rulers. After a severe defeat at a place called Yucheng, Li concluded that he was not strong enough to take the enemy capital and therefore returned to Dunhuang about 102 BC.
Emperor Wu responded by giving Li Guangli a much larger army along with a huge number of oxen, donkeys and camels to carry supplies. With this force he had no difficulty reaching Khujand (called Ershi 貳師 by the Chinese), the Dayuan capital. He lost half his army during the march,[1] but after a 40-day siege the Chinese had broken through the outer wall and cut off the water supply. The nobles of Ershi killed their king and sent his head to Li Guangli, offering the Chinese all the horses they wanted. Li accepted the offer, appointed one of the nobles to be the new king and withdrew with a tribute of 3,000 horses.[1] On his return journey all the petty states accepted Chinese sovereignty. He reached the Jade Gate about 100 BC with 10,000 men and 1,000 horses.
Who are the Dayuan?
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Dayuan (Ta-yuan; Old Chinese reconstructed pronunciation: /dhaːts ʔwan/; Middle Chinese reconstructed pronunciation according to Edwin G. Pulleyblank: /daj ʔuan/; Chinese: 大宛; pinyin: Dàyuān; Wade–Giles: Ta4-yuan1; literally: "Great Ionians") was a country in Ferghana valley in Central Asia, described in the Chinese historical works of Records of the Grand Historian and the Book of Han. It is mentioned in the accounts of the famous Chinese explorer Zhang Qian in 130 BCE and the numerous embassies that followed him into Central Asia. The country of Dayuan is generally accepted as relating to the Ferghana Valley, and its Greek city Alexandria Eschate (modern Khujand, Tajikistan).
These Chinese accounts describe the Dayuan as urbanized dwellers with Caucasian features, living in walled cities and having "customs identical to those of the Greco-Bactrians", a Hellenistic kingdom that was ruling Bactria at that time in today's northern Afghanistan. The Dayuan are also described as manufacturers and great lovers of wine.[1]
The Dayuan were probably the descendants of the Greek colonists that were settled by Alexander the Great in Ferghana in 329 BCE (see Alexandria Eschate), and prospered within the Hellenistic realm of the Seleucids and Greco-Bactrians, until they were isolated by the migrations of the Yuezhi around 160 BCE. It appears that the name "Yuan" was simply a transliteration of Sanskrit Yavana or Pali Yona, used throughout antiquity in Asia to designate Greeks ("Ionians"), so that Dayuan would mean "Great Ionians".
Characters for Dayuan, associating the character for "Great", and a character originally depicting two persons seated under one roof, but used for its sound value here. It is pronounced "yuan" instead of the more usual "wan".
The interaction between the Dayuan and the Chinese is historically crucial, since it represents one of the first major contacts between an urbanized Western civilization and the Chinese civilization, opening the way to the formation of the Silk Road that was to link the East and the West in material and cultural exchange from the 1st century BCE to the 15th century.
Yup and this relates to my earlier post (about the silk road) on why Europeans dominated the world.