Authors: Christopher I. Beckwith
Tags: #History, #General, #Asia, #Europe, #Eastern, #Central Asia
Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia From the Bronze Age to the Present (11 page)
80
Minorsky (1942: 18).
81
However, the
early
Romans clearly did have the comitatus, which they called the Celeres, described as a company of 300 mounted warriors who accompanied Romulus, the first Roman king, at all times. See above.
82
See
chapter 6
. He is said to have been an orphan, so his ethnicity is based on that of his adoptive parents. His actual ethnic background is thus unknown.
83
On the foreign name of An Lu-shan’s comitatus and Central Eurasian
châkar
s in China, see endnote 25.
84
On the warlike ethos of the Sogdians, especially the nobility, see Grenet (2005).
85
The
Secret History of the Mongols,
though not a history per se, is a rich source for the dynamics of Central Eurasians bound to each other by such oaths, of which there seem to have been several different kinds.
86
There are also admonitions by Central Eurasian councillors (such as Toñukuk, in the Old Turkic inscriptions), who argue against the wearing of silk—indicating that the Türk were wearing it. See Allsen (1997) for examples and references.
87
Blockley (1985: 115).
88
These were members of the
kesig
(or
kesigten)
‘bodyguard’, which made up the bulk of the full comitatus. The number had grown from Chinggis Khan’s time, and continued to grow.
89
Latham (1958: 138, 140–141); cf. Allsen (1997: 19–20).
90
Allsen (1997: 16–26) gives many detailed, colorful examples.
91
For historiographical problems concerning the quality and price of Turk horses sold to the Chinese, see endnote
26
.
92
See Beckwith (1991); cf. Jagchid and Symons (1989), whose discussion of this topic is unfortunately marred by many mistakes of fact and interpretation.
93
Hayashi (1984).
94
For details on the Mongols’ acquisition, production, and use of silks, especially brocades, and other precious fabrics, see Allsen (1997), whose discussion presents ample evidence that the Mongols did not use the putative “robbery” approach commonly ascribed to them and other Central Eurasians but employed, more or less exclusively, taxation and trade, and strongly encouraged the latter. see endnote
27
and the epilogue for further discussion.
95
Allsen (1997: 104; cf. 103).
96
In Western Europe the comitatus gradually disappeared as the Germanic peoples became Romanized (or “Europeanized”). On the Scandinavian development, see Lindow (1976). On the adoption of the Visigothic comitatus by the early Muslims of Spain, see Beckwith (1984a: 40–41 n. 52).
97
Tabarî ii: 170; Beckwith (1984a: 36).
98
Beckwith (1984a: 36).
99
Shaban (1970: 75).
100
HTS
221b: 6244.
101
HYC
1: 871c.
102
TFYK
964: 20r; Chavannes (1903: 147); cf. Beckwith (1984a: 37 and nn. 34 and 39).
103
Tabarî ii: 1765; cf. Beckwith (1984a: 38), q.v. for further examples.
104
Nawbahâr
is the Persianized form of Sanskrit
Nava Vihâra
‘the new
vihâra’.
For scholarship on the plan, see endnote
28
.
105
See de la Vaissière (2005a: 141).
106
See Beckwith (1984a: 40–41 n. 52) for details and references.
107
See de la Vaissière (2005b) and Beckwith (1984a). The Islamicized comitatus has been nearly universally misunderstood by Western scholars, who refer to it as a “slave soldier” system and argue that it is an “Arab” institution. For criticism of this mistaken view, see Beckwith (1984a) and de la Vaissière (2005b, 2005c, 2007).
108
Lest it be thought that booty acquisition was an exclusively Central Eurasian practice, as many appear to believe, it must be pointed out that the accounts of, for example, Chinese and Arab victories over Central Eurasian peoples nearly always mention both the number of people decapitated (generally only the leaders were taken captive, to be pardoned or executed later) but also valuables captured, such as suits of armor and, especially, cattle, horses, sheep, and so on, which in some cases are said to have numbered more than a million head. On the scholarly treatment of the information on this, see endnote
29
.
109
When Chinese or Romans demanded payment from other nations it is called “tribute” or “taxation” by most historians, but when Central Eurasians demanded it, it is called “extortion.”
110
See Noonan (1997) on the Khazar economy.
111
In the east much of the best pastureland had been captured by Chinese invasions beginning in the Warring States period. The territory was held by Chinese fortresses and walls built right through the steppe, including the Great Wall, which mainly connected earlier walls together and strengthened them. These walls were not built to protect the Chinese from the Central Eurasians but to hold Central Eurasian territory conquered by the Chinese (Di Cosmo 2002a: 149–158). That is, they were offensive works, not defensive ones. The purpose of the nomadic raids or warfare against the Chinese was undoubtedly mainly to remove the Chinese from the seized pastureland and restore it to nomadic control, as indicated by the fact that the nomads almost exclusively took animals and people as booty on these raids (cf. Hayashi 1984). The theories ultimately based on the idea of the Chinese as victims of Central Eurasian aggression, and the nomads as poverty-stricken barbarians greedy for Chinese silks and other products, are not only unsupported by the Chinese historical sources, they are directly contradicted by them, as well as by archaeology. The same applies all along the frontier between Central Eurasia and the periphery of Eurasia, from east to west. See further in the epilogue.
1
The Chariot Warriors
Harness the red mares to the chariot!
Harness to the chariots the ruddy ones!
Harness the two fast yellow ones to the chariot pole,
fasten the best at pulling to the pole, to draw it.
And was this thundering red charger
put here just to be admired?
Don’t let him cause you any delay, O Maruts
in your chariots! Spur him on!
—From the
Rig Veda
1
The First Central Eurasians
The Central Eurasian Culture Complex, which dominated much of Eurasia for nearly four millennia, developed among a people known only from historical linguistics: the Proto-Indo-Europeans. Because the precise location of their homeland is not known for certain, scholars working in various areas of cultural history have attempted to develop a model of the Indo-European homeland and of Indo-European culture based on information derived from historical linguistics. The words shared by the languages and cultures of Indo-European peoples in distant areas of Eurasia constitute evidence that the things they refer to are the shared inheritance of their Proto-Indo-European ancestors. Based on words referring to flora, fauna, and other things, as well as on archaeology and historical sources, it has been concluded that the Proto-Indo-European homeland was in Central Eurasia, specifically in the mixed steppe-forest zone between the southern Ural Mountains, the North Caucasus, and the Black Sea.
2
About four thousand years ago Indo-European-speaking people began migrating from that homeland. They spread across most of the Eurasian continent during the second millennium
BC
and developed into the historically attested Indo-European peoples by dominating and mixing with the native peoples of the lands into which they migrated.
Their migration out of Central Eurasia proper appears to have taken place in three distinct stages. The initial movement or first wave occurred at the very end of the third millennium, and the third wave late in the second millennium or beginning of the first millennium
BC
, but the most important was the second wave, around the seventeenth century
BC
, in which Indo-European-speaking people established themselves in parts of Europe, the Near East, India, and China, as well as within Central Eurasia itself. The migrations were not organized and consisted not of mass movements of people but of individual clan groups or, perhaps more likely, warrior bands. They seem first to have fought for their neighbors as mercenaries and only later took over. The Indo-Europeans spoke more or less the same language, but in settling in their new homes they took local wives who spoke non-Indo-European languages; within a generation or two the local creoles they developed became new Indo-European daughter languages.
By the beginning of the first millennium
BC
much of Eurasia had already been Indo-Europeanized, and most of the rest of it had come under very heavy Indo-European cultural and linguistic influence. This millennium-long movement constitutes the First Central Eurasian Conquest of Eurasia.
The Indo-European Diaspora
Proto-Indo-European,
3
when still a unified language, was necessarily spoken in a small region with few or no significant dialect differences.
4
There seems to be no linguistically acceptable reason to posit the breakup of the language any earlier than shortly before the first Indo-European daughter languages and their speakers are attested in the historical record about four thousand years ago. The traditional idea, still generally believed, has the breakup occurring due to glacially slow internal change over time from a unity some six or seven millennia ago:
5
“In view of the great divergence among the languages of our earliest materials, we can scarcely place the community of speakers of proto-Indo-European later than the early part of the fourth millennium [
BC
].”
6
This would make Indo-European typologically unique among all the many thousands of known languages in the world. The idea must be rejected. By contrast, the view of the early Indo-Europeanists, who suggested a period around four millennia ago,
7
is supported by the available data, including typology, and also corresponds to the younger end of the dating ranges suggested by several proposals of IndoEurope anist scholars.
8
At the time of the Indo-Europeans’ departure from their original homeland, it seems that there were still only minor dialect differences among the different tribal groups.
9
Their diaspora, or migrations away from the vicinity of their Central Eurasian homeland, can to some extent be reconstructed on the basis of the linguistic and cultural features they acquired along the way, also taking into account legendary material, such as the Old Indic and Old Iranian textual references to the conquest of foreign peoples and each other, as well as early historical data from the ancient Near East and the typology of ethnolinguistic change in Central Eurasia and vicinity in historically known periods. The following reconstruction represents an attempt to reconcile the linguistic facts with other data.
10
