Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia From the Bronze Age to the Present (89 page)

64.
It is often stated that there are so few books in Middle Persian or in any Persian literary language before New Persian because the Arabs destroyed the “great library of Ctesiphon.” In fact, so few books in early Persian have survived because the Persians simply wrote few books, at least in Persian, before they adopted Islam and got the habit of writing from the Arabs. When the Arab Empire began dissolving in the early ninth century, a highly Arabicized literary language, New Persian, developed. The Persians thenceforth wrote copiously, like the Arabs. The story seems to have arisen to explain the paucity of books in Middle Persian by contrast with the great number in Arabic and, eventually, New Persian. This myth belongs on the dustheap of history along with the one that claims the Arabs destroyed the great library of Alexandria, which actually had disappeared centuries before the Arab conquest.

65.
The Western and Southern subregions of Central Asia were conquered by Persian empires several times in recorded history, but those regions were never ruled directly by them for long. The local peoples were not Persians by culture or language. In fact, they spoke entirely different languages (Bactrian, Sogdian, and so on). Although those languages are related to Persian in the Iranian family of languages, they belong to a different branch of the family. Much of the confusion is due to the name
Iranian,
which, however, has nothing specifically to do with modern Iran (formerly Persia); it is a scholarly term for the language family and the peoples who spoke the languages. Like the Persians, the Arabs quickly overran Western and Southern Central Asia, but they too never controlled it firmly, and they lost what control they did have rather early. The Chinese similarly had trouble establishing firm control over the Eastern subregion of Central Asia.

66.
Hsüan Tsang spent his month at the Nawbahâr of Balkh studying the
Mah
ā
vibhāṣaśāstra,
an important Sarvastivadin text
(TSFC
2: 33) that is “an encyclopedia of Buddhist philosophy; in it opinions of several ancient and contemporary philosophies of different schools are carefully registered and discussed” (Ch’en 1992: 95 n. 9). Fortunately, he brought a copy back to China and translated it; subsequently it was lost in all other languages. Some good work has recently been done on the text and others related to it (Takeda and Cox forthcoming; Willemen et al. 1998).

67.
The civil war broke out after the murder of the third caliph of the new Arab Empire, ‘Uthmân (r. 644–656). Although the Prophet Muḥammad’s cousin ‘Alî (r. 656–661) succeeded, continuing discontent over the policies of ‘Uthmân and the desire for revenge by Mu’âwiya, the governor of Syria, who was ‘Uthmân’s cousin, led the realm into civil war. ‘Alî’s eldest son, al-Ḥasan, succeeded, but quickly abdicated in favor of Mu’âwiya. The uprisings in Khurasan actually broke out shortly after the first Arab conquests there, and despite several expeditions to put them down, the Arabs had little success there until after the civil war (Shaban 1970: 26–27).

68.
The title Spurgyal has usually been understood to mean ‘king of Spu’ (Beckwith 1993). Yet it is probably a mistranslation, and in truth we do not know what it means, though it does seem to be
possible
that Spu was the early dynastic name of Tibet, and the title does occur in imperial period texts. Recently some Tibetans and Tibetologists have begun using the title ‘Spurgyal’ to mean ‘Tibetan Empire’. This seems to be ahistorical, and is actually contradicted by bilingual (Old Tibetan and Chinese) sources, which refer to the country as
Bod chen
‘Great Tibet’, precisely parallel to (and undoubtedly modeled on) Chinese usage, for example,
Ta T’ang
‘Great T’ang’. The problem calls for scholarly attention.

69.
It continues to be stated, based on postimperial Tibetan accounts, that the princess, Wen-ch’eng kung-chu (written
Mun ca
η
ko
η
co
in the
Old Tibetan Annals),
was to be married to Emperor Khri Srong Rtsan (Khri Srong Brtsan, alias Srong Btsan Sgampo) himself. This is disproved by the account at the beginning of the
Old Tibetan Annals
as well as by the history of the other marriage treaty concluded with China in the eighth century. There are two possibilities. The princess was married to Gung Srong Gung Brtsan, the crown prince, who became emperor and reigned for six years, but then died. Khri Srong Rtsan then assumed the throne again and, following the Central Eurasian custom of levirate, took the Chinese princess as one of his consorts before he himself passed away in 649–650. This view is supported by the fragmentary beginning of the
Old Tibetan Annals,
which explicitly says that Khri Srong Rtsan “cohabited with her for three years” before he died. However, the same text refers twice to the emperor as the
btsanpo gcen
‘the emperor, the elder brother’, alongside his
gcung
‘[imperial] younger brother’, Btsan Srong. Although it is possible that Gung Srong Gung Brtsan was mentioned in the now lost portion, on the basis of what remains it seems more likely that he was not. That would leave the younger brother Btsan Srong as the probable groom. The
Old Tibetan Chronicle
refers to the same kind of dual rulership under Khri Srong Rtsan’s father, and the same situation appears to have obtained again later in the early eighth century, when the T’ang treaty princess Chin-ch’eng kung-chu was evidently intended for the ruler now known only as
btsanpo gcen lha
‘the emperor, the elder brother Lha’; but, in any case, she was clearly not intended for Khri Lde Gtsug Brtsan (’Mes Ag-tshoms’), because negotiations for her had begun long before he was a possible candidate; see Beckwith (1993: 69–70). In view of the widespread practice of dual kingship elsewhere in Central Eurasia, this topic deserves further investigation.

70.
The adoption of the Latin title
imperator
‘emperor’ by the Franks on Christmas Day in 800 would seem to be the real source of their annoyance with the pope that comes through in Frankish historical sources. The Franks already had two distinctive terms of their own for their empire’s supreme ruler, Latin
rex
and the Frankish equivalent of English
king.
Both were clearly distinguished from the neighboring Byzantine and Arab imperial titles, while by Charlemagne’s time the title
imperator
was no longer exclusively “imperial.” The ruler of the smaller realm of the Avars retained the title
kaghan
‘emperor’ from their earlier history in the Eastern Steppe, but their state was conquered by Charlemagne’s armies in 791.

71.
The Türk royal clan is named ‘A
Arsilas in Menander (Blockley 1985: 172–173). In Chinese sources the name is given as
, read A-shih-na in Mandarin, from a Middle Chinese dialect pronunciation *Asinas evidently representing a foreign *Aršinas ~ *Aršilas. The final *s, which became the “departing tone” in standard Middle Chinese, is known from other early transcriptions to have existed into the early Middle Chinese period (Pulleyblank 1984); the
n
of the modern Chinese pronunciation was pronounced as
n
,
l,
or
d
in the same period. Greek script does not have these particular ambiguities, but is instead ambiguous about
s
and
ś,
which are distinguished by the Chinese transcription. The Chinese transcription and Menander’s Greek transcription thus agree very well; the underlying form was *Aršilas. Though the etymology of the name remains unknown, it cannot be connected, as some would wish (see endnote
72
), with the Old Turkic epithet
kök
‘sky-blue’ in the inscriptions, which surely refers to the blue sky: Heaven, abode of the god of Heaven, Tängri, from whom the Türk rulers claimed to be descended. The inscriptions say (translation by Sinor 1990a: 297), “When high above the blue sky and down below the brown earth had been created, betwixt the two were created the sons of men.” The sky god, Tängri, and the earth goddess, Umay, are clearly what the writers had in mind. It is thus probable that
Kök Türk
means ‘the Heavenly Blue Turks’, as has long been believed by scholars. Although de la Vaissière (2007: 199–200) claims “on sait que le nom du clan royal turc est transcript en sogdien
‘
š
n’s
… c’est-a-dire très exactement Ashinās,” no such form actually occurs in the two inscriptions in which it has been said to occur, as shown in Beckwith (2005b). He ignores the Greek transcription and most of my discussion of the name of the royal clan of the Turks in an appendix entitled “On the Royal Clan of the Turks” (Beckwith 1987a/1993: 206–208), saying only, “Ce n’est pas un titre—
pace
Beckwith—mais un nom de clan,” the latter evidently a reference to a Tokharian title I give there, suggesting it is “perhaps the source” of the Turkic clan name.

72.
Klyashtornyi (1994: 445–448) and others have argued that the name is Khotanese āṣṣeina ‘blue’ (cf. Rastorgueva and Edel’man 2000, I: 285) or Tokharian
â
ś
na,
and corresponds to Old Turkic
kök
‘blue’, which has traditionally been thought to be used as an epithet in the name
Kök Türk
‘the Blue Türk’ in the Old Turkic imperial inscriptions from the Orkhon. Although the idea of Klyashtornyi et al. has gained some acceptance among Turkologists, there are insuperable problems with it. Identifying
kök
with A-shih-na ignores the fact that kök, as an adjective, must modify
türk
(those who say there is no adjective class in Turkic ignore syntax rules, but they cannot be ignored), whereas the name of the imperial clan certainly must be a noun. Using
kök
‘blue’
as a noun
would require
Kök Türk
to mean ‘The Blue(s) and the Türk(s)’ or the like, which makes no sense in the context of the inscriptions or Turkic history. The idea of equating A-shih-na and
kök
is based ultimately on the modern Mandarin reading A-shih-na and ignores the fact that the name was transcribed a millennium and a half ago in the Middle Chinese period, when it was pronounced quite differently. It also requires ignoring the very clear Greek transcription, which agrees with the Middle Chinese transcription; the resulting form Aršilas cannot be reconciled with the Khotanese word for ‘blue’. The idea additionally ignores the name of the collateral aristocratic clan of Toñukuk, A-shih-te, though any etymology must explain both names. Claims to have found the name A-shih-na in Old Turkic or Sogdian texts are completely unfounded, as shown in Beckwith (2005b). Finally, attempts to identify Arsilas with phonetically similar names noted in Turkic, Arabic, or other sources should also be viewed with great skepticism. The name is phonologically very alien to Turkic, as are most other early Turkic names. “Of the fifty odd names given to Türk rulers in Chinese sources, only a handful have Turkic equivalents and even fewer are genuinely Turkic” (Sinor 1990a: 290). The trouble the Turks must have had pronouncing the name Aršilas very likely accounts for the development of the numerous names similar to it attested in later Turkic history, many of which also seem to have been influenced by convergence with various foreign words and names; see Beckwith (1993: 206–208).

73.
The sources relating to the rebellion of 755 in the Tibetan Empire are mostly late and full of misunderstandings of Tibetan imperial history, but they reflect something that seems to lie under the surface in the official
Old Tibetan Annals.
The consorts of the assassinated emperor had included the Chinese princess of Chin-ch’eng, who was long dead by the time of the rebellion. Among his grandfather’s imperial consorts was a Western Turkic princess of *Arśilas blood known only by her Old Turkic title
khatun
(i.e.,
qatun)
‘queen’. The emperor had succeeded to the throne as a child with the help of Khrimalod, who was probably responsible for the overthrow of the emperor known only as the “elder brother”
btsanpo
Lha. For more on the rebellion, see Beckwith (1983).

74. It is often remarked that this or that teacher or translator went to Tibet from one or another foreign country. Though this certainly did happen, in most cases the individuals in question seem to have been living at the time within the boundaries of the Tibetan Empire, which had expanded to include their homes. The famous teacher Padmasambhava, who is largely (if not wholly) legendary, would thus have gone to Central Tibet from Udyâna, which was then a tributary state of the Tibetan Empire. On the putative transmission of Central Asian or
Tazig
(’Arab’) Buddhism to the former Zhangzhung area of western Tibet, where it later acquired the name
Bon
(a possible scenario that seems to be ahistorical), see Beckwith (forthcoming-c). If the latter event was not merely possible but actually historical, it would surely have happened in the same way—that is, while the Tibetans were a power in the area of eastern Tokhâristân (the area of modern eastern Afghanistan, southern Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan), which was a thoroughly Buddhist country at the time.