A Chinese expediton acorss the Pamirs and Hindukush

·期刊原文
A CHINESE EXPEDITION ACROSS THE PAMIRS AND HINDUKUSH, A.D.747.(1)

BY SIR AUREL STEIN, K.C.I.E.

Indian Antiquary

1923.05-07

pp.98--103,139--145,173--177

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p.98

AT the beginning of my second Central Asian
journey (1906--08), and again at that of the third
(1913--16),I had the good fortune to visit ground in
the high snowy range of the Hindukush which, however
inaccessible and remote it may seem from the scenes
of the great historical dramas of Asia, was yet in
the eighth century A.D. destined to witness events
closely bound up with a struggle of momentous bearing
for vast areas of the continent.I mean the glacier
pass of the Darkot (15,400 feet above sea-level) and
the high valleys to the north and south of it,
through which leads an ancient route connecting the
Pamirs and the uppermost headwaters of the Oxus with
the Dard territories on the Indus, and thus with the
north-west marches of India.(2)

The events referred to arose from the prolonged
conflict with the Arabs in the west and the rising
power of the Tibetans in the south, into which the
Chinese empire under the T'ang dynasty was brought by
its policy of Central Asian expansion. Our knowledge
of the memorable expedition of which I propose to
treat here, and of the historical developments
leading up to it, is derived wholly from the official
Chinese records contained in the Annals of the T'ang
dynasty. They were first rendered generally
accessible by the extracts which M. Chavannes, the
lamented great Sinologrue, published in his
invaluable 'Documents sur les Turcs occidentaux.'(3)

----------------------------
1 Reprinted from the Geographical Journal for
February, 1922.
2 The accompanying sketch-map 1 is intended to
illustrate the general features of the mountain
territories between the western T'ien-shan and the
Indus which were affected by the political
developments and military operations discussed
in this paper.
Sketch-map 2 reproduces essential topographical
details of that portion of the ground between tile
uppermost Oxua and Gilgit river valleys which
witnessed the chief exploits of the Chinese
expedition of A.D. 747 into the Hindukush region.
It has been prepared from Northern Transfrontier
Sheet No. 2 S. W. of the Survey of India, scale 4
miles to 1 inch.
For convenient reference regarding the general
topography of this mountain region may be recommended
also sheet No. 42 of the 1: 1,000,000 map of Asia
published by the Survey of India (Calcutta, 1019).
3 Documents sur les (Turcs) occidentaux, rocueillis
et comment par Edouard Chavannes, Membre de
l'Institut, etc., published by the Imperial
Academy of Sciences of St. Petersburg, 1903, see
in particular pp. 148-154.

p.99
In order to understand fully the details of the
remarkable exploit, which brought a Chinese army
right across the high inhospitable plateaux of the
Pamirs to the uppermost Oxus valley, and thence
across the ice-covered Darkot down to the valleys of
Yasin and Gilgit draining into the Indus, it is
necessary to pay the closest regard to the topography
of that difficult ground. Modern developments arising
from the Central Asian interests of two great Asiatic
powers, the British and Russian empires, have since
the eighties of the last century helped greatly to
add to our knowledge of the regions comprised in, or
adjacent to, the great mountain massif in the centre
of Asia, which classical geography designated by the
vague but convenient name of Imaos. But much of the
detailed topographical information is not as yet
generally accessible to students. Even more than
elsewhere, personal familiarity with the ground in
its topographical and antiquarian aspects seems here
needed for a full comprehension of historical details.

This local knowledge I was privileged to acquire
in the course of the two Central Asian expeditions
already referred to, and accordingly I have taken
occasion to elucidate the facts connected with that
memorable Chinese exploit in Serindia, thedetailed
report on my second journey, soon to be issused from
the Oxford University Press.(4) The bulk and largely
archa eological contents of this work may prevent
that account from attracting the attention of the
geographical student. Hence, with the kind permission
of the Delegates of the Oxford University Press,
I avail myself of the opportunity to present here
[Geographical Journal] the main results of my researches.

Some preliminary remarks seem needed to make
clear the political and military situation which
prevailed in Central Asia during the first half of
the eighth century A.D., and which accounted for the
enterprise to be discussed here.(5) After a long and
difficult struggle the Chinese under the great T'ang
emperors T'ai-tsung (A.D. 627-650) and Kao-tsung
(A.D.650-684) succceded in vanquishing, first the
Northern Turks (A.D. 630), and after a short interval
also the Western Turks. They were the principal
branches of that great Turkish nation which since its
victory over the Juan-juan (Avars) and the Hoa, or
Hephthtalites, about the middle of the seventh
century, had made itself master of inner Asia. By
A.D. 659 the Chinese had regained political
predominance, and for the most part also military
control, over the great Central Asian territories
roughly corresponding to what is now known as Chinese
Turkestan, after having lost them for about four
centuries.(6)

This renewed effort at Central Asian expansion,
like that first made by the great Hen emperor Wu-ti
(140-56 B.C.) , had for its object partly the
protection of north-western China from nomadic
inroads and partly the control of the great Central
Asian trade route passing through the Tarim basin.
Stretching from east to west between the great
mountain ranges of the T'ien-shan in the north and
the K'un-lun in the south, the Tarim basin is filled
for the most part by huge drift-sand deserts. Yet it
was destined by nature to serve as the main overland
line for the trade intercourse between the Far East
and Western Asia, and recent archaeological
explorations have abundantly proved its great
importance generally for the interchange of
civilizations between China, India, Iran, and the
classical West.

During Han times, when China's great export trade
of silk had first begun about 110 B.C. to find its
way westwards through the strings of oases scattered
along the foot of

---------------------------
4. The work has appeared since the above was written.
5. For a masterly exposition from Chinese and Western
sources of all historical facts here briefiy
summed up, see M. Chavannes' Essai sur l'histoire
des Tou-hiue occidentaux, forming the concluding
portion of his Documents sur les Turcs occidentaux,
pp. 217-303.
6. Cf. Chavannes, Turcs occidentaux, pp. 266 sqq.

p.100
the T'ien-shan and K'un-lun, the Chinese hold
upon the "Western Kingdoms" with their settled and
highly civilized populations had been threatened
mainly by inroads of the Huns and other nomadic
tribes from the north. After the reconquest under the
Emperor Kao-tsung the situation was essentially
different. The danger from the nomadic north had
lessened. Troubles with the medley of Turkish tribes
left in possession of the wide grazing areas beyond
the T'ien-shan never ceased. Yet the Chinese
administration by a well organized system of
garrisons, and still more by diplomatic skill, was
well able to hold them in check. But additional and
greater dangers had soon to be faced from other
sides. The claim to the succession of the whole vast
dominion of the Western Turks was drawing the
administration of the Chinese protectorate,
established in the Tarim basin and known as the "Four
Garrisons," into constant attempts to assert effective
authority also to the west of the great meridional range,
the ancient Imaos,in the regions comprising what is now
Russian and Afghan Turkestan.(7)

Considering the vast distances separating these
regions from China proper and the formidable
difficulties offered by the intervening great deserts
and mountain ranges, Chinese control over them was
from the outset bound to be far more precarious than
that over the Tarim basin. But the dangers besetting
Chinese dominion in Central Asia increased greatly
with the appearance of two new forces upon the scene.
Already in the last quarter of the seventh century
the newly rising power of the Tibetans seriously
threatened and for a time effaced the Chinese hold
upon the Tarim basin.(8)Even after its recovery by the
Chinese in A.D. 692 the struggle never quite ceased.

Another and almost equally great threat to
China's Central Asian dominion arose in the west
through the advance of Arab conquest to the Oxus and
beyond. About A.D. 670 it had already made itself
felt in Tokharistan, the important territory on the
middle Oxus comprising the greater part of the
present Afghan Turkestan. Between A.D. 705 and 715
the campaigns of the famous Arab general Qotaiba had
carried the Muhammadan arms triumphantly into
Sogdiana, between Oxus and Yaxartes, and even
further.(9) By taking advantage of internal troubles
among the Arabs and. by giving support to all the
principalities between the Yaxartes and the Hindukush
which the Arabs threatened with extinction, the
Chinese managed for a time to stem this wave of
Muhammadan aggression. But the danger continued from
this side, and the Chinese position in Central Asia
became even more seriously jeopardized when the
Tibetans soon after A.D. 741 advanced to the Oxus
valley sad succeeded in joining hands with the Arabs,
their natural allies.

Baulked for the time in their attempts to secure
the Tarim basin, the Tibetans had only one line open
to effect this junction. It led first down the Indus
from Ladak through Baltistan (the " Greet P'o-lu " of
the Chinese Annals) to the Hindukush territories of
Gilgit and Yasin, both comprised in the "Little
P'o-lu" of the Chinese records.(10) Thence the passes
of the Darkot and the Baroghil--the latter a saddle
in the range separating the Oxus from the Chitral
river headwaters--would give the Tibetans access to
Wakhan; through this open portion of the upper Oxus
valley and through ferthe Badakhah the Arabs

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7 For very interesting notices of the administrative
organization, which the Chinese attempted soon after
A.D. 659 to impose upon the territories from the
Yaxartes to the Oxus and even south of the Hindukush,
see Chavannes, Turcs occidentaux, pp. 268 sqq.
8 Cf. Chavannes, Turcs occidentaux, pp. 280 sqq.cz,
pp. 280 899.
9 See Chavannes, ibid, pp. 288 sqq.
10 Cf. for this identification Chavannes, ibid. p.
150, and Notes supplementaries; also my Ancient
Khotan, i. pp. 6 sqq.

p.101
established on the middle Oxus might be reached
with comparative ease. But an advance along the
previous portions of this route was beset with very
serious dificulties, not merely on account of the
great height of the passes to be traversed and of the
extremely confined nature of the gorges met with on
the Indus and the Gilgit river, but quite as much
through the practical absence of local resources
sufficient to feed an invading force anywhere between
Ladak and Badakhshan.
Nevertheless the persistent advance of the
Tibetans along this most difficult line is clearly
traceable in the Chinese records. " Great P'o-lu,"
i.e., Baltistan, had already become subject to them
before A.D. 722. About that time they attacked "
Little P'o-lu," declaring, as the T'ang Annals fell
us, to Mo-chin-mang its king: "It is not your kingdom
which we covet, but we wish to use your route in
order to attack the Four Carrisons (i.e., the Chinese
in the Tarim basin)."(11) In A.D. 722 timely military
aid rendered by the Chinese enabled this king to
defeat the Tibetan design. But after three changes of
reign the Tibetans won over his successor
Su-shih-li-chih, and inducing him to marry a Tibetan
princess secured a footing in " Little P'o-lu." "
Thereupon," in the words of the T'ang shu, " more
than twenty kingdoms to the north-west became all
subject to the Tibetans."(12) These events occurred
shortly after A.D. 741.(13)

The danger thus created by the junction between
Tibetans and Arabs forced the Chinese to special
efforts to recover their hold upon Yasin and Gilgit.
Three successive expeditions despatched by the
"Protector of the Four Garrisons, " the Chinese
Governor General, had failed, when a special decree
of the Emperor Hsuan-tsang in A.D. 747 entrusted the
Deputy Protector Kao Hsien-chih, a general of Korean
extraction commanding the military forces in the
Tarim basin, with the enterprise to be traced here.
We owe our detailed kowledge of it to the official
biography of Kao Hsien-chih preserved in the T'ang
Annals and translated by M. Chavannes. To that truly
great scholar, through whose premature death in 1918
all branches of historical research concerning the
Far East and Central Asia have suffered an
irreparable loss, belongs full credit for having
recognized that Kao Hsien-chih's remarkable
expedition led him and his force across the Pamirs
and over the Batroghil and Darkot passes. But he did
not attempt to trace in detail the actual routes
followed by Kao Hsien-chih on this hazardous
enterprise or to localize the scenes of all its
striking events. To do this in the light of personal
acquaintance with the topography of these regions,
their physical conditions, and their scanty ancient
remains, is my object in the following pages.

With a force of 10,000 cavalry and infantry Kao
Hsien-chih started in the spring of A.D. 747 from
An-hsi, then the headquarters of the Chinese
administration in the Tarim basin and corresponding
to the present town and oasis of Kucha.(l4) In
thirty-five days he reached Su-le, or Kashgar,
through Ak-su and by the great caravan road leading
along the foot of the T'ien-shan. Twenty days more
brought his force to the military post of the

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l1 See Chavannes, Turcs occidentaux, p. 150.
12 Cf. Chavannes, ibid., p. 151. By the twenty
kingdoms are obviously meant petty hill
principalifies on the Upper Oxus from Wakhan
downwards, and probably also others in the valleys
south of Hindukush, such as Mastuj and Ohital.
13 Cf. Stein, Ancient Khotan, i. p. 7. A.D. 741 is
the date borne by the Imperial edict investing
Su-shih-li-chih's immediate predecessor; its text
is still extant in the records extracted by M.
Chavannes, Tures occidentaux, pp. 211 sqq.
14 For these and all other details taken from M.
Chavannes' translation of Kao Hsien-chih's
biography in the T'ang shu, see Turcs occidentaux,
pp, 152 sqq.

p.102
T'sung-ling mountains, established in the
position of the present Tashkurghan in Sarikol.(15)
Thence by a march of twenty days the " valley of
Po-mi," or the Pamirs, was gained, and after another
twenty days Kao Hsien-chih arrived in " the kingdom
of the five Shih-ni," i.e., the present Shighnan on
the Oxus.

The marching distance here indicated agrees well
with the time which large caravans of men and
transport animals would at present need to cover the
same ground. But how the Chinese general managed to
feed so large a force, after once it had entered the
tortuous gorges and barren high valleys beyond the
outlying oases of the present Kashgar and Yangihissar
districts, is a problem which might look
formidable, indeed, to any modern commander. The
biography in the Annals particularly notes that " at
that time the foot soldiers all kept horses (i.e.,
ponies) on their own account." Such a provision of
transport must have considerably increased the
mobility of the Chinese troops. But it also implied
greatly increased difficulties on the passage through
ranges which, with the exception of certain
portions of the Pamirs, do not afford sufficient
grazing to keep animals alive without liberal
provision of fodder.

It was probably as a strategic measure, meant to
reduce the difficulties of supply in this
inhospitable Pamir region, that Kao Hsien-chih
divided his forces into three columns before starting
his attack upon the position held by the Tibetans at
Lien-yun. M. Chavanncs has shown good reason for
assuming that by the river P'o-le (or So-le, which
is described its flowing in front of Lien-yun, is
meant the Ab-i-Panja branch of the Oxus, and that
Lien-yun itself: occupied a position corresponding to
the present village of Sarhad, but on the opposite,
or southern, side of the river, where the route from
the Baroghil pass debouches on the Ab-i-Panja. We
shall return to this identification indetail
hereafter. Here it will suffice to show that this
location is also clearly indicated by the details
recorded of the concentration of Kao Hsien-chih's
forces upon Lien-yun.

Of the three columns which were to operate from
different directions and to effect a simultaneous
junction before Lien-yun on the thirteenth day of the
seventh month (about the middle of August), the main
force, under Kao Hsien-chih himself and the Imperial
Com missioner Pien Ling-ch'eng, passed through the
kingdom of Hu-mi, or Wakhan, ascending the main Oxus
valley from the west. Another column which is said to
have moved upon Lien-yun by the route of
Ch'ih-fo-t'ang, " the shrine of the red Buddha,"(16)
may be assumed, in view of a subsequent mention of
this route below, to have operated from the opposite
direction down the headwaters of the Ab-i-Panja.
These could be reached without serious diffculty from
the Sarikol base either over the Tagh-dumbash Pamir
and the Wakhjir pass

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15 Ts'ung-ling, or " the Onion Mountains," is the
ancient Chinese designation for the great snowy
range which connects the T'ien-shan in the north
with the K'un-lun and Hindukush in the south, and
forms the mighty eastern rim of the Pamirs. The
Chinese term is sometimes extended to the high
valleys and plateaus of the latter also. The range
culminates near its centre in the great ice-clad
peak of Muztagh-ata and those to the north of it,
rising to over 28,000 feet above sea-level. It is
to this great mountain chain, through which all
routes from the Oxue to the Tarim basin pass, that
the term Imaos is clearly applied in Ptolemy's
'Geography.'
The great valley of Sarikol, situated over 10,000
feet above sea level, yet largely cultivated in
ancient times, forms the natural base for any
military operations across the Pamirs; for early
accounts of it in Chinese historical texts and in
th