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[This is a guest post by Craig Benjamin, the leading authority on Yuezhi history.  It is a follow-up to "Yuezhi archeology without concern for Tocharian language" (8/4/24)]

"China Reaches Back in Time to Challenge the West. Way, Way Back:  The country’s archaeologists are striking out along the Silk Road to trace the reach of ancient Chinese civilization, disputing long-held beliefs", by Sha Hua, WSJ (7/29/24).

A recent article published in the Wall Street Journal concerning attempts by Chinese and Uzbek archaeologists to unearth material evidence of the Yuezhi and early Kushans makes interesting reading. The author prefaces their account by placing the work of the archaeologists in the context of Xi Jinping’s efforts to expand the scope and influence of Chinese civilization, arguing that the efforts of Chinese researchers in various global locations ‘has the potential to change the field of archaeology itself, along with China’s place in the sweep of human history’. However, rather than promoting the influence of Chinese civilization in Central Asia, the archaeologists appear to be intent upon advancing nationalist claims in support of China’s Belt and Road partner Uzbekistan by arguing, on the basis of very slender evidence, that the Kushans ‘were descendants of the local population’.  

The article focuses on the work of Wang Jianxin, a Chinese archaeologist based at Northwest University in Xi'an. Wang has apparently long been fascinated with the Silk Roads, and in particular with the impact of the migration of the Yuezhi from the borderlands of ancient northwestern China to Bactria, essentially southern Uzbekistan and northern Afghanistan today. According to the article, Wang and his team have been digging for several years in Uzbekistan, most recently at a site known as Chinortepa, close to the so-called Iron Gates of ancient Sogdia. The article states that, based on the artifacts he has discovered and the location of these discoveries, Wang now believes that our understanding of the nature and role of the Yuezhi in the history of ancient Central Asia might be incorrect, and that the Yuezhi might not have been founders of the Kushan Empire after all.

Such a startling thesis, which is clearly at odds with the consensus view held by most Yuezhi specialists, needs to be evaluated in light of the evidence Wang has assembled. Wang’s assertion that the field of Silk Roads Studies is dominated by Western scholars, and that it was time to ‘add China’s voice to the field’ might hold some merit, but it is hardly the fault of Western (and also Russian and Japanese) scholars if Chinese interest in the field has been slow to develop. And of course it is ancient Han Chinese annals – the Shiji, Han Shu and Hou Han Shu – that are fundamental to the story of the Yuezhi and their role in founding the Kushan Empire. None the less, Western scholars should welcome greater Chinese engagement in the field.

According to the article, after Wang signed an agreement with the Uzbek Academy of Sciences in Samarkand, the joint Chinese-Uzbek team unearthed ‘dozens of hitherto unknown nomadic settlements in Uzbekistan, stunning other archaeologists in the field’. It would be helpful if reports of these stunning discoveries were more widely disseminated through appropriate academic journals because so far information on these excavations has been difficult to access. The article’s implication that these settlements can be attributed to the Yuezhi is apparently based on Wang’s skill in ‘using rock paintings to identify sites’, but to the best of this author’s knowledge rock paintings (petroglyphs?) are not something generally associated with Yuezhi mortuary sites. But Wang’s reported preference of searching for graves ‘in flat terrain, orchards or farmland’ rather than digging up the numerous tepe mounds that dot the landscape of Uzbekistan does indeed have the potential to enhance our understanding of the lifeways of both nomads and sedentary communities in the region, so should be welcomed.

However, Wang’s arguments for seriously reevaluating the role of the Yuezhi in founding the Kushan Empire are less helpful. It is impossible to definitively attribute graves discovered in the region to the Yuezhi, although Wang seems confident in doing so. Even the so-called podboi tombs discovered by Russian and Chinese archaeologists at various locations corresponding with the itinerary of Yuezhi migration as outlined in the Han sources cannot be definitively attributed to the Yuezhi, although the description in the article of the tombs discovered by Wang around Chinortepa (‘where corpses were buried in underground pits with little chambers to their side’) does sound remarkably like podboi tombs. Podbois have also been excavated in Gansu in Western China and in Bactria by archaeologists over the past several decades. Those found in Bactria can be tentatively dated to the period of probable Yuezhi occupation of the region, and they have yielded a range of artifacts associated with militarized nomads, including swords and daggers, mirrors, jewelry and belt-buckles. But the artifacts apparently discovered by Wang at Chinortepa and used to illustrate the article – a ceramic vase, an unidentified bronze coin, and a ‘Kushan eggshell kept in a cigarette packet’ (?) – are hardly conclusive in providing any sort of attribution to the tombs.

Wang then contrasts these podboi tombs with other types of tombs his team has discovered near Kushan fortresses (which ones are not identified in the article) that apparently show evidence of Zoroastrian funerary practices. This leads Wang to the conclusion that ‘the Yuezhi and the founders of the Kushan empire weren’t the same people’.   Wang believes that the Chinor graves were those of either local farmers who had been influenced by the Yuezhi, or Yuezhi who had integrated into farm life. He concludes that the Yuezhi weren’t bloodthirsty colonizers but ‘rather coexisted peacefully with the local population’. This latter conclusion is undoubtedly correct, and in no way at odds with our understanding of Yuezhi occupation of the region. I reached a similar conclusion in my 2007 monograph on the Yuezhi:

After the disruption and uncertainty of continuous migration, the (Yuezhi) had arrived in a fertile region ideally suited to irrigation agriculture and animal husbandry, and here they intended to stay. These were not transitory, destructive, migratory invaders, but a large confederation of semi-sedentised pastoralists and agriculturists intent upon occupying, controlling and facilitating the continuing prosperity of the Surkhan Darya region. Hence they were careful of the crop lands, established themselves near to the strategic river crossings, and occupied at least one (and probably several) of the pre-existing fortified settlements as a base from which to complete their subjugation both of the northern Bactrian region, and de facto of the former Greco-Bactrian realm south of the Amu Darya.   … The ruling Yuezhi dynasty itself would have seen another advantage in leaving pre-existing crop lands unmolested – they knew how to exploit them by taking modest tributes so as not to undermine the wealth of rural populations. (C. Benjamin, 2007, p. 204)

Scholars of ancient Central Asia, particularly of Yuezhi and Kushan studies, should welcome the work of joint Chinese-Uzbek archaeological teams in the region. Important archaeological discoveries have been made in the region in the past but these have been piecemeal lately and we should all hope that this Chinese interest in the region yields new discoveries that help further flesh out the compelling tale unfolded by the authors of the Han Dynasty chronicles, supported by the work of so many archaeologists, numismatists and language specialists. But such discoveries must not be interpreted according to nationalist political and cultural ideology. Wang seems conscious of this when responding to a question from the WSJ author about whether Beijing could use a reinterpretation of the Yuezhi to make territorial claims in the region. Wang replies, ‘Such a notion was absurd because the nomads are a historical people and no one serious would put forth that argument’.

Yet at the same time Wang seems to be promoting an implausible nationalistic claim of Uzbek responsibility for the establishment of the Kushan Empire. Wang notes that his results ‘match up with the needs of China and Uzbekistan’, and the article concludes with the following statement: ‘Being able to trace the origins of the Kushan Empire to local people rather than outsiders feeds a tale of national resurgence after a period of foreign dominance that lines up favorably with Uzbekistan’s post-Soviet efforts to write its own history’. Undoubtedly many thousands of local people – farmers, merchants and urban residents – were a significant element of the demographic makeup of the multicultural Kushan Empire, which stretched from Uzbekistan to the Ganges, and from the Iranian Plateau to Xinjiang. But to claim the founders of the empire were Uzbeks half a millennium before Turkic-speaking peoples even began to make their mark on the stage of Eurasian history does no service whatsoever to the credibility of the exciting and flourishing modern nation of Uzbekistan.  

Craig Benjamin
benjamic@gvsu.edu
5 August 2024

Brief Bibliography

• Benjamin, C., The Yuezhi: Origin, Migration and the Conquest of Northern Bactria, Silk Roads Studies Series vol. XIV, Turnhout: Brepols, 2007.
• Falk, H., ed., Proceedings of the Symposium on the History of the Kushans on the Basis of Literary Evidence, Seminaris Conference Center, Berlin, December 2013, Mainz: Mainz Academy of Literature and Culture, 2016.
• Hill, J., Through the Jade Gate to Rome: A Study of the Silk Roads 1^st to 2^nd Centuries CE, Vol. I, 2^nd edition. An annotated translation from the Houhan Shu, John E. Hill, 2015.
• Hulsewe, A.F.P. and Loewe, M.A.N., China in Central Asia. The Early Stage: 125B.C. – A.D. 23. An Annotated Translation of Chapters 61 and 96 of the History of the Former Han Dynasty, Leiden: Brill, 1979.
• Litvinsky, B.A. and Altman-Bromberg, C., ‘The Archaeology and Art of Central Asia: Studies from the Former Soviet Union’, Bulletin of the Asia Institute 8 (1996).
• Mallory, J.P. and Mair, V.H., The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West, London: Thames and Hudson, 2000.
• Sima Qian, Shi Ji (trans. B. Watson), Records of the Grand Historian by Sima Qian – Han Dynasty II, New York: Columbia University Press, Revised edtn. 1993.
• Zadneprovsky, Y.A., ‘Migration Paths of the Yueh-chih based on Archaeological Evidence’, Circle of Inner Asian Art Newsletter No. 9 (April 1999) pp. 3 ff.

August 5, 2024 @ 6:52 am · Filed by Victor Mair under Language and archeology, Language and history

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