A Greco-Bactrian Great Wall in Central Asia

January 24, 2025 @ 3:05 pm · Filed by under Language and geography, Language and history

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The merging of peoples, cultures, and languages at the heart of Eurasia

The Iron Gates (Darband), a 3-kilometer (1.9 mi) mountain pass that separated the Indo-Greek kingdoms from Central Asian nomads. The Graeco-Bactrian ruler Euthydemus (230–200 BC) built a great wall there to protect the kingdom. c. 130 BC a nomadic people, the Yuezhi, invaded Bactria swarmed the kingdom, and killed its last ruler.

This is a key development in Eurasian history between the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC — a turning point between monarchical / feudal and imperial / bureaucratic government.

This intense clashing and mixing of cultures and peoples accounts for the spread of, among other types of lexical items, official titles and army units.  In "Xiongnu Official Title Danghu and Jurchen Tanggu ‘Hundred’" (1/13/25), by Penglin Wang, we see gradient decimal military Xiongnu (Hunnic) terms showing up in Jurchen and Manchu lexical usage far to the east.

In this comment, Lucas Christopoulos shows that Hellenistic armies were also structured similarly with "gradient decimal numerals".  These are so similar to the Xiongnu / Hunnic and Jurchen / Manchu divisions that all three could not possibly have arisen completely independently.

 

Selected readings

January 24, 2025 @ 3:05 pm · Filed by under Language and geography, Language and history


8 Comments »

  1. Victor Mair said,

    January 24, 2025 @ 6:11 pm

    There were multiple"iron gates" in Central Asia, all the way from the vicinity of Tehran to central Xinjiang.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Gate

  2. Victor Mair said,

    January 24, 2025 @ 6:46 pm

    From Michael Bates@Sogd:

    The notice is appreciated, but would it not be possible to provide
    full publication information: author, publication, and date? Thanks.

  3. Victor Mair said,

    January 24, 2025 @ 6:51 pm

    I feel the same way you do, Michael.

    Here's your answer, sent at midnight from Berlin by Chris Dorn'eich:

    =====

    This statement by Lefineder is very superficial and outdated.
    To begin with, the Yuezhi/Arsi never clashed with the Greeks
    of Bactria.

    Ever since the Ili plains, the Yuezhi drove the Sakas, more
    precisely the Sakaraukai/Saiwang/King-Sakas, before them.

    It were these Sakas who first conquered Eastern Bactria,
    i.e., the land of the Daxia/Ta-hia/Tachar, from the Greeks
    around 145 BCE.

    Around 130 BCE, the Sakas were evicted from Tachara/
    Tochara by the Yuezhi (Zhang Qian's story).

    The Yuezhi established themselves in Eastern Bactria
    and caused the Sakas then to conquer Western Bactria from
    the last Greek kings north of the Hindukush (with the help
    of the Parthians).

    So, in two waves, the Greek kingdom of Bactria was conquered
    and destroyed, not by the Yuezhi, but the Sakaraukai/Saiwang.

    After 130 BCE, the whole of Bactria remained divided a long
    time between the Yuezhi in the East and the Sakas+Parthians
    in the West.

    Accordingly, the story of the Iron Gate in the Hissar Mountains
    from the time of Euthydemos down to Kujula Kadphises has been
    a very complex and twisted one (and has not really been written
    down at length by anyone as yet) …

    ======

  4. Lucas Christopoulos said,

    January 24, 2025 @ 7:24 pm

    For the Iron Gates (Derbent-Uzbekistan), Claude Rapin:
    https://hal.science/hal-04100787/

    In the SPP 329 pp.89-90 and concerning the military part of the Xiongnus, I mentioned that Ying Shao (應劭 140–206 AD) commented that the Chanyu had used a “Jinglu sword” (Jinglu dao 徑路刀) for sacrifices in Ganquan when they worshipped their gods there. In: Boris A. Litvinskij and Igor R. Pičikjan, “Handles and Ceremonial Scabbards of Greek Swords from the Temple of the Oxus in Northern Bactria,” East and West vol. 49, no. 1/4 (December 1999), there is a description of the (post-Alexander) cavalry broadsword called “makhaira” found in northern Bactria. For jìnglù (徑路), Schuessler gives / kêŋh râkh /. As the Scythian sword is described as “akinakes” (ἀκινάκης) by earlier (than Alexander and the Greco-Bactrian times) Greek authors, I think that the Makhaira also became fashionable among the Northern Bactrian cavalry and perhaps the Xiongnu cavalry from the 3rd-2nd century BC. The Jinglu cavalry sword of that period is to me the single-edged “broadsword,” or the cutting and chopping makhaira (μάχαιρα) as found in northern Bactria. It was also used earlier by the Achaemenid Persians and steppe elite horseman fighters (Xenophon, Cyropaedia II, I, 21). In the Achaemenid period (550–330 BC), when the king went hunting, he took half his personal guards. They were required to have makhaira in addition to their other weapons (Xenophon, Cyropaedia, 1,2,9; II, 3, 10; IV, 5, 58; VI, 1,2; VII, 1, 34). In the Achaemenid state, the makhaira was used from Egypt to India. To resume, kêŋh râkh “dao” (刀), is more likely to describe the curved single-edged Makhaira of the Greco-Bactrian (and Xiongnu?) elite military cavalry, while the jian (劍) is the straight sword with two cutting edges as described by the Chinese sources.

  5. Lucas Christopoulos said,

    January 24, 2025 @ 7:40 pm

    “It were these Sakas who first conquered Eastern Bactria, i.e., the land of the Daxia/Ta-hia/Tachar, from the Greeks around 145 BCE.”

    The problem is that the Sakas were part of the Greco-Bactrian armies and escaped the Yuezhi south together with the Indo-Greeks. More than 90% of the population and armies of the Greco-Bactrians were not “Greeks” as the Greeks were a minority there. It was ruled within a multi-smaller area by Greeks, Greco-Saka, Indo-Greek kings, etc, Here, modern Western “communitarianism” doesn’t apply within the universalist cities of Alexander ruled by people of different origins in Central Asia. To understand and compare, you can imagine the king of England having Indian or Afghan wives and their children and grandchildren ruling there. It is too easy and not reflecting reality to think in "blocks" and "ethnicity." As today, Central Asia is very "regional" and ruled by allied warlords and kings.

  6. Lucas Christopoulos said,

    January 24, 2025 @ 7:53 pm

    "After 130 BCE, the whole of Bactria remained divided a long
    time between the Yuezhi in the East and the Sakas+Parthians"
    in the West.

    wrong, it was a regional progressive: replacement of rulers and interethnic royal alliances and successions that lasted long. After 130 BC, Eucratides's grand grandchild Hermaios was still ruling Kabul until 70-60 BC.
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hermaeus

  7. Scott de Brestian said,

    January 25, 2025 @ 1:36 pm

    wrong, it was a regional progressive: replacement of rulers and interethnic royal alliances and successions that lasted long. After 130 BC, Eucratides's grand grandchild Hermaios was still ruling Kabul until 70-60 BC.

    The post specifically mentions this only applies north of the Hindu Kush. Bactria did cease to be an independent kingdom.

  8. Lucas Christopoulos said,

    January 25, 2025 @ 7:10 pm

    Correct, the Bactria region proper, but not the Bactrian Kingdom itself.

    The Greco-Bactrian kingdom included several other regions: The principal mountain range of Bactria was the Paropamisadai (Παροπαμισάδαι), known today as the Hindu Kush. It contained mostly the mountains of Afghanistan and Pakistan. The Bactrian kingdom also had these three regions: the Sattagydia (the confluence area of the Panjshir and Ghorban rivers or in the middle of the Indus River, near today Bannu city), Gandhara (Kabul, Peshawar, and Taxila), and Oddiyana (the Swat valley). The Greeks later divided its territory into twelve districts or satrapies.

    The Saka of northern Central Asia had moved out from Bactria to Eastern Central Asia, and the Tarim had already around 520 BC, reaching the Ily Valley and the Tianshan mountains building Kurgans there. Then curiously they continued East at the time of the Greek rule from the 4rth century BC, as we find them moving from Tianshan to Gansu Majiayuan (马家垸遗址) around the mid-3rd century BC. Curiously, their two-dimensioned golden art representations (Phrygian hat archers and flat tigers) changed from the former three-dimensioned earlier golden art. This new perspective in art came supposedly from the Greco-Bactrian kingdom (Emma Bunker 1930-2021) with the possible explanation that they were very connected with the kingdom and not at war with them (see also the bronze wrestlers/Dioscuri belt of Keshengzhuang). That change came due to the Greco-Bactrian centralization of power and expansion through the cities along the Tarim Basin and the Hexi corridor as far as the Qin (my assumption for many, many reasons). If looking at the Saka-Yuezhi-Greco-Bactrian kingdom movements, the Sakas seem to follow the movements of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom escaping the Yuezhi migrations westwards at first. The Greek kingdom of Central Asia was not “destroyed,” but slowly taken over, and then its culture and letters were fully adopted by the Yuezhi and expanded again during the Kushana

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