THE ANCIENT SILE-TBADERS ROUTE. 



381 



by him arises partly from the erroneous idea that 

 the present route was the only one then in use, 

 partly from the omission to consult the Chinese 

 authorities, and partly from a failure to take an- 

 cient names in preference to modern ones for 

 purposes of comparison. 



In expounding the geography of Serica, 

 Ptolemy found himself in the position in which 

 many geographers stood at the beginning of this 

 century as regards their knowledge of diverse 

 continents ; i. e., they possessed a knowledge of 

 the countries which in some particulars was pre- 

 cise, but had to lay down the courses of rivers 

 and the direction of mountain-ranges, the posi- 

 tions of cities and districts, out of itineraries 

 and vague information. By this means rivers, 

 which later information showed to be sepa- 

 rate, got thrown into one, mountains were in- 

 correctly laid down, and maps were generally 

 erroneously constructed. Ptolemy's knowledge 

 was of an analogous character. On the In- 

 dian side the districts at the foot of the Hima- 

 layas were known among the Greeks by the 

 name of Emodus. Of the mountainous land be- 

 tween the Indus and Oxus little was known be- 

 yond the road between Balkh and Peshawur. 

 The region of the Upper Oxus and Jaxartes was 

 somewhat better known, and its supposed merid- 

 ional range and water-parting was called Imaus, 

 and supposed to be a spur of the Emodus. Silk 

 was brought across both the Imaus and the 

 Emodus : across the former to Sogdiana and 

 Bactriana, and across the latter to India. Be- 

 yond was Serica ; but as this was partly identi- 

 fied with the political limits of China, which was 

 known not to reach as far as the Imaus, the re- 

 gion immediately beyond was called Scythia extra 

 Imaum. Ptolemy acquired his information re- 

 specting Serica both from India, in regard to the 

 regions across the Emodus, and from Sogdiana 

 and Bactriana, with reference to the regions east 

 of the Imaus ; but, as Colonel Yule has remarked, 

 he was unable to focus the two stereoscopic pict- 

 ures into one. Marinus, on whom Ptolemy main- 

 ly relied, was exposed to the danger of misspell- 

 ing names, as he acquired his information second- 

 hand ; and of the agents of Maes Titianus, the 

 Macedonian merchant, who went to China for 

 silk, we do not know of what nationality they 

 were, but it is probable that they were Persians, 

 or Persian-speaking Tajiks. Bearing this in 

 mind, as well as the fact that in Marinus's time 

 Western travelers entered on Chinese ground not 

 far distant from Kashgar or Yarkand, and that the 

 names of places must be identified with names of 



some antiquity, and not with modern ones, we 

 shall be in a position to form a tolerably correct 

 notion of the silk-route of Marinus and Ptolemy. 

 Its point of departure was Baktra (Balkh), and its 

 terminus Tshang-ngan (Hsi-ngan-fu), whether the 

 traders managed to reach this latter place or not. 

 It is probable that the embassies sent by the 

 princes between Persia and the Altai to the 

 court of China during the two preceding centu- 

 ries did not go beyond it, and that it was not 

 even visited by the foreign merchants. The lat- 

 ter appear to have converged from different direc- 

 tions on Sha-chow, and the stations Yang-kwan 

 and Yu-monn-kwan were points of departure for 

 the same. 



The position of the kingdom of the Issedo- 

 nese is of importance in determining the route 

 of the silk-traders. Greek writers had spoken 

 of this people as a great nation. And in the 

 whole basin of the Tarim there was only one 

 kingdom corresponding entirely to the descrip- 

 tion given by them, and that was the Yue-tien 

 of the Chinese, the capital of which was Khotan. 

 Ptolemy represents the country of the Issedones 

 as lying north of a mountain-range which ha 

 calls the Kasian Mountains. The similarity of 

 the name has led Deguignes, D'Anville, Lassen, 

 Ritter, Humboldt, and other commentators on 

 Ptolemy, to identify the same with the modern 

 Kashgar. But the name of Kashgar was not 

 then in existence, the town being called Sulei for 

 several centuries after. A glance at the map, 

 however, will show a striking analogy between 

 the Kasian Range and the western Kuen-Lun, 

 and a further link is found in the name of the 

 chief product of the country, i. e., jade, which 

 among the Chinese was called yue, but among the 

 Persian and Turkish nations appears to have been 

 generally called hash. The range seems thus, 

 by a practice common elsewhere, to have been 

 named after its most important mineral product. 

 The identification is clinched by the fact that 

 Issedon Serica is described by Ptolemy as the 

 most important place along the trade-route, and 

 the Chinese accounts give Yue-tien as the chief 

 place. 



A second phase of importance on the line of 

 route was Daxata, which Hager has shown to be 

 a Grecized form of the Persian Desht — sand — a 

 term which is to be found in the name of the 

 town, Sha-chow, referred to above, which really 

 means " Sand-town." Turning to that portion of 

 the route between Issedon Serica (Khotan) and 

 Daxata (Sha-chow) we come upon two localities, 

 Tliogara and Lromche. The latter Baron Richt- 



