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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



hofen has been unable to identify, but the for- 

 mer name has, he points out, similarity to the 

 Tukhara of the Indians, or Tu-ho-lo of the Chi- 

 nese, a people who during the seventh century of 

 the Christian era were found by Hwen-Tsang to 

 have once dwelt a few days' journey east of Kho- 

 tan, and whose name still prevailed there at his 

 time, although the people themselves (who are 

 probably identical with the Yuetchi above men- 

 tioned, or, at all events, the greater part of them) 

 had, in the second century a. d., lived in the vicin- 

 ity of Kan-chow-fu, and at the time of the Buddh- 

 ist pilgrim's journey settled partly on the Upper 

 Oxus and partly on the Upper Indus. It is not 

 unlikely that the encroachment of the sandy des- 

 ert had caused a portion of the people to migrate 

 from their ancient oasis in the valley of the Ta- 

 rim, but that enough of them remained to give 

 their name to the old site. The identity of the 

 6ite with Ptolemy's Thogaroi is confirmed by the 

 name Aspacares, which is very like the Persian 

 name for nation of riders, and which referred to 

 the great Thibetan nomad race called No-kiang, 

 which, we learn from Chinese sources, dwelt 

 south of the oasis. Asmiraea, too, is described 

 by Ptolemy as lying south of the river Oikhardes, 

 which must be the Tarim. The important town 

 of Tsiemo, where the northern and southern 

 roads diverged, is the only name which has any 

 similarity to Asmiraea. 



Eastward of Daxata, or Sha-chow, the old silk- 

 route rested only on vague hearsay evidence. 

 The traders reported that a river and a mountain 

 had to be crossed before reaching the Sera metrop- 

 olis. The river is given as a branch of the Bau- 

 tisos, which must be the Hwang-ho. But Bau- 

 tisos is the name of the stream flowing north of 

 the Emodus through the land of the Bautse (i. e., 

 Bhot, or Thibet in its restricted sense), or, in other 

 words, the Yarudzangbo, or Upper Brahmapootra. 

 It is evident that Ptolemy's information derived 

 from India here occasioned him some confusion, 

 and that he has assumed that the Hwang-ho, 

 which flowed out of a little-known mountainous 

 country, and the Brahmapootra, which, according 

 to the Thibetans, flowed eastward into an un- 

 known region, were one and the same. Similar 

 instances of erroneous geographical conclusions 

 may be found in Livingstone's supposition that 

 the Lualaba and Nile formed one river, and the 

 theory, not long since held, that the Sanpu and 

 the Irrawaddy were one and the same. 



The western limit of Serica would appear to 

 have been near Kashgar and Yarkand, where 

 Marinus's information leads him to place them. 



Kashgar (Sulei) was a small kingdom, while 

 Yarkand (Sokiu) was more important, and was 

 often united with Yue-tien, or the Issedon king- 

 dom. In 81 a. d. the Chinese and Yue-tien made 

 common cause against Sokiu and overthrew it, 

 and from that time the western limit of Serica 

 appears to have been where the agents of Maes 

 Titianus placed it. Before 8*7 a portion of the 

 Issedon kingdom belonged to Scythia, i. e., to the 

 non-Seric country, and Issedon Scythica was, 

 therefore, a natural form of expression. The 

 western boundary then lay between Yarkand and 

 Khotan, and this corresponds with Ptolemy's 

 map. Another possible explanation is, that as 

 the Greeks designated all nomads by the name 

 of Scythians, and as they heard of the existence 

 of many of these nomad tribes eastward of the 

 Imaus, Ptolemy was induced to lay down a sharp 

 eastern boundary to Scythia extra Imaum, and 

 that the same boundary formed the western 

 boundary of Serica, which was thus shifted too 

 far eastward. 



In endeavoring to fix the direction of the 

 route of the agents of Maes Titianus between 

 Baktra and the Tarim Basin, we meet with many 

 difficulties. In settling this question the position 

 of Issedon Scythica becomes of great impor- 

 tance. On Ptolemy's map it lies east of Imaus, 

 west of the sources of the (Echardus, south of 

 the Auxacian Mountains, which were probably 

 the mountains on the west of the Tarim depres- 

 sion, where they approach Aksu, and northwest 

 of Issedon Serica. This description would cor- 

 respond to Kashgar and Yarkand, and the pass 

 leading to it would be either the southernmost 

 Pamir Pass from Badakshan or the Terek Pass to 

 the north. The latter answers best to the descrip- 

 tion. From Baktra there ran an important route, 

 i. e., that past Samarcand throughout the length 

 of Ferghana, and it appears, from Chinese author- 

 ities, that this was once a great commercial line of 

 route. In the Takht-i-Suleiman, near Osh, some 

 professed to recognize Ptolemy's "stone fort," 

 which was west of the Imaus ; but inasmuch as 

 important places such as Samarcand are not 

 mentioned, Colonel Yule suggested, in 1866, that 

 some intermediate line was the one sought for. 

 Later research has proved that there are various 

 routes through Karateghin, and the Alai country, 

 which might have been utilized for trade pur- 

 poses. It is possible, therefore, that at the time 

 when Baktra was the centre of a flourishing com- 

 merce, a direct way to the Tarim Basin was pre- 

 ferred to the circuitous route by Samarcand, along 

 which also heavy dues were exacted. The land 



