Sino-Iranica 



By Berthold Laufer 



INTRODUCTION 



If we knew as much about the culture of ancient Iran as about 

 ancient Egypt or Babylonia, or even as much as about India or China, 

 our notions of cultural developments in Asia would probably be widely 

 different from what they are at present. The few literary remains left 

 to us in the Old-Persian inscriptions and in the Avesta are insufficient 

 to retrace an adequate picture of Iranian life and civilization; and, 

 although the records of the classical authors add a few touches here 

 and there to this fragment, any attempts at reconstruction, even 

 combined with these sources, will remain unsatisfactory. During the 

 last decade or so, thanks to a benign dispensation of fate, the Iranian 

 horizon has considerably widened: important discoveries made in 

 Chinese Turkistan have revealed an abundant literature in two hitherto 

 unknown Iranian languages, — the Sogdian and the so-called Eastern 

 Iranian. 1 ' We now know that Iranian peoples once covered an immense 

 territory, extending all over Chinese Turkistan, migrating into China, 

 coming in contact with Chinese, and exerting a profound influence on 

 nations of other stock, notably Turks and Chinese. The Iranians were 

 the great mediators between the West and the East, conveying the 

 heritage of Hellenistic ideas to central and eastern Asia and trans- 

 mitting valuable plants and goods of China to the Mediterranean area. 

 Their activity is of world-historical significance, but without the 

 records of the Chinese we should be unable to grasp the situation 

 thoroughly. The Chinese were positive utilitarians and always inter- 

 ested in matters of reality: they have bequeathed to us a great amount 

 of useful information on Iranian plants, products, animals, minerals, 

 customs, and institutions, which is bound to be of great service to 

 science. 



The following pages represent Chinese contributions to the history 

 of civilization in Iran, which aptly fill a lacune in our knowledge of 

 Iranian tradition. Chinese records dealing with the history of Iranian 

 peoples also contain numerous transcriptions of ancient Iranian words, 



1 Cf., for instance, P. Pelliot, Influences iraniennes en Asie centrale et en 

 Extreme-Orient (Paris, 191 1). 



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