554 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 3 8 



A. D. 77 that he was given a free hand. His policy was to use native 

 levies of what we should now call "friendlies," with a stiffening of 

 experienced Chinese officers and soldiers: 



For the next seventeen years Pan Chao carried out this plan with unbroken 

 success. One by one the kings of the Turkestan oases were reduced to obedience, 

 until the whole Tarim Valley was under the peaceful rule of the Chinese viceroy. 

 In A. D. 97, after reducing the last contumacious prince, Pan Chao crossed the T'ien 

 Shan Mountains, and with an army of 70,000 men advanced unopposed to the 

 shores of the Caspian Sea. Never before, and never since, has a Chinese army 

 encamped almost on the frontiers of Europe. The whole stretch of country between 

 the T'ien Shan and the Caspian submitted to the Chinese without fighting. More 

 than fifty "kings" acknowledged Chinese overlordship and sent their heirs as 

 hostages to Lo-yang. ls 



East to West the highway essentially carried silk, and, to a much 

 smaller extent, furs. The quantity of silk carried was very large; 

 Hudson, referring to the age of the Antonines, i. e., the middle of the 

 second century A. D., writes — no doubt with some little exaggeration — 

 of silken fabrics being "well nigh as familiar in Londinium as in Lo- 

 yang". 14 We have little knowledge of the goods carried eastward in 

 exchange; we do not hear of any particular product of the Near East 

 being exported in large quantities, and what records we have suggest 

 that the Roman Empire, at any rate in the early centuries A. D., in 

 the main paid for its silk in gold. A discovery by Stein enables us to 

 appreciate how thoroughly the trade was organized on the Chinese side. 

 On his 1918 expedition he found two strips of undyed cream-colored 

 silk in one of the refuse heaps adjoining a post on the old Chinese 

 limes west of Tun-huang. The silk could be dated by other objects 

 in the heap to between A. D. 67 and 137. Of this happy find Stein 

 writes that one strip "bears the ink impression of a Chinese seal, not 

 yet deciphered, and by the selvages retained at both ends is shown 

 to have come from a piece or roll of silk which had a width of about 

 19.7 inches or 50 centimeters." The other strip, 12% inches long and 

 incomplete at one end, bears a Chinese inscription read by M. 

 Chavannes * * * "A roll of silk from K'ang-fu in the kingdom of 

 Jen-ch'6ng; width 2 feet and 2 inches ; length 40 feet; weight 25 ounces; 

 value 618 pieces of money". 15 



Here, then, on a roll of silk of middle or late Han times prepared for 

 export we have precise indications of its origin, dimensions, weight, 

 and price, while exploration at Loulan provided further evidence that 

 a width of about 50 cm was a standard export size. 18 



Yet in spite of the regular import, which went on for centuries, it 

 is difficult to quote a single example of Chinese silk discovered in 



" Fitzgerald, op. clt., p. 191. 

 " Hudson, O. F., Europe and China, p. 01, 1931. 



» Stein, Aurel, Central Asian relics of China's ancient silk trade, Asia Major. Hinth Anniversary Volume, 

 p. 368, 1923. See also Serindia, pp. 373, 374, 1921. 

 " 8tein, Serindia, loc. cit., and pi. 37. 



