Chris M. Dorn'eich

l’année
140 av. J.-C., au lieu de l’année 165, dans une note de mes «Documents sur les Toukiue
occidentaux» (1903, p. 134, n. 1).
He provides no discussion of this dating, neither 1903 nor 1907. But 165 BCE, as the
c rucial year in which the 月氏 started to migrate west, should not be too far off as
S hiji 110 tells us that one year before, in 166 BCE, the Xiongnu chanyu in person led an
army
of some 140,000 horsemen deep into Chinese territory burning the Huizhong pal-
a ce 回中宮 and sending out advance parties which came as close to Chang’an as the
palace
of Sweet Springs 甘泉 at Yong 雍. Laoshang ante portas. It was the worst irruption
the Han Chinese suffered at the hands of the vastly superior Xiongnu. The victorious,
seemingly irresistible Xiongnu armies may well have topped there military
exploit by also invading the territory of the 月氏 kingdom, in this or the following year.
(WATSON 1993: 145)
The Chan-yu remained within the borders of the
empire [literally: within the border defences] for a
littl
(forces) pursued him beyond the border defences
but returned without having been able to kill
(any of the enemy).
The
Xiong-nu grew more arrogant day by day,
crossing the border
every year, killing many of
the inhabitants, and stealing a great number of
their
animals ...
Shiji 110. 2901
單 于 留 塞 內 月 餘 乃 去
e over a month and then withdrew. The Han 漢 逐 出 塞 即 還 不 能 有
所 殺
匈 奴 日 已 驕 歲 入 邊 殺
略 人 民 畜 產 甚 多 …
From these accounts we may
guess that chanyu Laoshang had thus prepared the
way for the Xiongnu to invade the 月氏 next. In the Hexi 河西 (modern Gansu) Cor-
ridor, where their ordos or royal
camp was to be found near modern Zhangye 張掖 —
originally
called Zhaowu 昭武 by the Chinese, as we know from Weishu 102 and later
Standard Histories —, and with Longxi 隴西 near the Western
end of the Great Wall
as the border town, the 月氏 were the immediate Western neighbors of Han China. In
the north they had a long common border with the Xiongnu. Under these geographic
conditions, it must have been rather easy for the latter to invade the wide-open homelands
of the 月氏 in a similarly grand style in this or the next year. The 月氏, obviously
ill-prepared and thus taken by surprise, were beaten once again. This time their
king was killed. And adding insult to injury, the Xiongnu chanyu had a ceremonial
drinking cup made out of the skull of the 月氏 king. This was too much to bear for the
once so proud nomads who had despised the Xiongnu. Deeply shocked by this defeat,
the 月氏 reached the decision to dodge Xiongnu domination by escape.
The only route open to them was the vacant country of their old western neighbors,
the Wusun, between Dunhuang and the Lake Lopnor. When this small nation of nomads
had been beaten by the 月氏 and when their king had been killed, the Wusun
had decamped and fled to the Xiongnu. From what we read in the Shiji and Hanshu,
we may infer that this happened in the time of the Xiongnu chanyu Modu, in any case
before 176 BCE as the terminus ante quem. More than a decade later, presumably in
about 165 BCE, the 月氏 commenced their historic trek from the Hexi Corridor in a
northwesterly direction, past Lake Barkol between the Tianshan and Bogdashan mountain
ranges, along the northern foothills of the Tianshan into the basin of Dzungaria
and finally across the Borohoroshan into the upper Ili River valley. It was an exodus
fateful for the history of Central and South Asia over the next few centuries. It was —
eine Sternstunde der Menschheit.
As for the chronology of Zhang Qian’s mission,
which is the first topic of this compila
tion of relevant primary and secondary sources: whereas later discussions are
often
far off the mark, CHAVANNES is coming very close to the truth here. A small cor-
rection
of his text would have sufficed to make it perfect: he should, in fact, have
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