張騫 Zhang Qian. The Secret Envoy of Han Emperor Wu in Search of the Arsi (Yuezhi) and the Fall of the Græco-Bactrian Kingdom. (Annotated Compilation of Eastern and Western Sources)

e astern part — the country later called Tocharestan. With this in mind he would have
grasped that in the year 140 BCE not necessarily all of Bactria was still independent
u nder Greek kings, but only the country around the capital Bactra in the West. The
eastern part of Bactria had already fallen into the hands of those nomads who now —
v ery shortly before Zhang Qian reached Daxia-Tochara — had lost this part of fertile,
civilized, well populated Bactria, i.e. Tocharestan, to the superior 月 氏 . These first
nomad conquerors cannot have been the Tocharians — for the Tocharians were still
there: they are described as well settled on the land and as good traders, but weak
fighters — the first wave of nomad conquerors, of which the Shiji knows nothing beause
Zhang Qian had missed these early invaders by a very short period of time, had
c
alr eady swept across Daxia. In this first déluge the Greek armies and the last Greek
sovereigns had disappeared from Tocharestan. Terrified by the reappearance of the
Ruzhi 月 氏 , the faster and hardier horseback archers from an unknown world — the
F ar Eastern Oikumene — the first-wave conquerors had disappeared, too, and had left
behind a country which was now without a king.
The victorious 月 氏 quickly filled that vacuum. But it was all still very new. The
uzhi 月 氏 had barely erected their provisional seat of government as a tent city on
R
t he near side of the Oxus River when the envoy of Han emperor Wu appeared before
t heir leader — who was the son of that unfortunate king whom the Xiongnu had slain
more than thirty years previously. The mysterious first nomad conquerors of Tochara
can hardly have been any other people than the one which the 月 氏 had carried before
them ever since the lands on the upper Ili River: that particular tribe of the Saka conederacy
which has been variously called Sakarauloi / Sakaraukai, Sarancae / Saraucae,
f
[ Saka-] Aigloi / [Saka-] Augaloi, Sagarauloi, Sacaraucae, or Sakaurakai Skythai in the
W estern, and simply Sai-wang (older Sak-wang) 塞 王 in the Eastern historical sources.
Chinese 塞 王 has in the past often been misunderstood to mean “the king (s) of the
Sai/Sak” — with consequences that turned out to be very misleading. This reading and
translation was a capital blunder (see below, pp. 42, 43).
FRANKE, 1904: 54–55, explains:
Die verschiedenen Varianten für den Namen des Volkes, die sich bei den westlichen Autoren
finden ... legen den Gedanken nahe, daß ›wang‹ einen Bestandteil des Namens bildete,
also ›Saka-wang‹, und daß dadurch ein besonderer Stamm der Saka bezeichnet werden
sollte.
F.W.K. MÜLLER, 1918: 577 2 , strongly underlines this reasoning:
塞 , jetzt zwar im Norden ›Sai‹ gesprochen, lautet aber noch in Canton ›sak‹. ›Sak‹ war
die ältere Aussprache, wie die buddhistische Transkription für Upâsaka lehrt: U-pa-sakka
優 婆 塞 迦 . Dass ›Sai-wang‹ ein Name sein müsse, hat FRANKE mit Recht hervorgehoben.
Seine Darlegung wäre noch schlagender gewesen, wenn er den Originaltext hinzugefügt
hätte:
昔 匈 奴 破 大 月 氏 In alter
大 月 氏 西 君 大 夏
而 塞 王 南 君 罽 賓
Zeit besiegten die Hiung-nu die großen Yüe-tšï,
die großen Yüe-tšï machten sich im Westen zu Herren von Tai-Hia,
und die Sak-wang machten sich im Süden zu Herren von Ki-pin.
Da in den beiden ersten Sätzen keine Rede von Königen ist, wird auch im dritten Satze
王 nicht König bedeuten, sondern zum Namen gehören ...
“Le grand déchiffreur berlinois” (MEILLET on MÜLLER) makes an intelligent stateent
here. Of the Chinese name Saiwang/Sakwang 塞 王 the first part, 塞 , is clearly a
m
transcription of Sak(a-), whereas the second part, 王 , meaning “king” and read wang,
is rather strange in at least two respects. It does not recall the second part of the Western
name –raukai (*rawaka, “swift”) and it is a very common character in Chinese —
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