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)

Chang-k’ien failed to obtain the alliance of the Yueh-chi, who told him that they were
tired of fighting and trekking and only wanted a peaceful life in the rich country which
they had at last secured, and returned to China by the more difficult southern route from
Badakshan over the Pamirs and so through Chinese Turkestan; he was again captured by
the Hiung-nu, but after a year’s captivity he reached China in 126. In 115 he was sent on a
mission to the Wu-sun, then apparently about Lake Issyk Kul and from there sent out subordinate
envoys to visit the Western Countries up to and including Parthia, a country he
himself never saw. He died in 114, a year after his return to China ...
TARN’s chronology of Zhang Qian is correct for the year of return, but off one year
for the departure from Chang’an. He does not state the year in which, according to his
reckoning, the Chinese ambassador reached the Ruzhi 月 氏 ordos on the north side of
t he Oxus, but further down he says: 128. As for the onward route of Zhang Qian, TARN’s
e xplanations are immaculate except that Zhang Qian was not able to gather his 100
men mission together again after more than ten years with the Xiongnu. As discussed
a bove, his escape could only work because he was in the company of no one but his
trusted Xiongnu servant Gan Fu: just these two men continued the mission, not really
“ as if nothing had happened.” As for the return journey: it is very unlikely that Zhang
Qian took the direct, extremely difficult route by crossing the Pamirs from Badakhhan
to Yarkand. He had no knowledge of this route whatsoever, and it would not have
s
h elped him to evade the Xiongnu. More likely it is that Zhang Qian returned the way he
h ad come, i.e. via Samarkand and Ferghana — here he may have picked up the seeds
of the grape which we know he imported into China — and along the age-old caravan
route over the Pamirs back to Kashgar. From there he must have traveled the Souhern
route around the Taklamakan, close to the mountain ranges there, inhabited by
t
the proto-Tibetans, to avoid the Xiongnu. That he was captured all the same shows
how
well the Xiongnu were in control of the whole region of the Tarim Basin at the
time.
One final point to discuss would be the position of Kangju 康 居 . This was at first
just a small kingdom “some two thousand li (800 km) northwest of Da Yuan” according
to Zhang Qian’s Report. The Chinese envoy was searching for the Ruzhi 月 氏 , not the
Kangju. When the king of the Da Yuan 大 苑 sent him to the Kangju, this then is a first
hint at the fact that the 月 氏 , established in the lands around Sa
markand, had become
the new Kangju after they had subjugated this small kingdom and in the process had
extended the borders of it a considerable distance to the southwest, i.e. across the
Jax artes into Sogdiana. What sounds like a mere guess is corroborated in some of the
later Chinese Standard Histories: the Weishu 魏 書 , Beishi 北 史 , Suishu 隨 書 , and
Tangshu 唐 書 (see below, pp. 27–29).
As will become clearer later on in their history, one very curious fact about the Ruhi
月 氏 is that they were always trying to hide behind the Western, i.e. Central Asian,
p eoples they conquered. In the Hanshu of Ban Gu, completed more than two hundred
z
years after Zhang Qian’s Report, the Kangju 康 居 are suddenly a much bigger and
m uch more powerful country, now extending across the Jaxartes as far as the Oxus
a nd thus including all of former Greek Sogdiana with its capital in the area of
S amarkand as described in Tangshu 221B (see below, pp. 28–29). This first Ruzhi
p owerbase had hardly more than the name in common with the Kangju in the Shiji,
w here Sima Qian is quoting Zhang Qian. But in the same Shiji 123 we are told — now
bas ed on later sources — that in the year 101 BCE Kanjgu forces were lurking in the
background, ready to spring on the Chinese armies of Li Guangli 李 廣 利 , the “Ershi
g eneral” 貳 師 將 軍 , who at that time was besieging the capital of the Da Yuan 大 苑 in
order to obtain the coveted “heavenly horses” 天 馬 . Those “Kangju” were already the
R uzhi 月 氏 hiding behind this Central Asian name. The Shiji has a vague notion of
these two different Kangju by stating in chapter 123 :
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