Lands of Asia layouts (Eng) 26.11.21

part iv | migrations of cultures
of consolidating their control over the larger sections of the Silk Road. Hence, the
migration of Sogdians eastwards probably began in the 1st century BC, along with
the beginning of regular traffic along the routes of the Silk Road.
Thereafter, Sogdian colonies were established along the entire eastern section
of the Silk Road and remained in existence until the 9th and 10th centuries AD.
Especially large colonies of Sogdians existed in such Chinese cities as Changan,
Lanzhou and Dunhuang, where Sogdians lived in isolated communities. The Sogdian
community in Dunhuang alone numbered about 1,000 at the beginning of the 4th
century.
Apart from Sogdian communities in China, there were also settlements that
the Sogdians founded and governed themselves. Based on an analysis of Chinese
textual sources, the French scholar Paul Pelliot established that between AD 627
and 644 several Sogdian settlements grew up around the lake at Lop Nor. One of
these settlements was founded on the site of an abandoned Chinese city by a great
leader from the kingdom of Kan (Samarkand) called Kang Yandian, who had arrived
with many Hu – the Chinese name for Sogdians. Soon after, three fortified Sogdian
settlements were established here, one of which was Putao-cheng: ‘city of vineyards’.
It would appear that Sogdians reached Mongolia and southern Siberia via China,
as items of Sogdian origin have been found in the Altai and Transbaikalia regions.
It is possible that they also reached Korea and Japan, although there is no direct
evidence of this; Sogdia and its capital Samarkand were, however, well known in
these countries. This can be seen, in particular, in paintings found during excavations
of the palace at Afrasiab. They depict the arrival of embassies from different countries
coming to meet the Sogdian Ikhshid, Varkhuman (AD 696), with one of the panels
showing envoys from Japan or Korea.
Among the most interesting relics of the early period of Sogdian exploration of
the Silk Road are the so-called ‘Ancient Letters’. This moniker came to be used in
academic circles to designate a group of private letters discovered in 1907 by the
British scholar Sir Aurel Stein during excavations of the watchtower of the Great Wall
of China to the west of Dunhuang in Xinjiang.
In addition to Chinese documents, five complete and several fragmentary letters
on paper and silk, written in Sogdian cursive script in the Sogdian language, were
found here. Their significance for scholarship lies not only in the wealth of previously
unknown information about Sogdian colonies in Xinjiang, but also in the fact that
they constitute the earliest known specimens of Sogdian writing, and are several
centuries older than the documents discovered at Mount Mugh.
The date of the Ancient Letters is still a matter of debate. Stein dated them to the
first half of the 2nd century AD and was supported in this view by the German scholar
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