Lands of Asia layouts (Eng) 26.11.21

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impressed by the animal’s power and majesty that two poems were dedicated to it.
One of these, composed by Yu-Shih-nan, is a fu poem or ‘rhapsody’:
It glares its eyes–and lightning flashes.
It vents its voice–and thunder echoes.
It drags away the tiger,
Swallows down the bear,
Splits the rhinoceros,
Cleaves the elephant.
It crushes the mighty guar between gums and palate,
It bends the boa snake between finger and palm.
(From Golden Peaches of Samarkand, E. Schafer, 1963)
Lions were delivered to China from Tokharistan in the 7th–8th centuries AD.
According to M.E. Masson, lions were part of the local fauna in Tokharistan from
ancient times. The most ancient reference to these beasts in this region is in an
account of the time of Alexander the Great’s conquest in 328 BC, when he is said to
have gone hunting in the Sogdian region of Basista, not far from Samarkand. He was
apparently attacked by an enormous lion, which he killed ‘with a single blow’.
According to the Chinese chronicle History of the Northern Dynasties (4th–7th
centuries AD), lions used to inhabit the ‘Tashena’ mountains south of Samarkand
and were brought to the court of the Chinese emperor from there. There are many
depictions of lions on artefacts and in examples of fine art from Central Asia, and
coins from southern Sogdia dating from the 4th–7th centuries AD are particularly
noteworthy in this respect. The reverse of these coins include an image of a lion
standing on its hind legs and a warrior striking it with a sword. M.E. Masson believed
that unlike tigers, which inhabited the greater part of Central Asia up to the beginning
of the 20th century, lions had already disappeared from the local fauna by the time of
Arab conquest of this region.
There is considerable evidence of close contacts between Central Asia and the
civilisations of China and Xinjiang. Central Asia’s contribution can be summed up in
two ways: its direct influence on particular aspects of the civilisations of Xinjiang and
China, and its role as a mediator in trade and cultural contacts along the Silk Road
from the Far East through Central Asia to the Mediterranean.
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