Lands of Asia layouts (Eng) 26.11.21

4 .7
were particularly famous for it, and Alexandria was the centre for these arts in the
Hellenistic world.
In later times, Chinese sources recorded the arrival in China of illusionists from the
countries of the eastern Mediterranean that were part of the Roman Empire, which
the Chinese called Da Qin. They could transform things, breathe fire, disarticulate
their limbs, replace the heads of bulls with those of horses (and vice versa), and
juggle up to ten balls at a time.
The jugglers themselves are claimed to have said: ‘We are people of (from) Haixi
[the country west of the sea]’. Haixi is Da Qin, if we are to believe the account in the
‘Xiyu juan’ (Chapter on the Western Regions) from the Hou Hanshu.
Most of the cultural exchange and trade between the Eastern Mediterranean and
Parthia on the one hand, and China on the other, was conducted overland through
Central Asia, although there was also a sea route linking these countries, used mainly
by Chinese and Malay seafarers. Yet the Chinese themselves did not undertake their
first sea voyages to Mesopotamia until the 9th and 10th centuries AD.
Thus, in the two hundred years following the discovery of the Western Regions
by Zhang Qian, the Chinese had decisively and methodically become masters of all
the roads that led there, and had established regular diplomatic relations and trade
with several Central Asian dominions, and also made repeated attempts to gain
political control over them, as evidenced by their wars with Dayuan (Ferghana).
All this activity paved their way to the Mediterranean Sea and to contact with the
civilisations of Rome and Ancient Greece.
Chinese goods probably began to enter Central Asia in the second half of the 2nd
to the 1st century BC, after the discovery of the Western Regions by Zhang Qian,
and the establishment of various relationships with the peoples of Central Asia along
with the beginnings of the Silk Road.
However, there is also some evidence of the earlier arrival of Chinese articles here.
For example, during Zhang Qian’s time in Bactria, he reported having seen bamboo
staffs from Qiong and cloth from Shu. According to the people of Bactria, these items
were purchased by their merchants, who went to trade in Shendu.
Contemporary research suggests that the Shu corresponds to China’s Sichuan
province, while Shendu covers north-western India, Burma and the Yunnan province
in south-western China.
Thus, even before the beginnings of the Silk Road, Chinese and Bactrian
merchants were carrying goods to China and Bactria. Coins, mirrors, objects of jade,
silk fabrics and other Chinese objects have all been found in Central Asia.
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