________________
NOVEMBER, 1903.]
NOTES ON THE INDO-SCYTHIANS.
"
NOTES ON THE INDO-SOYTHIANS. BY SYLVAIN LEVI.
Extracted and rendered into English, with the author's permission, from the "Journal Asiatique," July-Dec., 1896, pp. 444 to 484, und Jan.-June, 1897, pp. 5 to 42,
by W. R. PHILIPPS.
(Continued from p. 389.)
HISTORICAL TEXTS.
Lévi, in the Journal Asiatique, Jan.-June, 1897, pp. 5 to 26,
What here follows is practically a translation the
of it. As before, the figures in thick type in square brackets mark the pages of the original.
417
PART II.
HIS second article by M.
[5] Chinese annals allow us to clearly follow the vicissitudes of the Yue-tohi, from the time when they were pushed on by the Hioung-nou about 165 B. C., until their establishment in the territory of the Ta-hia, south of the Oxus. But from the time when the Yue-tchi come into contact with India, the deplorable fatality which weighs on Indian chronology seems to extend also to Chinese evidence. Two documents refer to this obscure period; both have been long known, but the conclusions claimed to be drawn from these obscure texts demand a new examination.
[6] The first passage is found in the Annals of the Second Han Dynasty. It runs thus:
"When the Yue-tchi were conquered by the Hioung-nou, they went among the Ta-hia, "divided their kingdom into five principalities, which were: Hieou-mi, Choang-mo, Koei-choang, Hi-t'an, Tou-mi. About a hundred years afterwards, Kieou-tsieou-k'io, the prince of "Koei-choang, attacked and subdued the four other principalities, and constituted himself "king of a kingdom which was called Koei-choang. This prince invaded the country of the "A-si; he seized upon the territory of Kao-fou, destroyed also Po-ta and Ki-pin, and became "completely master of those countries. Kieou-tsieou-ki'o died at eighty years; his son Yen-kao"tchin ascended the throne; he conquered T'ien-tchou [India], and appointed generals "there, who governed in the name of the Yue-tchi" (see translation by Specht: Etudes sur l'Asie Centrale, J. A., July-Dec., 1883, 324).
The compiler Ma Toan-lin, who reproduced this account, joins it straight on to the journey of Tchang-k'ien, who visited the Yue-tehi about 125 B. C. and returned to China about 122. The interval of time indicated seems thus to be counted from the journey of Tchang-k'ien; the year 25 B. C. would consequently be the approximate date of the accession of the Kushanas.1 But we must [7] attend to the ordinary methods of this much-vaunted encyclopædist, if we want to get at facts; Ma Toan-lin has joined the two extracts together, without troubling to co-ordinate them. The original text clearly indicates the submission of the Ta-hia as the starting point of the calculation; but the actual date is none the less not determined by it. Specht (Etudes 324, note 4) proposes arbitrarily to put the conquest of the Ta-hia after 24 A. D., "because the History of the first Han" dynasty "makes no mention of it." This reason is quite inadmissible: the accounts of foreign peoples, incorporated in the Annals, do not pretend to trace a complete history of all these peoples; the compiler contents himself by inserting the information obtained from time to time, by chance of circumstances. The testimony of the official history teaches us that, from the beginning of the Christian era, relations between the
1 Cf. Lassen, Ind. Alt., II.3, 372, where the opinions of earlier interpreters are collected. The difficulty of making use of Chinese documents, without going to the originals, is seen olearly in what Lassen himself has written here. He accepts without dispute Ma Toan-lin's data, but regards with suspicion the original testimony of the History of the Second Han Dynasty; he in fact donfuses this dynasty with the petty Han dynasty, which reigned from 947 to 961 A. D.
