Indian Antiquary Vol 52

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Stephen Meredyth Edwardes, Krishnaswami Aiyangar
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 115

MAY, 1923]
A CHINESE EXPEDITION ACROSS THE PAMIRS, ETC.
101
-established on the middle Oxus might be reached with comparative ease. But an advance along the previous portions of this route was beset with very serious difficulties, not merely on account of the great height of the passes to be traversed and of the extremely confined nature of the gorges met with on the Indus and the Gilgit river, but quite as much through the practical absence of local resources sufficient to feed an invading force anywhere between Ladak and Badakhshan.
Nevertheless the persistent advance of the Tibetans along this most difficult line is clearly traceable in the Chinese records. "Great P'o-lü," i.e., Baltistan, had already become subject to them before A.D. 722. About that time they attacked "Little P'o-lü," declaring, as the T'ang Annals tell us, to Mo-chin-mang its king: "It is not your kingdom which we covet, but we wish to use your route in order to attack the Four Garrisons (i.e., the Chinese in the Tarim basin)."11 In A.D. 722 timely military aid rendered by the Chinese enabled this king to defeat the Tibetan design. But after three changes of reign the Tibetans won over his successor Su-shih-li-chih, and inducing him to marry a Tibetan princess secured a footing in "Little P'o-lü." "Thereupon," in the words of the T'ang shu, "more than twenty kingdoms to the north-west became all subject to the Tibetans."1 These events occurred shortly after A.D. 741.13
The danger thus created by the junction between Tibetans and Arabs forced the Chinese to special efforts to recover their hold upon Yasin and Gilgit. Three successive expeditions despatched by the "Protector of the Four Garrisons," the Chinese GovernorGeneral, had failed, when a special decree of the Emperor Hsüan-tsang in A.D. 747 entrusted the Deputy Protector Kao Hsien-chih, a general of Korean extraction commanding the military forces in the Tarim basin, with the enterprise to be traced here. We owe our detailed kowledge of it to the official biography of Kao Hsien-chih preserved in the T'ang Annals and translated by M. Chavannes. To that truly great scholar, through whose premature death in 1918 all branches of historical research concerning the Far East and Central Asia have suffered an irreparable loss, belongs full credit for having recognized that Kao Hsien-chih's remarkable expedition led him and his force across the Pamirs and over the Baroghil and Darkot passes. But he did not attempt to trace in detail the actual routes followed by Kao Hsien-chih on this hazardous enterprise or to localize the scenes of all its striking events. To do this in the light of personal acquaintance with the topography of these regions, their physical conditions, and their scanty ancient remains, is my object in the following pages.
With a force of 10,000 cavalry and infantry Kao Hsien-chih started in the spring of A.D. 747 from An-hsi, then the headquarters of the Chinese administration in the Tarim basin and corresponding to the present town and oasis of Kucha. 14 In thirty-five days he reached Su-lê, or Kashgar, through Ak-su and by the great caravan road leading along the foot of the T'ien-shan. Twenty days more brought his force to the military post of the
11 See Chavannes, Turcs occidentaux, p. 150.
13 Of. Chavannes, ibid., p. 151. By the twenty kingdoms are obviously meant petty hill principalities on the Upper Oxus from Wakhan downwards, and probably also others in the valleys south of Hindukush, such as Mastuj and Chitral.
13 Of. Stein, Ancient Khotan, i. p. 7. A.D. 741 is the date borne by the Imperial edtios investing Bu-shih-li-chih's immediate predecessor; its text is still extant in the records extracted by M. Chavannes, Turca occidentaux, pp. 211 sqq.
16 For these and all other details taken from M. Chavannes' translation of Kao Hsien-chih's biography in the T'ang shui, see Turse occidentaux, pp. 152 sqq.