Indian Antiquary Vol 52

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

Page 116

102
THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
( MAY, 1928
Tísung-ling mountains, established in the position of the present Tashkurghan in Sarikol.15 Thence by a march of twenty days the " valley of Po-mi," or the Pamirs, was gained, and. after another twenty days Kao Hsien-chih arrived in "the kingdom of the five Shih-ni," i.e., the present Shighnan on the Oxus.
The marching distance here indicated agrees well with the time which large caravans of men and transport animals would at present need to cover the same ground. But how the Chinese general managed to feed so large a force, after once it had entered the tortuous gorges and barren high valleys beyond the outlying cases of the present Kashgar and Yangi. hissar districts, is a problem which might look formidable, indeed, to any modern commander. The biography in the Annals particularly notes that "at that time the foot soldiers all kept horses (i.e., ponies) on their own account.” Such a provision of transport must have considerably increased the mobility of the Chinese troops. But it also implied greatly increased difficulties on the passage through ranges which, with the exception of certain portions of the Pamirs, do not afford sufficient grazing to keep animals alive without liberal provision of fodder.
It was probably as a strategic measure, meant to reduce the difficulties of supply in this inhospitable Pamir region, that Kao Hsien-chih divided his forces into three columns before starting his attack upon the position held by the Tibetans at Lion-yün. M. Chavannes has shown good reason for assuming that by the river Po-18 (or So-18), which is described as flowing in front of Lien-yün, is meant the Ab-i-Panja branch of the Oxus, and that Lien-yün itself occupied a position corresponding to the present village of Sarhad, but on the opposite, or southern, side of the river, where the route from the Baroghil paso debouches on the Ab-i-Panja. We shall return to this identification in detail hereafter. Here it will suffice to show that this location is also clearly indicated by the details recorded of the concentration of Kao Hsien-chih's forces upon Lien-yün.
Of the three columns which were to operate from different directions and to effect a simultaneous junction before Lien-yän on the thirteenth day of the seventh month (about the middle of August), the main force, under Kao Hsien-chih himself and the Imperial Commissioner Pien Ling-ch'êng, passed through the kingdom of Hu-mi, or Wakhan, ascending the main Oxus valley from the west. Another column which is said to have moved upon Lien-yün by the route of Ch'ih-fo-t'ang, "the shrine of the red Buddha,"16 may be assumed, in view of a subsequent mention of this route below, to have operated from the opposite direction down the headwaters of the Ab-i-Panja. These could be reached without serious difficulty from the Sarikol base either over the Tagh-dumbash Pamir and the Wakhjir pass
16 Trung-ling, or "the Onion Mountains," is the ancient Chinese designation for the great snowy range which connects the T'ien-shan in the north with the K'un-lun and Hindukush in the south, and forms the mighty castorn rim of the Pamirs. The Chinese term is sometimes extended to the high valley and plateaus of the latter also. The range culminates near its centre in the great ice-clad peak of Mustagh-ata and those to the north of it, rising to over 25,000 feet above sea level. It is to this great mountain chain, through which all routes from the Oxus to the Tarim banin pass, that the term Imaos is clearly applied in Ptolemy's 'Geography.'
The great valloy of Sarikol, situated over 10,000 feet above sea level, yet largely cultivated in ancient times, forms the natural base for any military operations across the Pamire for early accounts of it in Ohinese historical texts and in the records of old travellers from the East and Weat, of my Ancient Khotan, i. pp. 27 agg. Descriptions of the present Sarikol and of the two main routes which connect it with Kashgar, through the Gox valley to the north of Muztagh-8ta and across the Ohiohiklik pase in the south, are given in my Ruins of Khotan, pp. 67 -99., and Desert Cathay, i. pp. 89 899.
16 The term fout'ang, which M. Chavannes translates "la salle du Bouddha ...," designates, cording to Dr. Gilea's Chinese-English Dictionary, p. 1330, "a family shrine or oratory for the worship of Buddha" Considering the location, the rendering of trang by "shrine" soome here appropriate.