Indian Antiquary Vol 62

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 93

MAY, 1933]
ON ANCIENT TRACKS PAST THE PAMERS
ON ANCIENT TRACKS PAST THE PÅMIRS.*
BY SIR AUREL STEIN, K.C.I.E.
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If we look at the map it might well seem as if the mighty elevation of the Påmirs, with the high, rugged, meridional range forming its eastern rim, and with the vast drainageles3 basin of the Târîm beyond it, had been intended by nature far more to serve as a barrier between the lands where flourished the great civilizations of ancient Asia, than to facilitate intercourse between them. Yet historical records which have come down to us both in the East and West show that through this remote belt of innermost Asia there led routes wbich for many centuries formed important channels for trade, travel and political enterprise between China on the one side and Iran and the Hellenized portion of Wostern Asia on the other.
In my paper Innermost Asia; its Geography as a factor in History, I have fully ex. plained the reasons which obliged the Chinese Empire, when, under the great Han Emperor Wu-ti in the last quarter of the second century B.C., it sought direct trade access to the civi. lized countries of the West, to secure it through-control of the Târim basin. Situated between the high mountain ranges of the T'ien-shan in the north and the K'un-lun and Karakoram in the south, this great basin offered distinct advantages for the peaceful penetration' aimed at. The great mountain ramparts protected it from the dangers of the nomadic migrations and invasions. The strings of oases fringing the huge central desert of the Taklamakan in the north and south would permit caravan traffic to pass over ground where it was comparatively easy to protect it. To the south of the basin the utter barrenness of the high Tibetan plateaux makes such traffic physically impossible. In the north beyond the T'ien-shan all routes from the side of China were exposed to attack by great nomadic tribes, like those of the Huns, Turks and Mongols.
In the west the Oxus basin with its great fertile territories of ancient Bactria and Sogdiana has always provided emporia for trade exchange. Bukhara and Samarkand have retained this character down to modern times, and so did Balkh, the ancient capital of Bactria, until Chingiz Khân's Mongol invasion brought there devastation from which the land, the present Afghân Turkistân, has never fully recovered. Bactria lay nearest both to India and Persia, and through the latter led the ancient trade-routes both to the Mediterranean and the Persian Gulf. These brief remarks will suffice to explain why the ancient routes to be described here had their main western terminus on Bactrian ground to the south of the middle Oxus.
It was chiefly the trade in silk which made direct access to the Oxus basin so important for China. Before and for centuries after the beginning of the Christian era, the production of silk was a joalously-guarded monopoly of China and its profitable export to the Western Regions' was a great factor in the economic policy of the Empire. It is to this silk trade that we owe the early classical notice of the route followed by the caravans which proceeded from the Oxus to the land of the "silk-weaving Seres,' or China. It is to the northern of the two main routes with which we are concerned that the notice refers which Ptolemy, the geographer, has fortunately preserved for us from the account of a Macedonian trader whose agents had actually travelled along it. It led from Bactria, the present Balkh, past the northern rim of the Pamirs along the Alai valley, and thence down to Kashgar.
• Reprinted (with the omission of a few paragraphs) from The Himalayan Journal, vol. IV, 1932, with the kind permission of the author and of the Editor of that journal. The skotch-map illustrating Sir Aurel's paper was prepared by the Editor, E.J.
I See Geographical Journal, 1925, pp. 377-403, 473-98.