79 replies to this topic

[warlordgeneral]

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Edited by warlordgeneral, 31 March 2013 - 02:50 AM.

[Yun]

According to the Xin Tangshu, the Nine Clans were Kang (Samarkand), An (Bukhara), Cao, Shi2 (Tashkent), Mi, He, Huoxun, Wudi, and Shi4 (Kesh). All that it says about their remote origins is that the king of Kang was descended from the Yuezhi, and that his ancestors had lived in a city called Zhaowu north of the Qilian mountains (i.e. on the Gansu Corridor, the old homeland of the Yuezhi) before being defeated by the Turkut/Tujue (this is an error - it should be the Xiongnu) and forced to migrate to the Pamirs. The eight other clans were established by princes of the Kang. These Nine Clans are also known to us as the Sogdians.

The above info is from Xin Tangshu Chapter 221 part 2, "The Western Regions Part 2". It is quite possible that the Sogdian claim to descent from the Yuezhi is derived purely from local lore, and not from any reliable records from the Western Han. During the Western Han, the region later known as Sogdiana was comprised of city-states under very different names from those of the Zhaowu Clans, and was divided between the control of Ferghana (Dawan, later conquered by Han) and Kangju. The new Yuezhi/Kushan kingdom lay slightly to the southwest, in Bactria (northern Afghanistan).

[warlordgeneral]

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Edited by warlordgeneral, 31 March 2013 - 02:42 AM.

[Yun]

So the claim that the Sogdians are the descendants of the Nine Clans as stated in the Xin Tang Shu is most likely incorrect, right? But is the claim that the existence of these Nine Clans as originally clans of the Yuezhi a fabrication as well or can it be verified as a likely possibility?

No, what I meant is that the Nine Clans of Zhaowu are indeed the Sogdians, but their claim of direct descent from the Yuezhi is not completely credible. Between the time of the Yuezhi migration and the emergence of the Sogdians (in the late Han), the area that they inhabited was actually divided between Kangju, Ferghana (later annexed by Han), and Kushana (which expanded in the Eastern Han to include southern Sogdiana). So the Sogdians have as much likelihood of descent from Kangju or Ferghana as from the Da Yuezhi, and even if they were of Yuezhi descent, it would be due to a re-migration northwards from Kushana, rather than as remnants of the original great Yuezhi migration.

Also, what is a better way to type in English that you'd suggest to use to distinguish between the two Shi's (2 and 4 I assume are convenient ways on your part to indicate the different characters for the 2 Shi's? or am I wrong on this and that the numbers are actually ways in pinyin to distinguish between two different characters with the same pinyin transliteration?) Or should I just stick with Shi2 and Shi4?

The 2 and 4 are actually to indicate the tone of the character in Mandarin hanyu pinyin. I'm afraid i was mistaken about Shi4 - it should actually be Shi3. Snowybeagle is able to use the standard tone markings for his pinyin, but he does that by first typing the character out in Chinese and then using a program to render it in Hanyu Pinyin. You could try looking for symbols on Microsoft Word under the Insert menu - they usually have equivalents of letters with the tone markings, e.g. shí for Shi2 using the symbol í. However, Shi3 can come out only as shǐ even though it looks OK in MS Word - a problem that has frustrated Snowybeagle too.

BTW I've come across several secondary sources suggesting that the Qilian Mountains were actually the Tianshan mountains, basing this suggestion on the idea that the term "Qilian" in Qilian Mountains has a Tocharian etymology associated with "heaven". If this is true, then it would totally throw off the location of Zhaowu as originally being in the Gansu corridor and would place Zhaowu somewhere in Jungaria. Do you agree with this interpretation?

While the Qilian Mountains were already established in the Sui-Tang period as being what they are today, they were known to the Yuezhi in the pre-Han period as the Tianshan. So you've got it backwards - the Yuezhi Tianshan was the later Qilian Mountains, rather than the Yuezhi Qilian being the later Tianshan Mountains.

[snowybeagle]

However, Shi3 can come out only as shǐ even though it looks OK in MS Word - a problem that has frustrated Snowybeagle too.

Someone mentioned moi?

Okay, I found a solution to the i3 : ĭ.

In fact, the following are all the 3rd consonants which I need to type separately : ă ĕ ĭ ŏ ŭ by using MS Word "insert symbol" from (normal text) font, Subset : Latin Extended-A set.

Most of the time, I use the website http://www.mandarint...hardict_u8.html to get the hanyüpinyin renderisation, copy&paste, and then replace those characters which come up as ǐ with the above.

It's a real tedious process which slowed me down a lot during translations, but I persist as much as far as possible because I realise my pronounciation sucks (so I better learn) and it helps to distinguish different characters with similar hanyüpinyin.

[MengTzu]

Most students of Chinese history are familiar with the phrase "Wuhu Luanhua" - Five "Hu" (barbarian peoples) Overrunning China. It's used to describe the rebellions by various non-Han groups (commonly mistakenly termed as "invasions") in the early 4th century that toppled the Western Jin dynasty and brought on nearly three centuries of north-south division.

So where are the descendants of these five ethnicities today?

[General_Zhaoyun]

So where are the descendants of these five ethnicities today?

They have disappeared into history...the Xianbei were sinificized into 'han-chinese'. As for Xiongnu, there was the theory that they ended up as "hun" in Europe, some who migrated into China were also sinificized.

As for Qiang, it was believed that they were the ancestors of Tubo, who were in turn the Tibetans themselves.

I do not know what happened to the other 2 'hu'.

[Yun]

The north Chinese elite in the Tang dynasty were by and large a hybrid product of intermarriage and cultural fusion between the Xiongnu, Xianbei, Qiang, Di, Jie, and Han. It's too simple to say that the five "hu" were absorbed and assimilated into the "Han" and disappeared, because the Tang people were not ethnically the same as the Han people. "Han" did not take on its current ethnological meaning until the Qing dynasty. If the "hu" have disappeared into history, so have the "Han" of the Han dynasty.

The Qiang who stayed in Tibet and Qinghai are one of the ancestors of the Tibetans, but the Tuyuhun (who were a branch of the Xianbei) are also part of the Tibetan ancestry. To complicate things further, the Tanguts of the Xi-xia were known as a branch of the Qiang, but they were originally ruled by a family called the Tuoba, which is the same name as the Xianbei ruling family of the Northern Wei.

Anyway, there is still a Qiang ethnicity in Sichuan, but how closely related it is to the original Qiang is a question that anthropologists and ethnologists are still debating.

[DuncanHead]

No, what I meant is that the Nine Clans of Zhaowu are indeed the Sogdians, but their claim of direct descent from the Yuezhi is not completely credible. Between the time of the Yuezhi migration and the emergence of the Sogdians (in the late Han), the area that they inhabited was actually divided between Kangju, Ferghana (later annexed by Han), and Kushana (which expanded in the Eastern Han to include southern Sogdiana). So the Sogdians have as much likelihood of descent from Kangju or Ferghana as from the Da Yuezhi, and even if they were of Yuezhi descent, it would be due to a re-migration northwards from Kushana, rather than as remnants of the original great Yuezhi migration.

I presume you are talking here solely of the ruling families of the Soghdian cities? The Soghdian people themselves had been there since the Achaemenid period (and no doubt before that), they didn't "emerge" in the Han period.

[MengTzu]

The north Chinese elite in the Tang dynasty were by and large a hybrid product of intermarriage and cultural fusion between the Xiongnu, Xianbei, Qiang, Di, Jie, and Han. It's too simple to say that the five "hu" were absorbed and assimilated into the "Han" and disappeared, because the Tang people were not ethnically the same as the Han people. "Han" did not take on its current ethnological meaning until the Qing dynasty. If the "hu" have disappeared into history, so have the "Han" of the Han dynasty.

Would you say that the modern day "Han" ethnicity is a misnomer and is actually a mix of Xianbei, original Han, Qiang, etc.?

[warlordgeneral]

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Edited by warlordgeneral, 31 March 2013 - 02:43 AM.

[warlordgeneral]

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Edited by warlordgeneral, 31 March 2013 - 02:44 AM.

[Yun]

Are you sure about "the Qilian Mountains were already established in the Sui-Tang period as being what they are today" or that the Qilian Mountains mentioned in the Xin Tang Shu were not based off of the old location attributed to the Qilian Mountains like during Han times? If the Xin Tang Shu was confused about the Jie's origins as being Yuezhi rather than Sogdian, don't you think it's possible that the Xin Tang Shu, when attempting to elaborate on history over more than half a millenium ago than the period they were writing about, may have confused their new designated location of the Qilian Mountains with the old location of the place name of Han times?

The basis for my statement was the generally authoritative classic "Historical Atlas of China" edited by Tan Qixiang, which shows the Qilian as being called the Tianshan during the period of Yuezhi settlement, and being called the Qilian during the Sui and Tang periods. However, I acknowledge that the issue is probably not as settled academically as Tan Qixiang's atlas seems to convey. I have another tidbit that might intrigue you further. The Xin Tangshu writes that the Yuezhi "moved slightly south" from the north of the Qilian mountains to the region of the Pamirs during their migration. A look at the map will show that the Pamirs are actually due west of today's Qilian, but they are indeed "slightly south" of the Tianshan. So did the Xin Tangshu really get confused about a Sogdian legend mentioning the "Qilian", and located these "Qilian" mountains at the Qilian of Tang times, when they were actually the Tianshan?

I presume you are talking here solely of the ruling families of the Soghdian cities? The Soghdian people themselves had been there since the Achaemenid period (and no doubt before that), they didn't "emerge" in the Han period.

I'd certainly agree that the Sogdian ethnicity existed in the area of Sogdiana by that time, since it was encountered by Alexander's army. What I meant was indeed the Sogdian city-states, which did not exist in Western Han times and probably only became prominent in the late Eastern Han. The Yuezhi controlled Sogdiana when passing through on their way to Bactria, but the Sogdians were already there before them, so it makes no sense to trace Sogdian ancestry to the Yuezhi - although it is possible the King of Samarkand, from whom the other city-state kings were supposedly descended, was a Yuezhi. Thanks for the clarification.

[warlordgeneral]

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Edited by warlordgeneral, 31 March 2013 - 02:44 AM.

[warlordgeneral]

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Edited by warlordgeneral, 31 March 2013 - 02:48 AM.