The Early History of India, from 600 B.C. to the Muhammadan Conquest, including the Invasion of Alexander the Great c28.43

c28.43

The embassy of Chang-kien² in 125–115 B. C. to the Yüe-chi, while they still resided in Sogdiana to the north of the Oxus, had brought the western barbarians into touch with the Middle Kingdom, and for a century and a quarter the emperors of China kept up intercourse with the Scythian powers. In the year A. D. 8 official relations ceased, and when the first Han dynasty came to an end in A. D. 23, Chinese influence in the western countries had been reduced to nothing. Fifty years later Chinese ambition reasserted itself, and for a period of thirty years, from A. D. 73 to 102, General Pan-chao led an army from victory to victory, nearly as far as the confines of the Roman empire,³ and thus effected the greatest westward extension ever attained by the power of China. The king of Khotan, who had first made his submission in A. D. 73, was followed by several other princes, including the king of Kāshgar, and the route to the west along the southern edge of the desert was thus opened to the arms and commerce of China. The reduction of Kuchā and Karashahr in A. D. 94 similarly threw open the northern road.