The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s5.230

c10.s5.230

There remains one country yet to notice, Ferghana (Ta-yuan), which had formed part of the kingdom of Euthydemus (p. 83 and App. 10). It was the first ‘western country’ which Chang-k’ien reached after escaping from the Hiung-nu; he found⁷ a settled agricultural land like Bactria with ‘walled towns’ and ‘postal roads’, where the people made wine from grapes and stored it for years, and from which the vine and the alfalfa were subsequently brought to China. His account, as given by Ssu-ma Ch'ien, is however not at all clear as to the political position in Ta-yuan; he may have passed through in a hurry, as he was only ten days distant from the Hiung-nu and may have felt unsafe till he could reach the Yueh-chi; but his statement that the people shoot arrows on horse-back is inconsistent with a purely agricultural land of the Ta-hia type, and the parallel passage in the Ch'ien-han-shu, which reproduces exactly the same account, makes it clear that there was a nomad people (or a people of ex-nomads) superimposed upon and ruling the agricultural population;¹ and in 106–101 the king of Ferghana bore the Saca name Mu-ku'a² (Mauakes-Maues, see p. 496).