The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s5.235

c10.s5.235

¹ Hirth p. 103 §79. ² The first of the two poems given by Ssu-ma Ch’ien (below, n. 6), apparently in Wu-ti’s reign. ³ Hirth p. 102 §73. ⁴ Ib. p. 103 §79; so Wylie p. 70 (from the Life). ⁵ Ib. ⁶ For the two poems see Chavannes’ translation, Les mémoires historiques de Se-ma Ts’ien III pp. 236-7. It is the second poem (not the first, as Chavannes thought) which is Wu-ti’s, as Ssu-ma Ch’ien shows clearly by Ki-Yen’s remark. But this poem must be in or before 112, when Ki-Yen died (see Chavannes’ note); therefore the first of the Ferghana horses reached China in or before 112 (‘Le cheval céleste est arrivé’), and this confirms the version which I have adopted; Chavannes, in transferring the Ki-Yen incident from the second poem to the first, was misled by the belief that no Ferghana horses came till 101. It does not appear that the horse whose apparition is the subject of the first poem (‘Le cheval céleste est descendu’) was ever brought to Wu-ti at all; it was merely part of the ‘heavenly horse’ legend. ⁷ Tarn op. cit. App. II. ⁸ Hirth p. 109 §105. ⁹ Hirth’s spelling. Other versions have been Eul-che and Ni-se; de Groot calls it Dsi-su. Identified in later Chinese writings with Uratube.