The Greeks in Bactria and India c10.s5.58

c10.s5.58

His Report to the emperor on the western countries which he discovered, and the use made of it by Ssu-ma Ch’ien and Pan-ku, are noticed in Appendix 20. But, though Ssu-ma Ch’ien professedly gives his Report, the question arises how far the Report so given is really Chang-k’ien’s own, and I have not succeeded in finding any study of this subject.¹ Pan-ku says that the subordinates whom Chang-k’ien sent out from the Wu-sun country in 115 did not get back to China till after his death;² Chang-k’ien’s Report therefore should only contain such information as he acquired in 128. But it is certain that the Report *as we have it* in Ssu-ma Ch’ien includes information obtained in 115. In 128 the great Saca invasion of Parthia was in full swing.³ But in the Report An-si (Parthia) is bounded on the north by the An-tsai (Aorsi)⁴ who lay round the Aral northward and eastward; this means that Parthia was suzerain of the whole Massagetae country up to the Aral and the lower Oxus, which was only the case from the time when Mithridates II (who became king in 124) had overcome the invasion to his death in 87 B.C. Again, in the Report Merv is Parthian;⁵ but in 128 it was in the hands of the Saca invaders, and was never Parthian till, as part of the liquidation of the invasion, it was taken for Mithridates II by the Suren who struck the ‘campaign’ coins (p. 499), again later than 124. Finally, the Report says that the people of Parthia wrote on parchment in horizontal lines;⁶ this looks like the observation of an eye-witness, but Chang-k’ien himself never saw Parthia. If then Pan-ku be right about Chang-k’ien’s lieutenants, Ssu-ma Ch’ien has supplemented the Report himself and included in it information obtained in 115. But it will be noticed that all the above instances relate to Parthia alone, which Chang-k’ien never visited but which by the time Ssu-ma Ch’ien is supposed to have written had become very important to China on account of the through trade. It does not follow therefore that Ssu-ma Ch'ien did more than supplement the An-si section; and the things which matter to Greek history, the accounts of Ta-hia and Ta-yuan, I have taken—I have found nothing to the contrary—to represent Chang-k'ien's own observation.