The Greeks in Bactria and India c22.25

c22.25

It will be seen that I follow the opinion which, prior to Professor Herzfeld’s Sakastan, was universally held, that Chang-k’ien’s Ta-yuan was Ferghana (though, as will appear, it was larger than Ferghana proper), as Ta-yuan admittedly is in Chinese literature from the fourth century A.D. onwards.⁶ Herzfeld however has argued⁷ that Chang-k’ien meant by *his* Ta-yuan not Ferghana but the Pamirs; but though he has rightly pointed out elsewhere that what Chang-k’ien saw and what he heard are different things, he has here omitted what Chang-k’ien saw in Ta-yuan and has based his argument solely on the relative positions by points of the compass which Chang-k’ien gives for the several peoples he mentions, a thing over which a stranger in a strange and unknown world might easily make mistakes; indeed if one considers the mistakes made by Ptolemy, with all the sources of information which he had at his disposal,⁸ it would be extraordinary if Chang-k’ien had *not* made any. And when Chang-k’ien put the Yueh-chi west of Ta-yuan⁹ (which is what Herzfeld is going on) he did just make a mistake (or Ssu-ma Ch'ien made one in transcribing his Report); this is shown clearly enough by Pan-ku, who in transcribing the same passage quietly corrected 'west' to 'south-west' or 'south',¹ and this is one of those cases in which the later historian, who had at his disposal much new information collected by Chinese envoys and caravans, is bound to be right.