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The Tribute Trade with Khotan in Light of Materials Found at the Dunhuang Library Cave

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The Tribute Trade with Khotan in Light of Materials Found at the Dunhuang Library Cave The Tribute Trade with Khotan in Light of Materials Found at the Dunhuang Library Cave V ALERIE HANSEN yale university, new haven Historians have long been interested in the Chi- one jade tablet and one box.”3 This is but one of nese tributary system because of its importance a dozen instances on which Khotanese envoys to understanding China’s relations with other brought tribute to the Chinese between 938 and countries—both in the past and today. Many of 1009.4 In each case, the Chinese sources record today’s intractable foreign policy issues had their the date, the name of the country presenting trib- roots in the tribute system. One has only to think ute, the item presented, and occasionally the of Tibet—was it a part of China during the Qing name of the emissary heading the delegation. dynasty? independent? something in between?— None of these sources, though, records how the to grasp the importance of the topic. participants viewed these exchanges. Nor do we Most studies of the tribute system have focused learn what they received in return for their gifts. on periods like the Qing dynasty (1644–1911) For this information, we must look to the Chi- when China was united and its weaker neigh- nese- and Khotanese-language documents pre- bors presented gifts to the emperor in the capital. served in the library cave of Dunhuang (cave 17 Northwest China in the ninth and tenth centu- according to the numbering in use today) and ries offers a promising comparison because the taken to the United Kingdom, France, and Russia Tang central government, ravaged by the costs of in the early years of the twentieth century. One suppressing the An Lushan rebellion (755–763), set of documents—about the travails of a tribute- was weak, so weak in fact that Khotan and the bearing mission that included seven princes—is Uighur khanates referred to the local rulers in particularly informative about relations between Dunhuang as “China” and often sent envoys Khotan and its neighbors in the ninth and tenth bearing tribute only as far as Dunhuang.1 Even in centuries. More specifically: we will ask what these times of intermittent warfare, the regional was the purpose and nature of the tribute trade? powers of the northwest continued to exchange Who was traveling on the overland trade routes emissaries. Anyone assessing the considerable at this time? Why? risks has to wonder why. These Khotanese documents have been trans- Those hoping to understand the tribute system lated, often several times, and thoroughly anno- in any period face a major obstacle in the Chinese- tated by Khotanologists, facilitating their use for language sources: most of the surviving record those, like myself, who do not read Khotanese.5 consists of terse entries originally composed by This essay does not presume to date these docu- bureaucrats for other bureaucrats.2 These are pre- ments, a problem that has defied solution by the served in the official histories and other docu- greatest Khotanologists of the twentieth century. ment collections. To cite a typical example: “On The closing section, though, offers a translation the fourth day of the twelfth month [of the sec- of a revealing letter from members of the royal ond year of the Jianlong reign, or 961] the king of household living in Dunhuang to the Khotanese Khotan Li Shengtian sent an emissary to present princess and prime minister. Building on it, this 37 hansen: The Tribute Trade with Khotan section will speculate why so many Khotanese that the envoys played a key role because they documents were placed in cave 17.6 reported on the military strength of different rul- When the trade between Khotan and the Uighur ers.12 In another report, the Khotanese envoys khanate of Ganzhou (modern Zhangye, Gansu) themselves allude to this role: “And we began to had been suspended for ten years (either in the late collect [information], but again we thought, It is ninth or mid-tenth century), the kaghan wrote to impolitic and we did not any more collect it the king of Khotan. From a historical point of here.”13 Although they stopped actively gather- view, the exact date of the letters does not matter ing information, their report to the Khotanese too much because the earlier date (in the 890s)7 king still included much detail about Dunhuang and the later date of 9668 fall into the same period and Ganzhou. in Dunhuang history: that of Chinese rule be- Not surprisingly, the documents have much tween 848 and 1036, when the Xixia army de- more to say about trade than gathering intelli- feated the Cao-family forces. After more than gence. Writing after a ten-year gap in which the seventy years as part of the Tibetan empire, Dun- Uighurs and Khotan did not exchange envoys, the huang came under the rule of a Chinese general Uighur kaghan hopes to persuade the Khotanese named Zhang Yichao in 848, and his nephew and to resume trade and so describes it in glowing grandson continued to rule to sometime around terms. The different documents about the seven 914. The Returning-to-Righteousness (Guiyijun) princes, though, convey a very different picture of government ruled Dunhuang during the waning Silk Road exchanges at the time. All the goods years of the Tang dynasty, which formally col- mentioned are locally made, and none of the lapsed in 907. Even before then, though, the cen- documents refers to coins.14 ter was very weak, and Dunhuang was all but We must remember that the peak years of the independent. Sometime around 920, a second Silk Road trade, between 500 and 800, have passed. family, the Caos, took over from the Zhangs. At that time, contracts from Turfan and Kucha The Cao family governed for more than a cen- regularly give prices in Sasanian silver coins (pos- tury, and their rule overlapped with that of the sibly Sogdian replicas),15 Kucha coins, and Chi- Song dynasty, founded in 960 in China. Some- nese bronze coins.16 The An Lushan rebellion of time around 1036, the Xixia Tanguts conquered 755 forced the Chinese central government to Dunhuang, and the region remained under non- withdraw its annual subsidies of coins and bolts Chinese rule through the twelfth, thirteenth, and of silk for the armies stationed in the northwest. fourteenth centuries. The consequences were immediate. We do not know the original language of the The differences between Turfan and Dunhuang Uighur kaghan’s letter. He may have written in contracts are striking: at Dunhuang in the ninth his native Uighur, or in Chinese or Tibetan, both and tenth centuries purchasers exchange silk or serving as diplomatic languages at the time. The grain, weighed in fixed amounts, to purchase or Khotanese translators, who viewed the document rent land or to buy animals.17 In their magiste- as the equivalent of a haßÎi communication (usu- rial survey of contracts from Dunhuang, Yama- ally from an inferior to a superior),9 rendered the moto Tatsuro and Ikeda On explain: “That the letter: “(I) the Khan (of Kamcu) have so made a Dunhuang contracts provide evidence of the dis- haßÎi,10 stating, the country has for some reason continuation of the use of money is a fact that been destroyed.” The word “country,” Bailey ex- cannot be overlooked. From the period of Ti- plains, refers to the intercourse and diplomatic betan control onward, money was not used in contact between the two countries of Khotan and this region, the media for disbursement being Dunhuang. In the past, the letter continues, when grain or cloth.”18 In 788–790 the financial rec- relations were “good on both sides,” the king of ords of a storehouse at Dunhuang referred to Khotan “used to send to the Kamcu [Ganzhou] coins; this was the latest Chinese-language men- land for the Khan the favour of many various tion of coins known to date.19 Tibetan-language wonderful things.”11 contracts, most likely from the period of Tibetan In focusing on trade, the kaghan does not bring occupation 786–848, confirm the decline in the up another benefit of sending delegations to visit circulation of coins: with only a few mentions of other rulers: the information that they brought dmar, the Tibetan word for “copper,” which may back. Zhang Guangda and Rong Xinjiang note refer to bronze coins, the contracts record ex- 38 hansen: The Tribute Trade with Khotan changes in grain and cloth. It is possible that metal, incense and other aromatics, furs, animals, some Chinese coins, perhaps those minted before ceramics, and precious stones. Some, like the furs, 755, continued to circulate in the ninth and are obviously of local manufacture, but the origin tenth centuries, but the region’s economy had be- of others is more difficult to determine because come essentially demonetized.20 no physical specimens survive. When Yamamoto and Ikeda say “money,” they We might call this the French fry problem.28 mean coins. Yet if we adopt a broader, and more Was the Iranian powder (hufen !", a pigment commonly accepted, definition of money as a used for make-up and painting) that appears in so store of wealth, fixed measures of grain and fixed many Dunhuang documents actually from Iran? lengths of cloth sometimes served as “money” at Or did the people living in Dunhuang call it “Ira- Dunhuang.21 Contracts from Dunhuang often give nian” because the item had once originated from the dimensions of each piece of cloth, and in the Iran? Travelers could conceivably have carried tenth century parties to a transaction occasion- powder overland from Iran, because it was light, ally sketched the piece of cloth in question on but “Iranian locks” (husuo !#) were heavy and, the back of the contract.
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