News from Ancient Afghanistan.....5 Rather Than Attempt to Comment Part of an Elite but Non-Royal • Prof
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Volume 4 Number 2 Winter 2006-2007 “The Bridge between Eastern and Western Cultures” In This Issue From the Editor • News from ancient Afghanistan.....5 Rather than attempt to comment part of an elite but non-royal • Prof. Tarzi’s 2006 excavations at here on every article in this issue residence? What is depicted? Is Bamiyan ..............................10 of our journal, let me share with the whole iconography connected • A visit to the region of historic you some thoughts inspired by with celebration of Nauruz? Is it Balkh.................................. 27 reading two important new books abstract and symbolic or rather • A new interpretation of the Afrasiab which are closely related to certain related to a very specific political murals.................................32 of our contributions. In the first situation? Is the Chinese scene on • Mapping Buddhist sites in Western volume, Royal Nauruz in the north wall a specific depiction Tibet ...................................43 Samarkand, the eminent scholar of court culture in China or simply • Han lacquerware in Xiongnu Prof. Frantz Grenet begins his emblematic of a Chinese prin- graves..................................48 essay with the statement: ‘A cess’s having been sent off as a • Ming-Timurid relations as recorded positive side to the so-called bride to Central Asia? It is certainly in Chinese sources ................54 ‘Ambassador’s painting’ at interesting that at least one • Hunting hounds along the Silk Samarkand is that we shall never contributor (Markus Mode) Road....................................60 fully understand it…This means explicitly disagrees with the • An interview with Kyrgyz epic that research on this painting will premise about Nauruz which is singers.................................65 never stop and this is excellent embodied in the volume’s title. news, as this research had many While the consensus dating for the repercussions on the knowledge paintings now has been narrowed Next Issue of Sogdian history and art’ (p. 43). to the 7th century, scholars cannot Indeed, as most of our articles in agree whether we might be • A focus on food along the Silk Roads, The Silk Road this time remind us, looking at the late 640s or, say, with articles by Terrie Chrones, Darra we live in a world of new the early 660s. Each choice has Goldstein, Paul Buell, Debra McCown, discoveries, if one marked by sad some plausible arguments in its Dru Gladney and Nancy Chen.... reminders of what has been lost favor. Or, take the Sogdian • The latest on Xiongnu archaeology or is under the threat of inscriptions on the murals, destruction or theft. Were we to published in a new reading in this • Trade routes in Anatolia second-guess history, we might volume by Vladimir Livshits. When .... and more ask, for example, what if the were they written? Do they record bulldozer in 1965 had not torn off merely formulae and inter- the top of the hall with the pretation of the imagery by those About ‘Ambassador’s painting?’ Would who could not have witnessed the it eventually have been properly scene it depicts? The Silk Road is a semi-annual publi- excavated with enough more cation of the Silkroad Foundation. The One can readily obtain a visual intact to answer some of the now Silk Road can also be viewed on-line impression of the scholarly unanswerable questions which are at <http://www. silkroadfoundation. disagreements by comparing the org>. Please feel free to contact us inviting such ingenious solutions various reconstructions of the with any questions or contributions. as the one proposed below by murals on the west wall of the hall, Guidelines for contributors may be Matteo Compareti, who organized the wall that arguably held the found in Vol. 2, No. 1 (June 2004) on the conference in which Grenet central imagery, since it faced the the website. and the other experts par- entrance to the room. Since only ticipated? The Silkroad Foundation the lower part of the wall survived P.O. Box 2275 The conference reports in Royal the ravages of time and the Saratoga, CA. 95070 Nauruz are fascinating reading in bulldozer, within certain limits part precisely because the authors imposed by the rest of the Editor: Daniel C. Waugh [email protected] do not always (and probably never imagery, the scholar is free to will) agree on some of the most imagine what was in the upper © 2007 Silkroad Foundation important issues. Was the hall register. A number of key issues © 2007 by authors of individual ar- with the mural part of a palace or are at play here. One basic and ticles and holders of copyright, as specified, to individual images. perhaps somewhat surprising one Part of the challenge here is to bet that the articles in it which will is that most of the interpretations balance the inventiveness of hold up best with time are those which have been advanced are modern scholars in finding which are the narrowest in their based on an imperfect publication analogies and sources for the focus on specific details: Etsuko of the surviving evidence. As Irina imagery with the realities of the Kageyama’s careful comparison of Arzhantseva and Olga Inevatkina preserved evidence and what to details of coiffure and garments note in their paper, the earliest moderns are the opaque world of the Chinese women with drawings of the paintings views and knowledge of the recently discovered depictions in contained many errors and creators of the paintings. I think early Tang tombs; Valentina omitted significant detail. The no one nowadays would err on the Raspopova’s examination of more precise drawings undertaken side of underestimating the weaponry with her interesting during restoration work in 1978 complexities of Sogdian culture, observations on the fact that to a have remained largely unknown which embraced Iranian, Central degree the artists did not always and still need to be properly and Asian, Indian and other elements. match weapons to the ethnicity of fully published. The two scholars Indeed, what meticulous scho- the individuals in the paintings; document the value of those 1978 larship is determining is how wide- the previously mentioned article drawings with a number of spread certain motifs seem to by Arzhantseva and Inevatkina; examples (and, one might add, have been, even if they have and Alix Barbet’s technical study the volume as a whole is valuable survived to this day in scattered of the painting technique. That for its extensive illustration). locations only in isolated and said, Grenet surely is right about fragmentary examples. Might the stimulation provided by the there not be a danger though of uncertainty concerning what we As presumably any of the imposing a rationality and system know. That stimulation is specialists should admit, the on the Samarkand paintings which abundantly evident in Matteo challenges of ‘reconstruction,’ they do not merit? And might Compareti’s article which we which perforce involves inter- there not be a danger of publish below: if his conclusion pretation, and other kinds of exaggerating the complexities? would be accepted, it could indeed analysis based on that which has The late Boris Marshak’s help to explain some of the been reconstructed embody some contribution to this volume (which puzzling details of the real dangers. For example, has been dedicated to his ‘Ambassador’s painting.’ François Ory’s explanation for his memory) is noteworthy for his reconstruction drawings (see Figs. opening admission that he had While a volume such as Royal 1-3, p. 91) should give everyone been wrong in some of his earlier Nauruz is a landmark publication pause. A lot of his detail derives analysis and for his insistence that pulling together both what is from his reading of the other justly too many of the other interpretive known and what is hypothesized famous set of Sogdian paintings, schemes are at odds with the and posing questions for future those at Panjikent. Yet, as Étienne archaeological evidence from research, the volume indirectly de la Vaissière pointedly notes (p. Sogdiana, evidence which most suggests another kind of 153; he is commenting on Boris would agree he knew better than desideratum for the success of Marshak’s interpretation of the any other person. While of course that research. Extensive as the murals, not on Ory’s recon- he may not be right, Marshak literature now is on the struction), ‘The painting of shows what I would call a salutary Samarkand paintings (and, of Samarkand is not that of skepticism, for example, in regard course, many of the other Panjikent.’ Might one not respond to reading too much out of the important bodies of material to de la Vaissière, who seems to Sogdian inscriptions on the unearthed along the Silk Road), prefer for the west wall imagery a paintings. It is worth remembering much of it is not readily accessible. variant where the upper register one basic rule of argument, which Markus Mode and the Franco- is based on a relief on a Sogdian is that the chain of evidence is only Uzbek Archaeological Mission funeral couch from China (see his as strong as each of its links. I headed by Frantz Grenet are to be fig. 3, p. 158), that ‘The painting think part of what Marshak is commended for their publication of Samarkand is not Sogdian getting at is that tendency to want of materials on the Internet. carved reliefs from China’? Is the to construct an edifice of ‘proof’ Imagine the benefit were they to key and now lost image in the mainly out of unproven assum- coordinate efforts and begin upper register the Goddess Nana, ptions, at least some of which end systematically to post to one or the Sogdian ruler Varkhuman, or up becoming ‘accepted fact.’ the other website digital copies of the Turk khaghan or some the scholarly literature that is alternative configuration of the It is hard to know how we may often published in books or last two? Choose one and a whole respond to this volume when we journals unavailable in most skein of alternative reasoning re-examine it in five or ten years, libraries.