days. When they departed they left their packs, which were then retrieved by
the people of Thina. What the Sesatai received in return is not mentioned.
The longest and most circuitous of these ancient routes originated in
Sichuan and ran south into Yunnan, then through the great gorges of Burma
to Assam, then due west into Bengal and up the Ganges Valley into
Afghanistan. In some places on this route, goods had to be carried over paths
carved into the sides of mountains. The Chinese government had no inkling
of this trade until an emissary sent to Central Asia in the second centuryBCE
made a startling discovery:“‘When I was in Daxia [Bactria, today northern
Afghanistan], I noticed the bamboo staves of Qiong and the cloth of Shu
[Sichuan]; when I asked how these had been acquired, the men of Daxia
said:“Our merchants go and buy them in the state of Shengdu [northern
India].”That state lies some thousands of li [one-third of a mile] southeast of
Daxia.’”Of course, Sichuan lay thousands of li beyond Shengdu. When the
Chinese emperor learned of this, he dispatched several missions tofind this
route. All were either attacked and their members killed or became lost
before turning around and heading home. The people who controlled this
trade wanted no competition, especially from a rival with the resources of the
Chinese government. The route faded back into obscurity, where presumably
it continued to exist as long as all the parties along the way were able to earn
an acceptable profit for their efforts.
Commercial economy in China was given a great boost during the Late
Zhou, a time known as the Period of the Warring States (403– 221 BCE),
when the authority of the central government collapsed and regional states
struggled to determine which one would reunify the country. Intense com-
petition among the states stimulated growth, a process aided by the coming
of iron technology and the introduction of coinage. Great opportunities
became available for large-scale merchants as recounted by Sima Qian:“Lu
Buwei was an important merchant from Yangdi. As he traveled about, he
bought cheap and sold dear, and his household amassed a fortune.”Through
his wealth and power Lu Buwei rose to become chief minister of the state of
Qin, which eventually emerged as the victor among the warring states. Part
of the reason for Qin’s success was that it was the westernmost of the states
and controlled much of the trade with Central Asia. Once China was reuni-
fied, thefirst emperor, Qin Shihuangdi, introduced a series of centralizing
measures, some of which aided commerce, including the improvement of
roads and canals; the standardization of weights, measures, and axle widths
of wheeled vehicles; and the consolidation of commercial laws.
The Qin dynasty was short-lived (221– 206 BCE), being replaced by the
much longer lasting Han dynasty (202BCE– 220 CE), whose official ideology
became Confucianism. In theAnalects, Confucius is reported to have said:
“The mind of the superior man dwells on righteousness; the mind of a little
man dwells on profit.”Those who were in a position to set the social canon
in China, the aristocracy, saw it convenient to devalue the role of trade and
From the Jade Road to the Silk Road 123