west turkestan 323West Turkestan.
On May 23, 743, Emperor Hsüan-tsung requested information on
the location of foreign countries. Part of the report of the Herald
concerned with West Turkestan is preserved in the T’ang hui-yao 100:
21a-22b. It mentions seven of the seventeen states which have sections
of their own in the histories and encyclopaedias, as well as others
which are now obscure. Distances are given in day journeys or in
Chinese miles (li), based on contemporary maps.
The Chinese sources refer to the states of West Turkestan by Chinese
names. While their locations, with two exceptions, can be established
with a fair degree of certainty, their equivalent West Asian names are
a different matter. Some of the towns have existed under changing
names until today. Some have disappeared, but their ancient names
are known. In other cases, only the Chinese names are preserved. If
their ancient territories were situated between modern places, it is
a matter of conjecture by which names they should be referred to.
It is nevertheless better, wherever possible, to attempt rough West
Asian correlations so that the geography can be more easily visual-
ized (map.9).
Emperor Yang of Sui (r.605-618), eager to establish relations with
foreign countries and doing just as he had done in the maritime
south, sent two envoys to West Turkestan. These were the Attending
Secretary Wei Chieh and the Attendant of the Director of the Retain-
ers Tu Hsing-man. When they returned to Ch’ang-an, they brought
carnelian cups, Buddhist sutras, ten dancing girls, and asbestos (Pei
shih 97:3a-3b).
Ferghana
The Chinese name for this state was P’o-han.^1 It was situated at the
upper Syr-Darya, between Kokand and Andizhan, with Ferghana
between them (map 9).
Between 605 and 617, envoys from Ferghana to the Sui court offered
(^1) Wen-hsien t’ung-k’ao 338:47b calls it Chin-han.