Richard N. Frye ANCIENT CENTRAL ASIAN GENERALITIES
When one is old, details of digging a site, deciphering an almost illegible inscription, or checking dozens of references for a fact in an article, all become difficult. That is why at that stage in life, it is usually not a new discovery but an application of years of experience to certain problems which occupies one.
Boris Anatolyevich is an historian as well as an archeologist, and I, as an historian wish to dedicate this unworthy morsel to many years of our close relationship. Boris was not only a life saver for my family in Dushanbe in 1991, but he and Elena also made our stays in Moscow memorable. May he long continue to enlighten us with his many and informative writings.Here I wish to summarize a number of disparate items about the ancient past of Central Asia.
1. The first subject is a general outlook on the relations between the settled people of the oases of Central Asia and the pastoralists, who were either simply shepherds or true nomads. The domestication of the horse on the grasslands of south Russia in the third, or even earlier millennium provided a means whereby pastoralists were able to control large numbers of animals over greater distances than on foot. It may be proposed that at first horses were attached to wagons but surely by the end of the second millennium B.C., if not earlier, horses also were ridden. Horse bits and bridles found in kurgans indicate that horseback riding was practiced, of course without stirrups. In ancient Babylonian cuneiform texts the horse is called the “ass of the east”, which tells us that horses were rare and they came from the Iranian plateau to the Mesopotamian lowlands. It would be natural to assume that horses were used to herd sheep and cattle, but there is no evidence that in this early period nomadism, such as we know among later Scythians/Sakas, Turks and Mongols, existed.
How then did the Indo-European speakers migrate, especially the Indo-Iranians to the south and east in the second millennium B.C.? We learn of warriors on chariots in the Rigveda, Avesta and the Iliad and Odyssey, but no soldiers on horseback, which is strange. It seems reasonable to suggest that the Indo-Iranian speakers moved on foot, or with wagons, but the chiefs only rode chariots because it was unseemly for warriors to mount horses as did the lowly herd keepers. Fashion or modes sometimes last long and have priority over common sense. The elongation of the skulls of the Heph- talite aristocracy, for example, is a mode or fad which was also practiced by other© R.N.Frye, 2001
peoples in Central Asia and the north Caucasus. So the natural assumption that it would be easier and more effective for warriors to ride horses rather than in chariots, does not seem to have applied to the ancient Iranians. From the scarce archaeological evidence we have of ancient clothing it might be supposed that trousers, so helpful for horseback riding, were introduced by the Scythian/Sakas about the eighth century B.C. But again this may have been the fad or style of clothes which promoted horseback riding among warriors, for trousers were not necessary for horseback riding. This suggestion, I submit, is both logical and consistent with the sparse data we have. New discoveries, of course, could change this.
2. Russian archaeologists, such as Elena Kuzmina, have found that the homeland, or the first area of expansion, of the Indo-Iranians or Aryans was in present Kazakhstan, and this is accepted by most scholars dealing with the early history of Central Asia. But there is a problem about the expansion of Indo-European speakers in this part of the world, and that is the place of the centum “Tokharian” speakers of Kucha and Karashahr in Uiguristan, which the Manchu dynasty termed Xinjiang. The last article published by my teacher W.B.Henning addressed this problem.1 He implied, without discussing the matter, that the first Indo-European speakers to move from the north onto the Iranian plateau and Mesopotamia in the third millennium B.C.
were called Guti, and they were the ancestors of the “Tokharians”. In his analysis of several words, which need not be repeated here, he suggests that the Guti were driven out of Mesopotamia and moved east to the Kucha area. In my opinion this is most unlikely, for anyone familiar with the geography of the vast area between the two regions would find it very difficult to postulate a movement so far to the east over deserts and mountains, formidable even for motivated merchants, much less for tribes. Is there an alternative, accepting that the “Tokharians” came to Uiguristan (Xinjiang) in the third or even fourth millennium B.C.?If the “Tokharians” came to their later homeland so early, then they and the Hittites (also centum speakers) would be the oldest Indo-European speakers in Asia. The obvious conclusion is that they both are the earliest peoples, attested by language remains, who broke away from other Indo-Europeans, and since the Guti came into Mesopotamia from the east, it would be rational to propose that one group of the latter went east from the south Russian-Kazakhstan homeland, while another went south into Iran and Mesopotamia. The satem speakers, especially the Aryans, then moved later.
It is dificult to accept the arguments of Ivanov and Gamkrelidze that Anatolia was the homeland of the Indo-Europeans, for the Guti surely came from the east, and we would expect to see much evidence of early Indo-Europeans in Mesopotamia and Syria, the natural places for the earliest expansion.[357][358] Such early Indo- Europeans surely would have inundated the “Fertile Crescent” with little desire to expand eastward over the Iranian plateau. In my opinion, the hypothesis of Anatolia as the homeland of the Indo-Europeans should be rejected. I propose this general sketch as more consistent with the meagre linguistic and archaeological evidence we now have. Obviously more discoveries in the future might change this outlook.
3. To continue with the Indo-Europeans, we surmise that a general means of disposal of the dead was cremation, since this is found with the ancient Greeks, Indians, Vikings and others.
On the other hand, since inhumation and cremation competed with each other since palaeolithic times, as we gather from archaeology, we may suppose that both forms were in use, possibly together or at different times. At an early period some people thought that only the individual spirit was important, not the body, hence cremation. The pre-Islamic Iranians, however, at some time adopted exposure of the bodies to vultures or the elements as a feature of their religion, commonly called Mazdaism, or perhaps more limited to the reform of the ancient religion which we may call Zoroastrianism. The flesh of the dead apparently was not important but the bones were, since they were gathered together and placed in receptacles. When and how concepts of the purity of the elements—fire, air, earth and water—developed is uncertain, but it must have been clear to people who either buried their dead, or exposed them, that only the bones would survive no matter what form of disposition of corpses, other than cremation. Prehistoric shamans believed that they could raise the bones of the dead and somehow restore life, and to the east of Kazakhstan was the abode of shamans par excellence. One may suggest that the Iranians were influenced by the shamans of their neighbors, and in pre-migration times buried their dead, as revealed by excavated early graves in Kazakhstan. But in their move southward they found aborigines who neither cremated their dead, possibly because of lack of wood, nor buried them, but exposed them.We may suggest that both cremation and burial on the migration were abandon- ded, and exposure became the norm, rationalized by a religious precept not to defile the elements.[359] Again this is simply a suggestion which appears reasonable.
This is not all that need be said about the dead, however, since what is significant in questions of disposal of corpses is the attitude of the living towards the dead. For example, the ancient ‘Chinese, it seems, on the whole wanted to get rid of the dead, to send them on a journey to the next world, so they (the dead spirits) would not cause trouble to the living in this world.
Dedicatory shrines, of course, were erected to one’s ancestors, as a matter of piety, but there were no beliefs, it appears, similar to those of the Iranians. For the latter, the living really wanted the dead to interfere in this world to aid the living. Shrines to the dead were sacred places where the living could obtain help from the dead, as in the shrines of Catholicism. This attitude was ancient and continued into Islamic times when many Zoroastrian shrines were converted into Islamic mazars or ziyaretgahs, which became places of pilgrimage.Against this proposal, one might protest that there were really few differences in the attitudes of various peoples towards their dead, but only in degree. Practices or rituals, on the other hand, varied, for the Chinese practice of placing lists of articles or contracts in the tombs of the departed, as at Astana in the Turfan oasis, was not common elsewhere, although domestic articles and food, of course, were put in tombs in many tombs throughout Asia. The practice of placing a coin on the tongue of the deceased, so frequent in ancient Greece, was a kind of counterpart or parallel to the Chinese contracts. The above remarks, however, merely indicate the complex
ity of relying on various modes of disposal of the dead to reconstruct the religious practices of ancient peoples.
In passing, a caveat to archaeologists is the belief that the discovery of a fire altar in an excavation of early Central Asia is surely evidence of Zoroastrianism. But other religions revered fire from prehistoric times, and even today fire altars are found in Hindu temples. So one must be careful of assigning a very early presence of Zoroastrianism to an ancient site simply where a fire altar has been found.
4. To turn to later history, place names may be derived from tribal names or geographical features, such as rivers. For example, if we look at the Old Persian inscriptions, the name Parsa (Ionian Persis) obviously was derived from the Persian tribe of Iranians who settled in the southwestern part of the Iranian plateau.
Sogdia too appears to be the name of the tribe which principally settled in the Zarafshan River basin. Haraiva, or the Herat area, on the other hand, may have been derived from the name of the river which flows through that land, and Arachosia (Iranian Harahvati, Indian Sarasvati) would be the same. Bactria too may be derived from a river name rather than the name of a tribe of ancient Iranians.Old place names frequently are carried to new regions by the movement of peoples. For example, it has been suggested that the town of Amul in Tabaristan is derived from Amul on the Amu Darya by the Amardi tribe which wandered to the west. As a parallel one may suggest that the Kashka Darya in Sogdiana.is related to Kashi, one name of the town of Kashgar in Uiguristan. Another name, for Kashgar, identified in Khotanese documents by Professor Kumamoto, apparently was Suli, the town of the “Sogdians”, the chief merchants on the “Silk Route” to China, borrowed by the Tibetans as Shulig. This would serve to explain the scarcity of Buddhist monuments in the Kashgar area, similar to Sogdiana.
5. Why did Buddhism flourish in Bactria, to the north and east of Sogdiana, and even in the Merv oasis, whereas in the Zarafshan River valley few Buddhist remains have been found, indicating either an anti-Buddhist reaction, or possibly a population not favorable to the monastic character of that religion. I propose that it was more in the society of the Sogdians, and the pragmatic nature of their merchants, to reject the doctrinal beliefs and practices of monkish Buddhists and Manichaeans than the simpler creeds of the local Mazdean priests, or even the Nestorian Christians, who were not monastery oriented as were their Monophysite rivals (Jacobites). There were, of course, adherents of all these faiths among the Sogdians, and even the shamanistic or nature beliefs of the nomads found adherents. The Sogdians were surely more tolerant in religious matters than their Sasanian neighbors, and in this regard more akin to the Turks and other tribes of Inner Asia than to the people of the settled states to south, west and east.
In other words, I suggest that the Sogdian merchants were more inclined to refer to shamans controlling the forces of nature, magic, talismans, or leaders of cults, and the like, rather than to missionaries of the world religions. The discovery of Buddhist, Christian and Manichaean writings from the northern oases of Uiguristan in the Sogdian language should reflect circumstances different from those in the homeland. The great majority of the writings date from the period after the Arab invasions of Sogdiana and may be the products of isolated communities of Sogdians in merchant colonies to the east of their homeland. Or conceivably refugees from the west turned to the “world” religions in solace for the loss of their lands to the invaders. In any case, the documents should not be considered as representative of the prevailing religious
situation in Sogdiana. Again, these are my thoughts about the general religious situation of the Sogdians at the time of their probably greatest flourishing in the seventh century.
6. The pre-historic Merv-Bactrian archaeological complex, recovered and described by Russian archaeologists, by no means ended in historic times. I suggest that throughout history Bactria and the Merv oasis had more in common with each other than with Sogdiana, both in trade and in culture. Were the eastern bank of the Oxus/Amu Darya and the Hissar mountain range the borders between the Persian influenced Merv with Bactrian areas and Sogdiana? If we adopt this suggestion some features of history may be clarified. For example, when al-Biruni in the eleventh century of our era tells us about the ancient festivals of the Sogdians and the Khwaraz- mians, we miss those of the Bactrians. I suggest that one reason for this was the early Persianization of Bactria, as it was in the Merv oasis. Another reason was the predominance of Buddhism here, and ancient Iranian festivals and calendars well may have been forgotten, or superseded by Buddhist festivals and claendars. Let us review history to account for this.
If we leave the prehistoric archaeological connections between Merv and Bactria, the first information about the two lands is found in the Behistun inscription of Darius. There we learn of Frada, the rebel against the authority of Darius, who was defeated by an army led by Dadarshi, the satrap of Bactria, sent by Darius. Later Merv and Bactria were united under one satrap, an indication of the close connection of the two. It is uncertain if this situation lasted throughout the era of the- Achaemenid Empire, but both were ruled by the early Seleucids, followed by the Graeco-Bactrians. It seems as though communications between Merv and Bactria were more important than connections with Sogdiana. Perhaps the Hissar mountains and the lower Oxus River were considered as the real frontier of the western powers, while Sogdiana in this early period was considered a kind of buffer region, beyond the borders of the core areas.
With the conquest of the Merv oasis by the Parthians, however, the close contact or union of Merv and Bactria was broken. From this time, through the rule of the Sasanians and the Umayyad Caliphate, Merv became a military outpost of the western powers and an extension of west Iranian culture. Bactria, “land of a thousand cities” as the Greeks called it, of course, was more populous and richer than the Merv oasis, and when the two were separated by different rulers, it became a goal and prize for conquerors coming from the west. When Sasanian forces marched against the Kushans, and later Chionites and Hephtalites, troops from the Merv garrison usually joined the main army moving from the Herat region. Under Shapur I, and possibly first during the reign of his father Ardashir, both Bactria and Merv became part of the Sasanian Empire. The Kushano-Sasanian governors, who ruled this part of the empire, issued gold coins on the Sasanian model, probably in Merv, and on the Kushan model probably in Bactra/Balkh. The connections between Merv and Bactria were broken by the Chionites at the end of the reign of Shapur II in 379, and the old Merv-Bactria axis ended.
From the excavations of Kara Tepe, near Termez, we learn of later Sasanian occupation of Bactria, but just how much was controlled and how long that rule lasted is unknown. It is possible that local rulers from time to time acknowledged Sasanian suzerainty, but we do not know. Bahram V is supposed to have made conquests in the east, since the rulers of Bukhara copied his coin type, but again infonnation is
lacking about Bahram’s control of Bactria. To return to al-Biruni, it is quite possible that during the Sasanian occupation of Bactria, the Persian festivals and time reckoning replaced local systems. In any case, it seems clear that both Bactria and Merv were “Persianized”, whereas Sogdiana, Khwarazm, and elsewhere in Central Asia, were not.
It is fascinating to see that the Arabs followed Sasanian practices by establishing their outpost in the east, and center for further raids into Central Asia, in the Merv oasis. But again Balkh too received garrisons and together with Merv became the Umayyad centers of rule in the east. Even before the conquests, however, the Persian language had spread in Bactria, as in Merv, and Sogdian, which was a competitor, lost, with the native Bactrian language, and system of writing in modified Greek letters, becoming a poor third in cultural competeition. Under Islam, however, Persian swept all before it, especially when it was written in the Arabic alphabet. The groundwork for this dominance, however, had been laid in pre-Islamic times.
7. Bullae and clay sealings. Both bullae and clay sealings are very ancient, the latter probably older than the former, for the need to identify or seal wares must have existed before the spread of writing. In my opinion one should restrict the term “bullae” to documents on which is writing. The material on which writing was placed could have been clay, papyrus, parchment or leather, and paper, and any substance which sealed the document, clay, wax, or other, on which a seal impression was made, should be called a bulla. Some scholars believe that all pieces of clay with seal impressions were bullae, attached to documents, but we have evidence to refute this position. In the Sasanian Empire we find both clay bullae and clay sealings, and the two are eaily distinguishable. The bullae are small pieces of fine clay, usually with only one seal impression on them (fig. 1). The clay sealing, on the other hand, is larger in dimensions, with coarser clay, and usually with many seal impressions, including an “official” seal impression, which has writing but no figures or designs (fig. 2). The “official” seals were those of the religious establishment which seems to have had the responsibility for registering commercial activities on behalf of the government. Possibly this was because of the literacy of the mobads, and the lack of such knowledege by the vast majority of people. The late Vladimir Lukonin suggested that these clay seals with many impressions represented partnerships in commerce, with the partners impressing their seals on wares which were transported and sold after having been registered by government officials. Since such impressions have been found as distant as in Sri Lanka, his proposal appears attractive. Whatever the purpose of the seal impressions, there is no doubt they had something to do with trading. Since the impressions seem to be late in the time of the Sasanian Empire, their usage was standardized, and probably regulated by the government, at the time of Khusro I (531-579) as one of his reforms. From the legends of the “official” seal impressions on the clay, one gains a picture of the geographical divisions of Sasanian Iran.
In Central Asia, other than Merv which was part of the Sasanian Empire, archaeologists do not find clay sealings like those from Iran. The conclusion is that merchants were not regulated as in Iran, and trade was not constrained by governmental controls similar to those in the neighboring empire. Bullae were used in both areas and indeed elsewhere, but evidence of government regulation is lacking. This does not mean that the merchants of Central Asia were in any way backward compared to their counterparts in Iran, for after the time of Khusro the Iranian merchants had much to do to catch up with the enterprising Sogdian and Khwarazmian mer
chants. Undoubtedly there was competition, but also cooperation, as we learn from Middle Persian names, together with many Sogdian personal names on the graffiti or carvings of merchants on the upper Indus River, as well as both Sogdian and Middle Persian writings on ostraca from Merv. After the Islamic conquest of Central Asia, Central Asian traders took adavantage of belonging to a vast Caliphate to expand their activities to such a degree that the cities of Central Asia outpaced those of Iran in commerce. This is a subject which I have discussed on numerous occasions, and I need not continue with this subject here.
8. Finally, as Alice in Wonderland said, “the time has come to talk of many things”, in this case, forgeries. I believe that many archaeologists and art historians are unaware of the extent of forgeries, and the capabilities of master forgers in the Orient. Just as in Europe, a few Oriental forgers are uninterested in making money but only in fooling experts, and their productions are veritable masterpieces, creations rather than copies of existing objects. Since I have had interesting experiences with forgers over years, I feel information should be given to persons concerned with such matters. Some general remarks may be appropriate to the subject.
On the sub-continent of India Rawalpindi was a great center of forgeries, and still is. The specialties of the forgers were gold coins of the Kushans and Kushano- Sasanian governors, but also silver coins of Greco-Bactrian and later rulers. Stone and stucco sculptures in the Gandharan style were also favorite objects of forgery. Usually the objects were offered for sale in the bazaars, but sometimes archaeological excavations were “seeded” with forgeries by workers.
In Iran specialties of forgers were Luristan bronzes, Sasanian silver objects, but rarely coins, and seals, with manuscripts and miniatures not far behind. Boyid silks and other textiles were also forged, but not as much as seals, including clay bullae and pottery, both ancient and Islamic. Factories of forgers existed in Tehran, while even provincial towns, such as Harsin in Luristan for bronzes, were engaged in the activity. In fact the Iranians were rivals to the Chinese, who were experts in the forgery of ancient Chinese bronzes and art objects. Perhaps it was an extension of the Chinese practice which induced forgers in Uiguristan to take up the trade, as Sir Aurel Stein and Paul Pelliot found out.
Russian Central Asia was never a great center for forgeries, while in Russia itself icons and Scythian gold objects attracted forgers. This predilection is probably being revived at the present time. So forgers have not vanished by any means and museums and collectors must continue to be on guard.
All of the above remarks could be elaborated and details supplied, but I only wished to give general directions for younger researchers in the Iranian and Central Asian regions to fill in the details and expand our understanding of the fascinating past of this vast area.