1st Edition

Central Asia and Non-Chinese Peoples of Ancient China

By Edwin G. Pulleyblank Copyright 2002
    324 Pages
    by Routledge

    The present set of studies by Professor Pulleyblank complements those gathered in Essays on Tang and pre-Tang China. The central concern here is the interaction between China and the non-Chinese peoples around it, in particular those of Central Asia. The volume opens with several articles contributing to the dating of events as far west of China as Afghanistan and India based on more accurately dated Chinese historical sources. Two studies deal with the prehistory of the Turks, while others are concerned with indigenous non-Chinese peoples that lived within the heartland of China during the formative years of Chinese civilization and the way in which they were absorbed into that civilization. The concluding series of papers, published between 1966 and 1999, addresses the controversial question of the coming of horsemen belonging to the Far Eastern Tocharian branch of Indo-European to Xinjiang (Eastern Turkestan) at the beginning of the second millennium BCE and their possible influence on the origins of the Chinese bronze age.

    Contents: Preface; The date of the Staël-Holstein Roll; Some remarks on the Toquzoghuz problem; Chinese evidence for the date of Kaniska; The Chinese and their neighbors in prehistoric and early historic times; Ji Hu: indigenous inhabitants of Shaanbei and Western Shanxi; Zou and Lu and the sinification of Shandong; The "High Carts": a Turkish speaking people before the Türks; The name of the Kirghiz; Chinese and Indo-Europeans; The Wu-sun and Sakas and the Yüeh-Chih migration; Han China in Central Asia; Why Tocharians?; Early contacts between Indo-Europeans and Chinese; Central Asia at the dawn of history; Index.

    Biography

    Edwin G. Pulleyblank

    'If any one scholar can be regarded as the 'standard-bearer' of the post-war generation in this field (...), it is Edwin G. Pulleyblank. It is therefore with great respect that we welcome the re-publication of this collection of fourteen essays spanning from 1954 to 1999: an amazing forty-five years at the forefront of linguistic and historical research on the early contacts betwen China and Central Asia.' The International History Review