Sogdian Traders and Others Along the Silk Roads with Judith Lerner

I'm really delighted to be here and I want to thank the Society for Asian art and Sandra another an old friend for inviting me to speak with you about a group of people who are very dear to me the sogdians this invitation came at a very opportune time because I have been working on the first exhibit devoted solely to the sogdians usually the sogdians are included in the many Silk Road exhibitions but this is the first that will be devoted to the sub Dean's their culture their history and their art it will be online and also certainly the first exhibition like this I receive is the freer sackler Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution and we won't go live until probably February but this is a plug and I will send all the particulars I don't have a website number yet but I will send all the particulars to the society and I'd love you to visit I've been working with a lot of people who scholars who specialize in the sogdians and not only will you be able to see enlarged images some of them you'll be able to turn around and really look at a complete piece of metal work on your screen at home and also we have vintage footage of excavations in Tajikistan and various scholars who specialize in Sogdian matters myself included will also be talking about different aspects of sogdia art and and culture so a little plug for that if you don't mind and this is a kind of road map since we will be going along the Silk Road first the routes that the Stockton's travels that it to be the main routes that comprise what's called the Silk Road and Chris I know you you know that there were other roads as well there's the maritime route going south and through the oceans into southern China and even farther north where they might hook up with the land routes and then there is also a more northern route coming down from Mongolia Siberia often called the fur route so we'll talk about the main route that the sogdians traveled who exactly were they something about Sogdian religion and the sogdians at home and then I'll conclude with sogdians abroad mainly in China so you see on this map the sardines are there there's no real country called sogdiana we call the area sogdiana but it never coalesced into an actual country as iran did for example but instead there are a series of city-states centered around Samarkand and Bukhara both situated in in oases very fertile oases and the South Bay owners themselves as I said they never really joined or created actual land nor did they create an actual Empire they were agriculturists basically who practiced mining and metalworking and from at least the third century CE II they achieved great influence via trade they established trading colonies along the trade routes and so were able to form an empire based just on their mercantile activity this Empire covered what is essentially today whose miss Becca Stan and Tajikistan and parts of North of Southern and Eastern Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan where they set up colonies it isn't that they ever really conquered people to form a colony but they set up merchant colonies often within existing city-states and then also along the way they established and we will be going through following the the roads that they that they took there were also some daeun colonies set up along the way and so the trade would go from sogdiana itself not necessarily directly through to xi'an or ancient changan as it was called then in china which was the capital city but often it was more from one city along the Silk Road between Shangaan and let's say summer khan and back and forth or else then all the way through to Shang Gong whoops I need to go back so this gives you an idea of what they had to traverse and we will actually do this virtually going northern route and the southern route they're really perilous terrain coming out near Dunhuang and then along down through to chunga this is about 3,000 miles so it's like if you were to walk and of course this was all basically on foot or on Camelback or horseback but many people were walking so this is like walking from San Francisco to New York City this is the kind of terrain that one would encounter and so that this audience truly were were great travelers there's saying of Chinese saying that maybe some of you have already heard of that Menem sogdia have sogdiana have gone wherever profit is to be found the Chinese also said about the sogdians that when a Sogdian child is born his mother puts honey on his tongue and glue in his palm so he will speak sweetly and money will stick to his palm so you might detect a little bit of envy there since they were such supreme traders and the Chinese although there was Chinese trade people relied on the sogdians to move the goods back and forth so what was this travel like as I mentioned there are multiple kinds of silk so-called silk road's and as you know you know about the history of the the term Silk Road it could easily have been called the glass road the Jade Road even the Wu barb Road for all the things that came across so we will be starting here Samarkand and Bukhara these are the various overland routes but this is the main one when one is talking about the so-called Silk Road going to changan and the various sea routes that will also get you into China and farther on into Korea and Japan and we will be focusing on this area and probably when I'm and I said we will be I will take you through the terrain those of you I know many here have been to Central Asia and have been to shinjang western China and have been to Xian changan but I'm sure you did not do it the way this audience did overland completely and so you will see I hope and appreciate what they what they encountered what they had to go through and when I this is through Bing I went online and wanted to see what road would today's Geographers suggests to go from Samarkand to changan and this type here is probably much too just a small for you to read but it says we can't find directions for this journey because one or more waypoints are too far from any known roads so so let's start on the road that this Huggins took and even when we talk about the road that they took of course there were many ways of getting through the mountains but there were basic general passes and terrain that that was more passable than other parts so starting from summer times you're looking across from old summer kind of Frazee AAB those of you who have been there this is where the French have been excavating for many many years and very important Palace has been found but it has an even older foundation even pre Alexander but goes back when Alexander set up shop there and Samarkand was called martanda then but we're looking across from old summer khan to modern summer cond and one goes through to the in tajikistan here we're in still in uzbekistan but we cross into tajikistan these these modern countries as you know are just really not a figment but was mainly made up by by stalin and particularly tajikistan if you look at a map of the shape of tajikistan it goes in many different funny directions and cuts off and then continues and that's really because he just wanted to keep various ethnic groups separated when the same ethnic groups actually separated from each other but that's a whole other lecture but so we we go from a frog into the Agno valley well that's one of the main passageways through the mountains and which is very challenging it's 8,000 to 10,000 feet above sea level and is completely inaccessible in the winter and yet sogdians did settle in this area at least to set up communities to help the caravans that were coming through and even today in the yog know Valley there are people living called the Adobe's who speak a dialect of ancient Sogdian I will get to this a little bit later about who this audience actually were but they are an Iranian group and eastern iranian group and so their language is somewhat different from the persian that is or spoken in Iran or dari spoken in Afghanistan but yaghnobi is presumably as as close as we can get to hearing what was an ancient Sabaean sounded like and actually we will have recordings on this exhibition online exhibition of young Noby songs the next great difficulties that would be encountered were the Pamir mountains which many people trick today it's a nice place for trekking but not just for passing through with laden camels and horses very high elevations unpredictable weather and a scarcity of vegetation and wildlife and so of the pioneers were extremely dangerous this eventually gives way to the eastern come ears with wider valleys and meandering rivers that make travel much easier but then just when things are getting better the travellers encounter the Taklamakan desert one of the largest sand deserts in the world its hemmed in on the north west and south by mountains and it suffers dramatically low temperatures in the winter and very innervating high ones in the summer so it's really a very difficult place for travelers to get through and there are many Taklamakan I'm not really sure I don't know that anybody really knows what the origin of the of the name is and there are many interpretations of what the name what what the name should was of what how it got its name and what the name means but the translation that I like best is once you get in you don't come out so yet along the way there were so here's the Taklamakan desert and that there are towns along the way that there are stones they receive what runoff from the mountains that surround them and the southern route of Houghton Miran these are names you might be familiar with or paintings from Miran Aurel Stein has written about well he's he was all over and through the Taklamakan but there are wonderful ruins here and paintings but we will take the northern route you've I think Monica's in spoke about Kissel and Kucha and Lee lon and then turf on is another main center but you're looking at on the left or the ruins outside of turf on and we then keep moving there was a very big actually Sogdian colony there and I really cannot I won't be showing you any real physical evidence of Sogdian habitation along these desert routes because we really don't have very much in terms of art and artifacts but archaeologically a lot has been found receipts coins so we know there was a large sardine colony for example in turf on that paid taxes to the Chinese government and it was there where you could have weigh stations for the caravans or that would be a particular port of call or in a place to pick up goods that were produced around that Oasis when then leaves tore fond and continues along and and until one passes to unsay which is not on the map and it's just about here before Dunhuang and and then that's where the two roads actually join and you come out around done long on your on your right and then you're in what is called the who she corridor and this is what takes you you follow that along and this is what takes you on to changan I mean it's still not easy going you are essentially going from one Oh a TSA's to the other with really some formidable desert and other difficult areas between stops for example one of the cities maybe some of you who have been there your song yeah do you have sorry about this I think other people it's really counterintuitive going forward is the one at the bottom so these are rock formations that one would have to go over and through to get to to pass through Sonya and then finally one reaches the western gate of Shangaan and it is in the western part of the city that the sogdians had their settlement there was a western market that sold goods from from the west and we'll talk about the people who came across but wine shops for example places of entertainment all run by saga central asians mostly as we think sogdians and so who are these people who traveled the roads I've my talk is called traitors and others because the sogdians were not only just traitors and also traitor at least to me connotes a kind of one person one sack load of goods that you're bringing from one place to another buying in the bazaar and moving on to someplace else and indeed we have many Ming Chi these statues that the Chinese put in their tombs of what we would consider traitors here is one I don't know whether he saw Guillen or not but he certainly is in Chinese he must be Central Asia could very well be Sogdian or for her as Mian from one of the the areas to the west of the Taklamakan and you see over he's dressed for both heat and cold with a peaked cap and scarf that he can pull over his nose so that to protect him from the desert winds he carries the sack on his back it's actually it looks like a kind of rucksack almost and also a pitcher in his left hand and unfortunately I don't have the proper view to show you but keep in mind that this looks like a regular pitcher or you were that we would have today and the handle joins the rim so just please keep that in mind for later but others who were in trade I would call merchants and that to me implies people who had who ran whole caravans they might actually be stationed in Saudi Anna itself and maybe never even made the trip to the to the east but sent out and or produced and made sure that the provisions of that were there for sale were loaded up and that everything worked out for the for the caravan because of course they made money and they also control they they would send out others others audience to to the different colonies along the way to check the goods that are coming across and as you'll say I believe you've already heard about the Sogdian letters and those were written by sogdians stations were living a lot in in China but some of them lived a lot within the communities in the Taklamakan writing back to the home office and what you're looking at and I I mean we don't know that these particular gentlemen were merchants but they're certainly well dressed and seemed to be well fed and they are enjoying a banquet drinking from nice looks like golden or guilt silver most likely vessels and this along with many other wonderful paintings was discovered in the town of Pancho Kent which is about 60 miles east of Samarkand and we'll we'll be returning to panja Kent but I just want to give you a sense of what these people look like and then when they're in China here is a merchant this is from a two Chinese tomb actually a sarcophagus although that fellow buried in it and this is the tomb owner as you see here seated with his leg crossed over and he is gesturing to this man who was kind of kneeling hunched over before him this is a Sogdian as seen through Chinese eyes and I show him to you because he is dressed in similar kinds of garments these roundels decorating his fine silk jacket which is what these fellows have these roundel trims that you see he seems to be in a somewhat subservient position and maybe he was as a trader or a merchant but also the Chinese would like to show these people in in this way but he is offering him whatever his wares are in this little container anyway to move on this gives you a better a better view this is a rubbing of of the that that image and you can see the roundels he has a little purse here hanging from his belt very similar to what we have here this is a fan by the way that must have gotten pretty hot as they were wining and dining now we have a lot of these Ming Qi showing foreigners as grooms for horses and leading camels they're not Chinese would certainly not this fellow with his very heavy beard they're often shown quite well-fed this person actually now that I look at him he might even be playing a flute but anyway we they did supply grooms for horses and and camel drivers and another another group of people who came across were artists and artisans and unfortunately we don't have any image like images that can be identified as these kinds of people but I show you an example of metal work that of the type that would have either been traded across or the metal worker himself came with his great skills to work in at changan or somewhere else and indeed the sogdians were known for their wonderful metal work what you see with this small handled cup it's only about so tall is it does come from China it was found in China but it is not Chinese work it is Sogdian work the noted archaeologist and art historian Baris Marshak who's a specialist in Chinese in sorry in Sogdian metalwork and was the longtime excavator of Pancho Kent and for him this cup epitomized a particular school of Sogdian metalworking characterized by beaded borders as you see here you can almost liken them to the pearl roundels that they like to decorate their garments with when you turn the cup up there's a very finely incised scrollwork vegetal scrollwork so that the person you're drinking with it can be entertained by this beautiful decoration and and notice the the thumb rest there the Dorst heads of elephants and the thumb rests often have very amusing figures on them like wrestlers and such and then what's also interesting because this is a Sogdian piece is this decoration which I think possibly is under the influence of Roman work there is a pattern a Roman pattern that we find in Roman late Roman metalwork and on Roman sarcophagi couldest Rigell it's a sort of S shape device it was used to scrape by the athletes to scrape the oil off of them after wrestling and so this S shape which is a decorative pattern is called astral pattern and we see it being used in sogdiana and there is this very strong connection between even farther west west of sogdiana west of iran and and the Roman world of the Mediterranean world that appears in Sogdian metalwork okay we also have entertainers who came across all kinds of entertainers musicians acrobats dancers both men and women young men very young men and very young women some of them had to do more than dancing as you might imagine many came as free agents to make their livelihood in China or along the way some were gifts of local rulers in Central Asia to the court some came as slaves and what you're looking at is a tongue Ming Qi showing a camel with various Central Asian musicians obviously not all of them fit on one camel but this is a kind of abbreviation to show the variety and the different kinds of musicians the Chinese really love this this music and it appears in to mark and on the walls of tombs as well as these two figurines and this fellow is a dancer Sogdian dancing was very much appreciated by the Chinese it actually became a phenomenon in in China the Sogdian world is or the push wonwoo is what it was called and the best dances were said to come from Tashkent performed by teenage boys and and young girls and here you see this look this is a tiny figure of bronze made in the probably probably the eighth century of this man twirling on one leg with a calabash on his back he's a probably an itinerant dancer this captured the imagination of many many of the Chinese and there are poems that particularly tongue poets wrote about the dancing of for example just read you a bit of one the Iranian from Tashkent appears young he dances too he dances before the the wine goblet has wrap it as a bird he wears a cloth cap afar and make empty and pointed at the top his Iranian robe of fine felt has tight sleeves and so there was this whirling dance there was a leaping dance there are all sorts of kinds of dances that that appeared but but this Sogdian world really became a phenomenon from from the court from the Chinese court the Tang court to to local wine shops according to another Chinese account officials and concubines all learned how to circle and turn and in fact the favorite courtesan of the Emperor learned to do the dance herself and she and the Sogdian Turkic general an lushan who became a favourite the understan became a favorite of the tongue Emperor chuan song due in part to his expertise in doing the world and this is in spite of the fact that he way so they say over 400 pounds must have been quite a sight and as many of you know that it's the same on lu shan who cemented the great rebellion in 750 that nearly destroyed the tong empire and devastated china and so from dancing to an imperial destruction it's quite an interesting link there's we also have I mentioned merchants of craftsmen and metal workers we also have written evidence of painters who came across from from the West but there's nothing that we can actually point to and say this was done by a Sogdian but there are descriptions of a particular painter who was known for his painting and very fluid shapes it was like water on on cloth and this struck the Chinese as something quite remarkable and so it was recorded but to get back to the the Sogdian world because I just have another image was so popular it appears in so many different media for example on this beyond who or flask it's only about so big possibly you've seen it in the National Museum of China in Beijing and you see this sort of again their tented this guy is a little bit beefy dancing around on a lotus of all things a Buddhist symbol and he is accompanied by other by a Central Asian Orchestra and here are dancers whirling around they often danced on a circular rug stayed on the rug as they leapt and turned and thing and these are untuned doors of a in northwestern China interestingly the it's a family tomb and they are of Central Asian most likely Sogdian ancestry so it's an interesting connection that this dance which the Chinese see or saw as pure entertainment does seem to have some kind of religious connotation as well there are tongue reports written reports from the Tang period of the Chinese flocking to the temples of Central Asians or an ear on Ian's of Iranian people's that were in the western part of Chong GaN to watch the dancing they were going to the port yard and watch them dance as these as the sogdians whirled around we don't have real evidence of this from sogdiana itself but we find it in the Chinese chronicles and this is something one of these years I will work on the connection with the whirling dervishes that we have in in Central Asia and the different Naqshbandi groups if that isn't somehow connected going back to the Sogdian some ancient way of doing a religious dance something that I know you're all familiar with as I said it captured the Chinese imagination so that for centuries going into the Sung dynasty there was the image produced on tile as you see here and metalwork on belt buckles and belt pieces of this twirling whirling star diem often often seeming to be drunk okay who else came across on the Silk Road translators scribes and pilgrims now the sogdians as merchants had to be adept in many different languages and so they were noted as translators and in fact some families that had settled in China eventually became translators to the court but the freudian language itself was actually the lingua franca of the Silk Road but also going in these caravans were pilgrims Buddhist pilgrims the caravans were the safest means of travel no matter if you wanted to go from east to west west to east you hooked up with one of these caravans otherwise the danger was well not only would you be lost you could be set upon and and worse so we we have evidence of many Buddhist pilgrims using the caravans to go west and then south into India to bring back Buddhist scriptures some of these pilgrims were also Sogdian we do have evidence of sogdians who who were who were Buddhists it will talk about Saudi and religion shortly and of course the most famous pilgrim is chuan Tsung who against the Emperor's orders crept out of Xian and went on a very perilous journey to bring back Buddhist sutras from from India here is a map of his travels leaving from changan he takes the northern route into turf on the king of turf on was so taken with him that he didn't want him to leave either and so he had to sneak off again and he travels down into sogdiana he has he's important for us who study Central Asia the his description of Samarkand and other places along the way also he gives a very important account of Bamiyan and the and the Buddha's that were built at Bamiyan and so he travels this way and goes into India spends quite a bit of time in India and comes back eventually along the southern route through Houghton and Nia and Mulan and then back into chung gan where he is he received permission to return and he is greeted as a great with great respect and he then devotes the rest of his life to writing up his travels and his travels are often were also written up by an apprentice monk actually a shamanistic monk who who served him and so i don't know if any of you have read there's there's a book a very readable book by failing riggins about shan songs a journey that's it's very interesting another other in addition to traders are the saw teens who came across and stayed whole families emigrated and eventually after several generations in china some of them become leaders of the different foreign communities that are set up in or that are established within the Chinese such as at Chung Gong or in a lanzhou or they which is now the capital city of Gansu Province but they're there all over and I show you a panel from the funerary bed of Anjou who was a leader became a leader of his local community this was a an appointment made by the Chinese government and it's a political appointment and in some cases it's also a religious appointment so he's in charge of the zoroastrian must e'en a temple and worship and and such and we will return to him later but I just wanted to mention that these are these are then people who some of them came as merchants some of them came because they also trained horses and there's a whole family of in Ning shah in the northwest who ran a horse farm for the chinese military we learn all this from their epitaphs because they are buried kind of in the chinese manner and so when we have an epitaph we know exactly what they did and in this case on his funerary bed Anto very proudly shows himself wearing we know that he's a saba a leader of this community and he and another sob ow there's a particular cap that they wear it looks like it has a kind of flap that goes up and often it's white is in a tent and he is doing some kind of with a Turk and he is doing something diplomatic or maybe economic but anyway this is one of the panels on his we'll look at his bed a bit later that gives you a sense of you know what his life was like and how he wants to be remembered in the afterworld on is means that his family came from belharra when these when the Central Asians entered China the Chinese gave them names their last names reflecting where they originated in sogdiana now not all of this is really accurate but because we are finding as more records come to light that of somebody who has given the name of on may not have been from bahara but if you are come for example that means you came from Samarkand so it's interesting to get a sense of where they're from and in this case we have his epitaph and we know that he probably says that his ancestors came from bahara so now who exactly or this sogdians archaeologically their roots appeared to go back to the second millennium BCE in Central Asia they are it's this is a very highly charged term but they would be members of indo-aryan group which is both a linguistic and cultural term and I don't want to get let's be on my job description to get into that and for my purposes we are really encountering them in the first millennium but they are an Iranian group that moves across moves west across Central Asia and on to the plateau occupying that area that the Greeks called trans ox iana across the Oxus River today when the ancient times known as the elude aria and then it's really off the map but they are really between and transoxiana is across the Oxus and up to the jocks are tapes that's the ancient name today the seer Daria I don't know I'm just curious how many people here have been to Tajikistan okay to coach and perhaps so you were at the seer Daria you were really way way in the north almost the northernmost part of where Alexander went and so we really begin to learn about them well over a millennium later as I've sorted but in the later part of the seventh century and into the 8th when the I'm sorry I'm going ahead of myself this area called trans oxy Anna bye bye bye the Greeks it becomes known when the Arabs begin moving into this region in the seventh and eighth centuries and spread their control over sogdiana the area was known as Mara Inara which means that which is across the river so it's really the axis the amou Darya that really divides what would be lets say Bactria from sogdiana sogdiana first appears in world history in the 5th century BC when it was recorded as a satrapy of the province of the Achaemenid Empire and it's mentioned Cyrus brought it into the fold Cyrus the Great Cyrus the second who is really the founder of the of the dynasty and so this is the father's that he got up and in fact it was there in the northern part of sogdiana in on the Aesir Darya River that he lost his life in battle with nomads the sogdiana has always been threatened by nomads and nomads are a constant wanting to come in to the settled areas and so there is a great deal of Roche month that has to be going on as well so I will just go quickly through this oh it's also the the sardines are also mentioned of course in Darius's great the iStent inscription where he talks about all the members all the different peoples of his empire and there it is it's called sold which is probably the way it was pronounced and the mentioned in the charter of susurrus suits of foundation tablets that were found at the palace of Darius and Sousa mentioning certain stones that came from sogdiana and then at Persepolis we see a group of of people who have been identified as the as the sogdians bringing weapons and metalwork as gifts or tribute to the Achaemenid king archaeologists are still fleshing out the post Alexandrine history and culture of the sogdians but in this they've been helped by references in the Chinese sources the Chinese are absolutely of course fascinated with the sogdians in the and we learn about them they're mentioned or the country seems to be mentioned in the late centuries BCE and the early centuries CE II but we don't know very much about them until the early 4th century CE II with the major discovery near Dunhuang in western China of the so-called ancient letters or Sogdian letters written by sogdians living in China to their compatriots back in Samarkand and your I don't know whether Sandra has mentioned the socketing ancient letters but they were discovered by Sir Mark Aurel Stein that indefatigable brilliant archaeologist and scholar in near a watchtower in I don't know if this is the watchtower but that's what it would have looked like a watchtower from the first century and they were just left there in the mail pouch and there are five and all four have been translated the other is very difficult apparently I don't read Sogdian so it's all difficult to me but they're written on paper and two of them are from a woman a lady true lady in distress who has been abandoned by her husband in Dunhuang and the other two letters as I said have been read with a concern commercial activity of the writers as well as documentation about the Sogdian diaspora along the eastern end of the Silk Road most important they proved that the sardines had already established their trade connections by the beginning of the fourth century because different towns like Luang done long are mentioned in these letters as having Sogdian communities living there now the lady's name was mune a and in letter number one she writes to her mother describing how she and her daughter have been abandoned in Dunhuang by her husband nan a dot and that no one will take her to her mother's house it's a pretty treacherous journey as you know and they don't have the money they are totally without funds and actually she and her daughter survives on the kindness of strangers and the local priest the Zoroastrian masti and priest and the daughter writes in a postscript in one of the letters that they've really sunk low they have they've become servants to the Chinese and this letter number three she complains and she writes and and and and writes but at the end she says she's writing to her husband remember I obeyed your command and came to Dunhuang and did not observe my mother's bidding nor that of my brothers surely the gods were angry with me on the day when I did your bidding I would rather be a dogs or a pig's wife than yours pretty strong stuff and he never got that letter and we have no idea what happened to them in another letter this is a letter that this is only the upper part of it a certain non Avon doc who lived in what is today lanzhou the capital of GaN su province writes back to its home office in Samarkand and he describes the chaos in China at this time which resulted from Hunnic invasions and his description of are pretty horrifying but and he/she says none of us are coming out of this alive and therefore this is almost like a last will and testament in which he's writing back to this friend with whom he has left money on account and he asks that it should be given to now it's hard to know whether this is a boy he adopted it doesn't seem to be his own son but there's real pathos here and real caring that the money be given to a certain or orphan and he if he should live and reach adulthood and he has no hope of anything other than this money then when he and his name is Tasha Swan doc is grown up give him a wife and do not send him away from you another keep him with you don't let him go off the way I have gone off it always kind of brings tears to my eyes but I particularly when you see the actual letter so now let us continue defining this audience and at the break a few people asked me about the religion well here we go who were you know what what did they practice they practiced a lot of different religions as you would expect from people living in such a cosmopolitan region where you have all this trade back and forth and other people coming to live but so we have evidence of starting from the bottom of Judaism of shayla's and there is a wonderful painting of the dancing with God the blue god shiva at panja can't with a husband and wife as was found in a house with a husband and wife kneeling there dressed in Sogdian garb kneeling and offering incense to dancing shiva hinduism buddhism many as I said were were Buddhists although when Schwann song got to summer cond in the early 8th century he describes the monasteries as having been abandoned and though we like to think of the sogdians and on the whole they were they were very eclectic and they were very open to other religions other ideas apparently there was a kind of reaction against Buddhists and there were very few practicing Buddhists in summer khan at that time manic he ism which you learned about yes last week christianity nestorianism particularly there were many proselytizers who came across from syria iran sought refuge in this audience in sogdiana the sogdians seemed to be on the whole welcoming of people of other beliefs and were very eclectic sometimes practicing more than one I guess what it whatever seemed to be right for the particular moment but Mazda ISM was the sogdians own belief system and you see I write Mazda ISM and in parentheses Zoroastrianism so Astron ISM is of course a religion of today it is an Iranian religion and the most practiced number of practitioners are the Parsees in India they're large they're astron community in the United States and Britain in Australia there is a real diaspora today but I like to think of the Austrian is and as the religion of Iran it is of Iran meaning Persia I hope that's clear and there it was a state religion and the text that we have which is our how we know about was our Austrian ISM were written down in they there's an oral tradition there and they really weren't written down until their asterism became threatened by the Arab invasion and by the conversion from Zoroastrianism to Islam and so they the priests began writing these down and most of the texts we have are from the 10th century or the copies from from later and this is how we know about our astronauts but in Saudi Ana we see practices in the art that don't seem very it's Austrian so I like to make the distinction that all all Zoroastrians our Mazda isms but not all Mathias --tz-- or zoroastrians and the sogdians I like to think of as being mazdan and I will explain that further anyway what is this religion it's basically a dualistic religion two opposing powers good versus evil or horror Mazda which means the all-knowing Lord is on the on the good side Herman is the devil is evil sogdians called a horror Mazda odd vogue he did not have the same ascendancy it seems in sogdiana as he did in sustain Ian Iran to Mazda ins to all zoroastrians I should say to Zoroastrians and Omaha's Dan's the elements are sacred and pure fire in particular is is pure sometimes you'll read heroes or estrogens they worship fire they do not worship fire but fire is a way it is sacred and it is a sacred element and it is a way of communicating with the gods it it symbolizes truth and wisdom and so the fire altar is very central to the rites and an important Rite is called the phrenic on ceremony in which offerings are made to the gods there is a great need because the elements are sacred that means air water earth and Fire there is need to protect these elements from the polluted the pollution that dead matter brings in fact some Saracens like to say that theirs is an ecological religion and so Mazda ins forestry ins do not practice internment because that would be polluting the earth instead the bodies are exposed in a barren place where nothing can grow or so I'm sure you've heard the term tower of silence and maybe those of you who've been to Iran have seen them in yost those are later where they've been built out but it doesn't matter as long as the body is protected it's not in the ground or on the ground and the body is then defleshed by birds of prey wild dogs the bones are gathered and placed into ossuary or bone containers called o hasta dongs and it is from these hasta Dawn's that we find in sogdiana and various sites in sogdiana not in Zoroastrian Iran curiously that we some of the contemporary rights being performed so for example this particular ossuary from a place called Bullock organ not far from Samarkand shows in these arcades directory and priests who notice their robes bound with a belt called a puss T which is wrapped around three times ritual purposes and his the it's a kind of sacred thread that reminds all Mazda ins of the ethical imperative to have good thoughts good words and good deeds to be allowed into heaven and the lower part of their faces are protected by a mouth covering called a padam so that their breath will not pollute the sacred fire like young spittle or sweat which is polluting on the long sides which you have the best view of two priests officiate at the Efrain agon ceremony performed on the morning of the fourth day after death and this is when the body is then brought to the doc MO or wherever it is going to be exposed and they're facing a stepped fire altar that is one form of fire altar can take in this case it has leaves sprouting from it which is I cannot iconographically very interesting and one could go on about that for half an hour but I won't but anyway you have an idea of what these fire altars look like and the it has a pyramidal top they can be all different shapes but this one is form of a pyramid that in which you this is a better view there are two pairs so six and all of these ladies each holding a plant and they seem to be dancing or whatever they may we don't know because there's nothing to identify as such we just have to go back to the literature and the literature that we have of course is there a streon or older literature that maybe encompasses both eastern iran which is sogdiana and iran itself which is to the west but anyway they may represent the horrors or the pleasure givers mentioned in one of these or Austrian texts who live in paradise or they could possibly personify the qualities that one aspires to in life and in the afterlife such as wholesomeness perfection and immortality and then above you see a star and a crescent symbolizing the universe's is a very universal symbol and not only in Iranian Sogdian art but also in the ancient Near East the the ossuaries are absolutely fascinating and I can only show you one more and some of them are extremely complex and we don't always know what exactly is being represented they're all made of clay of baked clay and they've been stamped using a mold so they were actually ordered by the Dozen and sometimes the archaeologists will find fragments of several they don't necessarily fit together but we know that they were made from the same stamps and I will just point out a few of the more interesting and what I feel it's really identifiable you see the priests here with his mouth covering it's a different form than you saw on the other ossuary but it is a mouth covering at the Efrain agon table this has to do with the souls journey to heaven because if you if your deeds have been good your thoughts have been good your words have been good in life that gets weighed against any evil that you might have done and here you see the soul being weighed by a particular god named rosh hashanah and if you survive this way you are then allowed to cross the chin god that's called the bridge the chin god bridge into paradise and then up here these are deities up here you see there's a harpist and over here is somebody playing another it's more of a horned instrument there is a fragment that identifies it that these are gods this is taking place in heaven in heaven as we know from Zoroastrian texts is a place of music and song it sounds very nice I'm just going to skip a little bit and so as I said the the chief deity is over a Mazda it's a dualistic religion two supreme opposing powers of her Mazda is the all-knowing Lord but in sogdiana and also in Zoroastrian sasanian Iran there there are a multiplicity of other deities you saw one of them Russian who weighs the soul there's another one who actually something will help to a skort the deceased across the bridge and it in sogdiana the most important deity is nana the goddess nana who is actually the patron goddess of pungent and she is important in Samarkand and everywhere else she appears on coins she appears in wall paintings I will show you a natural wall painting a fragmentary one showing her in a few moments but here is an example of how Nana would appear in the reception room of a well-to-do panja hunters house as I mentioned conjugant which is to the east of Samarkand has been one of the most perfectly excavated sites ever it has been excavated now by the Russians for 70 years and it's known as the has been called the Pompeii of Sal Diana because of the exquisite paintings many of them fragmentary that the fragments are or just breathtaking that have been so carefully been preserved and excavated and conserved by the Russian and now Russian hájek teams if you've been at the Armitage museum in st. Petersburg you might have seen some of the paintings those who have been to Tajikistan no doubt have seen some of the paintings and they are really gorgeous so I show you punch account with evidence tea next to summer cond and this was the interior of a punji Cantor's house with Nana who holds the Sun and the moon she often has and she does here has four arms this is the influence of of Indian art and Indian deities on Sogdian art it comes in around the 6th century and she has seated on her lion just her avatar and this takes up the entire wall of this house which has this domed ceiling supported these are these would be wood and these are wooden carvings as Caryatid figure he looks that way because these houses were burnt by the Arabs in the middle of the 8th century but because of a fire they were preserved and due to the very careful excavation and then consolidation of the wood we can see them today and he these Cariocas are boys actually and they're very Indian looking which is interesting and then the ceiling is covered with wooden plaques and sometimes gesso plaques and in this case we have a goddess seated on a lion who may or may not be known abut this lion and goddess is is quite prevalent I show you one of the very beautiful paintings this one not from panja Kent but from a neighboring principality that was heavily influenced to thee by by Sogdian art and by art from summer Condon and panja Kent in particular called rooster asana and we see Nana and the line and just notice the way the shading of the wonderful shading and the sinuous lines of his of his mane and her very beautiful face almost moon face this might remind you of some of the paintings that you have encountered when you've been looking at paintings from photon and other sites along the roads in in Xinjiang and that is there is certainly a connection there and she is holding in her she has four arms and she always holds in her upraised arms being in this case the personified moon and the personified Sun that might just make it a little easier for you to see her so this is a good segue into a little bit about upon Jack and about sogdiana is visual culture which is a whole lecture in and of itself so I will just continue for a few or a little bit on painting and then on metalwork and because these are the two arts at which the sogdians really excelled you've seen examples of their funerary art the ossuaries and they are basically although some are much more refined but they're basically have a sort of popular folk art feel about them but in contrast the painting the wall paintings both in the temples and in the private homes are are really quite exquisite we have depictions of deities and religious scenes but most of what survives comes from the houses and it's marked by this very beautiful descriptive kind of painting and in fact one of the major characteristics of Sogdian painting is its narrative quality the desire to tell a story visually now of course this perspective could be somewhat skewed because as I said most of the painting that we have comes from panja Kent and there are wonderful paintings from a froz ABBA if you've been to Samarkand I'm sure you've seen paintings from the blue Hall which shows some kind of diplomatic New Year's a celebration of people's from the different parts of the world who come to pay homage either to the god of Samarkand or to the King that still opened to great debate actually and also we have painting from sites in the belharra Oasis notably at Bharat Shah which is near bahara but I have no time to show that so I urge you if you haven't done so and you want to know more about Saudi and painting is to read the two books or just look at the pictures of the books by giddy as a pie and Baris Marshak his tales and fables just really quite remarkable so as I said Pancho Kent has been excavated for over 70 years so and and very very carefully thanks mainly to oh I'm sorry I'll just for a moment an earlier paintings style from conjugant which i think is also really exquisite from one of the temples again the goddess don't know whether it's not although it was found in one of the temples that seems to have it was probably dedicated to her and you see there's just really this wonderful line but also the interest in detail and jewelry and these lovely kind of stacked folds of her of her upper garment so there you have in this old photograph Barse Marshak and and Alexander bill and it's key who really the saviors and great excavators of panja can't bars who was a pupil of a villainous key showing him paintings that had been unearthed while bill and it's key was still directing probably in the late 1980s late 1980s since Marshak took over in 1993 who here has been to the Armitage I might have seen these paintings they they really what can I say they really grab you these colors it's not do them justice this is very typical though of of Sogdian painting the so called Rustom cycle the great hero Rustam from the shahnameh is seen fighting with his men the various devils or deeds and below above there are processions as well sometimes there is a an upper section and then down below are a series of smaller paintings of scenes from folk tales and fables and one can just imagine the great narrative tale that is the main that is the main subject here and you can follow that along the the wall and then these episodic scenes down below and one can just imagine there was in in the Sogdian house there was a bench called a sofa built into the wall and probably covered with wonderful textiles and pillows where people would sit and dine and you can imagine that people talking and telling tales and pointing to these different paintings on on the wall here is Rustom setting off to battle and here below is one of the tales being told and as you look at it there's somebody killing a goose and since Sogdian is read from right to left if you start over here I think you know what story might be told the golden the yeah the goose laying the golden eggs here is this gentleman who sees oh well this is really the sku escapes laying a golden egg every day and so if I kill if I cut her open think of all the eggs I'll get and of course he has a dead goose so you know this from Aesop's fables it's also from their indian animal fables that we can identify from the Panchatantra there are buddhist Jataka tales that are illustrated and as I said tables that we know is Aesop's fables but those don't just have ancient Greek roots but have even more ancient Western and even further East Asian roots this gives you an idea of how these the interior of one of these reception halls would be like the pillars supporting it's probably a dome ceiling and this is the sofa that runs around sometimes there is an altar or a fireplace and people would could talk hold meetings and also when they have banquets be entertained by what is painted on on the walls another example of some of these paintings is the tail of the lion and the hair from the Panchatantra and where the the hair tricks the lion into drowning and what's so very interesting is here we have it in pungent in the early 8th century and then it's illustration in a folio from the 15th century and it's very likely that the painters at panja kent we're using books that we no longer or Scrolls that we you know no longer have so this is all very very precious to have these these paintings to tell us what the culture was like and have this literature is really so so old and it's spread so so wide let's now turn to metalwork very briefly you saw that wine cup in the beginning and both it and this one were found do come from from China but you see this is a Chinese product and this is the Sogdian product this is probably a later edition so it really doesn't belong to the to the 8th century but sogdians silver work began reaching China by the bee of the 6th century but the work itself and the artisans and over time the popularity of this art spurred the Chinese metal workers to imitate them so you can see in shape but also in technique not necessarily in decoration and so this Chinese version which actually is its post dated to the late 7th century it's both are in the the freer sackler Gallery is much more ornate with a grapevine inhabited by birds and rabbits it's a very Chinese motif and yet the metalworking techniques are very similar the use of a ring punch and chasing which is or which is hammering designs from the front and a lot of this is taken from a Sogdian metalworking techniques another this is my my favorite piece he always makes me smile this yu-er with the winged camel he spoke silly and divine and truly divine because he represents the sardine equivalent of Vera throg nough the god of victory his avatar is as a camel this was found in the latter part of the 19th century in Russia there's very little that has actually been found on Sogdian territory because so much of it was traded and a lot of it was traded north even in post Saudi and times for furs so we find a lot and on Russian territory which is why the Armitage has such an extraordinary collection of this silver so it was traded for furs up the Volga the damper and in the the perm region and in its shape it's it's quite bulbous as you see it's decorated on both sides with the winged Bactrian to hump camel this truly epitomizes Sogdian metalworking skills you have a combination of textures and techniques for the surface and then this bulbous body contrasting with the very delicate sinuous handle which further enlivens the object if the camel himself isn't sufficient with this dragon head which could even be influenced from China but there's a kind of playful quality to it and then this wonderful leafy shape that terminates the handle the shape itself and this this kind of handle has Roman connections which is important when we compare this yu-er to a sustained en one and I'm sure many of you are familiar with say nian society and metalwork and yours and they really aren't very different and I'm always telling people you cannot confuse this Amiens with sogdians they are really besides being different people having the the art is really very very different you'll notice hurt just very quickly that this yu-er is much narrower and the the handle joins the body on the shoulder as opposed to the handle of the Sogdian yu-er joining at the neck and that is really very distinctive that little minke I showed you in the beginning of the trader carrying his jug I don't think he's carrying a wonderful gilded silver you were like this but it has the handle attached to the top and we see this a lot well first of all in Chinese ceramics not only in the shape but also in the technique this is glazed ceramic Phoenix headed you were and you see this sort of looks like a modeling or peddling but that's really an imitation of metalworking techniques that the Chinese liked and reproduced in ceramics and then in on Shea's panel you notice over here there's that sound and you ER so it it it appears all all over and as far as the the camel goes not only is the the winged camel appears in a lot of Sogdian art back in sogdiana and here this is on shows this is a door to unchaste tomb which has this painted blue net over the doorway and here's a drawing of it because it's impossible to see otherwise but notice the camel again this time forming a tripod offering stand for religious rights and here are bird men again they're wearing the bottom so that their breath will not defile the sacred fire and they're tending to fire here there's also various offerings and hears on chat and probably his son who are making offerings on a small portable a burner over here and in the air in the sky you notice these kind of heavenly musicians here's one playing a lute a harp these are up sir asses taken from Indian art you'd find them in Gandara but we find them all overdone along there's a real blending in this art but we're now calling sino Sogdian art of the art of sogdians or other Central Asians living in China who are using their own backgrounds but also borrowing from what's around them and now in the little time that's remaining I just want to go very briefly through some of what the audience living in China have left us this is the complete bed of on check we now have a total of 11 beds and sarcophagi belonging to foreigners who were mostly sogdians who lived in China seven beds are known but only three have been archaeologically excavated and the the four sarcophagi one was returned by a dealer it's now back in China only two really have been excavated I also show you the as an example of a sarcophagus this is a Sogdian known as Xu Jun which means master Jun in Chinese that was the Chinese name he was given but he also we know his sogdia name work hock from his epitaph stone which was bilingual that's unusual and so this is in the form of a of a Chinese house and inside would be the platform upon which he and his wife were laid to rest he's buried in a Chinese tomb now everything I've said about being as our astronaut and not polluting the earth but the Chinese the the Chinese living in I mean the sogdians living in China were buried in Chinese type tombs it could be because they were not allowed to expose their dead by the Chinese be that as it may one can argue that the stone sarcophagus or the stone bed separated the body from the earth and so you were not really polluting anything and one of the remarkable things about finding and the usefulness of besides them being was very interesting finding all of these remains of Janurary remains of Saudi ins and China is that they show us things that we only knew about from the Zoroastrian religious literature we don't even have it on Aussie Aires in in sogdiana and this in particular is what is known as the SOG deed ceremony the glance of the dog in this case this was not an excavated piece it's in the Miho Museum we right smack in the middle and actually that slab belongs in the middle of the bed we see the dog who is brought in the dog is sacred to Zoroastrians and the dog is brought in is the very keen sense of smell to make sure that the person is truly dead he is the dog is made to see the dead body several times in the course of this four days and then accompanies the corpse to the dogma etc so this was really quite remarkable it was a remarkable thing to to to discover to have even though it comes from the market and then on another this is on work Hawks sarcophagus again what we know from the literature but we don't often see is the actual crossing of the bridge to paradise and there is surgeon and his wife we hace and their with a caravan because he began as a merchant and as a carrot banner there is Austrian priests and there are dogs watching their way now if you are if you if to get if you've done well in your life good thoughts good words good deeds in addition to having your soul Wade you approach the chin rod bridge and if you will see a beautiful maiden walking towards you that's your sort of like your let's call the Dean it's a kind of other half and she will accompany you to paradise however if instead you see this old hag moving towards you you know that the bridge is going to narrow razor thin and you are going to fall into these waters which are inhabited I don't know if you can see them with all sorts of monstrous creatures and finally again just to show you the the the idea of dance and song and the banquets this is from the Miho couch a feasting couple he clearly is a Central Asian well-fed bearded his wife is probably Central Asian for various reasons the upper-class Central Asian women wore Chinese garments and here we have somebody doing this Ogden world with the Sogdian Orchestra and this is the good life in in the in the afterworld so I think this is a very good place to close

Channel: Asian Art Museum

Views: 11,104

Keywords: silk road, art history, Asian art, China, West Asia

Id: y6zKxdNQqr4

Length: 100min 49sec (6049 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 02 2019