Step Fourteen

Everything that I have ever talked about as important in travelling the Silk Road really seems to boil down into one thing: BE A SOGDIAN.

Who were the Sogdians? Historically, we've got these people who came from the land between the Amu Darya and the Syr Darya rivers, centred around Samarkand although with this really decentralized political system. They were Zoroastrians - that we know - but not as intensely purist as the Sassanians next door. They were traders first and foremost, they settled parts of China and managed to become high up people in Chinese government and bureaucracy, and they translated TONS of texts. The way I see it, we've got four distinct ways we can look at the Sogdian contribution to the history of the Silk Road.

Way the First: Sogdians as religious connoisseurs. I use the term cognizant of how loaded it is, with its implications of "picking the best" - but what I'm really using it to say is that, like connoisseurs of cheesecake pick out what they think is best, the Sogdians picked out what they thought was best about certain religious traditions, and I'm not using the word to make value statements about religions. There. Now that that's out of the way: on to the main point. The Sogdians, whether at home between the rivers or in their colonies in China, somehow managed to incorporate a ton of different religious traditions into Zoroastrianism.

We've got evidence of the usual run of Zoroastrian practices (although Lerner, Marshak, and Feng are all pretty quiet about what exactly those practices ARE), along with some Hindu goddess worship, and some Nestorian Christianity creeping in there, and some Manichean teachings, and I'm guessing we might see a lot of Buddhist influence if we look at later history, maybe some Islamic influence, and definitely some Confucianism or Daoism when we get into China. The Sogdians were able to pick and choose when it came to religion, which, as I've delved into before, results in Good Things. With the exchange of ideas comes the exchange of technology, the exchange of goods, the exchange of alliances, all of which are essential to success on the Silk Road - all of which ARE the Silk Road.

Way the Second: Sogdians as traders. And traders of ideas as well as everything material! But, really, traders.  LOOK AT THEIR LOCATION! It was totally prime for interaction with everyone. Between the Persians and Romans/Byzantines on one side, the Chinese on the other, Bactria and India below them and the riches of the steppes above, the Sogdians had it made. Not only that, but because the bulk of their civilization was between two rivers, they had a great wealth of resources of their own (presumably) with which to start up trade. And trade they did - trumping even the Sassanians, who were pretty powerful and awesome and stuff. Not only were they the chief go-betweens between EVERYONE, they also made a huge contribution to trade relations in general: the Sogdian language was the language of trade all along the Silk Road(s). Not only did they facilitate the actual progress of goods and technologies and ideas along the trade routes, they facilitated the interactions between traders of all cultures, so that we can probably say with a great degree of accuracy that Silk Road trade was a Sogdian enterprise.

Way the Third: Sogdians as cultural puzzle pieces. The Sogdians knew that the best people to trade with are people you know, so they accordingly set up lots of colonies along the Silk Road routes, and, in doing so, created a ton of microcosmic Sogdian worlds in the heart of places like China. In China they were particularly successful, managing to maintain their cultural identities to the extent that we can tell from their last names that they were still identifying with their homeland, even after so many generations that China really WAS their homeland. They also got in really tight with the Chinese government - one particular family managed to produce a bunch of high-ranking officials and military officers and even some imperial bodyguards and horse-breeders.

To me, this is characteristic of the Silk Road itself:  the interactions of different cultures to the point where they weave together to form a distinct tapestry where the warp and weft can still be distinguished. The Sogdians, in their ability to both integrate into Chinese society and keep their own distinct cultural heritage alive, are essentially personifications of the entirety of the Silk Road. I know this is a big claim. I'm not sure if I actually can make it, but I'd like to.

Finally, Way the Fourth: Sogdians as translators. I've already talked about the Sogdian language as the language of trade, but that's not the only awesome thing that they managed to do linguistically. They translated Buddhist texts primarily, according to Feng, but this seems to me to just be indicative of what was probably a larger translation effort: the Sogdians are the reason that a variety of religious and historical and political theoretical traditions made their way along the Silk Road. The Sogdians provided one of the main vehicles for the progress of knowledge along the trade routes, a common language, and then actively ensured that the knowledge was IN that language so that it COULD travel.

The Sogdians were just...essential. Could there have been a Silk Road without them? Somehow, I feel that the things that they did were done to a lesser extent by different peoples, and while there might not have been a giant presence, there probably would've been the same sort of thing, and we'd have a Silk Road. But would it be at all the same? As I see it, the best and only way to success on the Silk Road would be to follow Step Fourteen and be a Sogdian.