Final Project

So I wrote some stuff about Iran and Islam and Zoroastrianism and the 7th century CE.

http://iranianislam.blogspot.com/

[Note: due to technical problems, the videos, while scheduled to be posted at certain times, were only all finally uploaded by 11:45 PM on Tuesday the 5th. The actual content under the page "The Paper" was posted at 3:00 PM on the 5th, but, for some reason, pages aren't timestamped]

Step Fifteen

The word "cosmopolitan" gets used as an adjective, but if we look to the original Greek, it's actually a combination of "cosmos" and "politas" - "citizen of the world". It's been appropriated as an adjective, like in reference to a city, where it can mean "Having the characteristics which arise from, or are suited to, a range over many different countries; free from national limitations or attachments." or "Composed of people from many different countries." (both OED Online)

Regardless of nitpicky details about parts of speech, I figure, when we're talking about cities anywhere along the Silk Road(s), and especially ones near the ends, we're talking about the latter definition. So when we're talking about Xi'an (Chang'an, on some maps), we're talking about a city that is ridiculously ethnically/culturally/linguistically/religiously/etc  diverse.

This was my thought process (with some help from the internet - I don't carry the Oxford English Dictionary around in my head, unfortunately) when I dug out my course outline in my attempt to write something that actually fit with the week's theme instead of just branching randomly and haphazardly from the readings.

And then I read some articles. Two really stuck out at me: Bundy's essay "Missiological Reflections on Nestorian Christianity during the Tang Dynasty" and the first chapter of a book by Edward Schafer - romantically entitled Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of Tang Exotics. I'm going to go with a tri-layered argument refinement process here, to boil down a concrete strategy for how to deal on the Silk Road once you reach your destination.

I would like to sum up Section One, before I begin it, with the phrase: "like the new Star Trek movie!" Bundy's focus on the Nestorians' awesome survival method reminded me so much of that movie, in an abstract sense, it was ridiculous. Basically, if you haven't seen it, J. J. Abrams, bless his heart, managed to craft this movie that satisfied both the hardcore Trek nerds (tribble in Scotty's office was such a nice touch) and made a whole new fanbase of people who found it a genuinely good movie without needing to know any Trek lore at all. How does this relate to the Nestorians? They were, essentially, J. J. Abrams. They kept, as far as I can tell from Bundy's article, the basics of their religion so that the original adherents stayed cool with it, while changing and revitalizing things to appeal to the whole new fanbase that they found in China.

So, really, the Nestorians and good ol' J.J. make the point that one should adapt to the times/places in which one finds oneself - to make whatever it is that one is both something that one can fully own, and something that can be equally owned by the other people of the time/place.

In the margins of the article, next to "Step 15: IT'S JUST LIKE STAR TREK!" is the scribble "although it kinda failed the Nestorians but wtvs." And I was pretty worried - was the one awesome argument that I'd found in Bundy's article totally called into question by the fact that the Nestorians were kind of subsumed into broader Chinese culture so that we have very little information about them at all - Bundy makes it seem as though he presents the bulk of the extant material in all of 11 pages - and so that they essentially disappeared as a cultural subset?

It turns out that Schafer is very helpful in answering that question with a resounding "No!" Schafer details an elegant, slightly disorganized (so much getting lost. So many delicious little tangents.) history of Tang China with reference to commerce and luxury items and traders and stuff. It's all really wonderful and opulent and happy and "oh, so traders liked to live here..." until he starts getting into expulsion edicts and the idea of making monastics of all religions disrobe and join secular society for tax purposes and then the revolts and killing of foreign traders and it all gets pretty terrifying.

The basic idea of Schafer's chapter, in connection with my lacklustre conclusion from Bundy, is that, in Tang China, particularly during the end of the dynasty, it was less about cultural survival and more about survival. Period. The Nestorians, then, did it right - they adapted as much as they needed to in order to survive, and if that meant not being foreign, and if that meant getting rid of monastics (which Bundy maintains were the backbone of the religion), and if that meant protecting your family from overzealous revolutionaries however you could, then you did it. I think, too often, in academia we forget about the nitty-gritty, the everyday life aspect of things, and we say "Gee, the Nestorians didn't do themselves any favours!" but what we really mean is "Gee, the Nestorians didn't do us any favours!" and we don't see that, on an individual level, they survived. Dying for your faith is all well and good, but if you can preserve your religion in quiet while preserving your life as well, then, you know, I'd vote for that.

Additionally, as the latter part of the Schafer's chapter makes very clear, whatever your culture was pre-Tang-blowup doesn't matter. Even if you had a strong, non-adaptive presence, after you're gone, they'll find their imaginations are more exciting than you ever were.

It's a sobering thought, that, even if you were really radical and strong and didn't adapt at all, you might not make a mark. And I think it makes the middle point a lot more important, because if even your culture won't survive, you might as well start to think about yourself as an individual/member of a family and get on weathering the storm.

Troubling lessons of the Silk Road(s) boiled down into Step Fifteen: Adapt, and you have a chance of survival. Because even cosmopolitan cities can decide that the world is just too big to include inside their walls, and the weeds that stick up beyond the grass are the ones that get pulled out. 

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. 

Step Thirteen

So one thing we've seen time and again in history is that religions travel well. Religions seem to travel better than language (Jews stayed Jewish when they moved out to Eastern Europe, but they dropped the Hebrew and Yiddish grew up), or food types, or anything, really, except tangible goods. And even then, I'll bet that Jesuit missionaries were pretty frequently shipwrecked or robbed somehow along the way but still managed to spread their religion.

In my ongoing quest to be the best/most successful Silk Road-er ever, I think this is an important lesson to learn. And I think that the story of Xuanzang, or at least as Sally Hovey Wriggins tells it, is an excellent case study to support this point.

So Xuanzang is this Buddhist monk who decides to contravene a direct order from the emperor and head out on what turns into a sixteen-year walk, all the way to India, with the interest of re-discovering Buddhism. He's a profound Mahayana Buddhist (not surprising), and he's wondering how to reconcile Mahayana beliefs with Theravada texts that he's been reading (to his profound consternation), and what better place to do that than in Theravada Buddhism's home? So off he goes, and it's quite a story.

Amidst all the miracles (which are all pretty cool - Xuanzang's biographer had quite the dramatic flair, even if everything is 100% true and accurate) and all the flattering state visits and all the 'Oh heavens. These people are rather strange. Nice, but straaaaaaaaannnngggge...' moments, Xuanzang discovers more than just an obscure part of his religious roots: he discovers the power of religion.

His monk's garb gets him lots of help along the way, as do his institutional ties, but his personal practice is what really gets things done. In every conflict that he has with a ruler, for instance, the demonstration of his dedication to his principles or his Awesome Buddhist Arguing Skills or his stick-to-his-guns attitude where Mahayana and Theravada clash manage to let him come out on top in some way or another, but I want to look at this on a more fundamental level.

I want to take Xuanzang's journey and say that being religious was the only way he could travel at all, really. Looking back to some readings from last week/the week before/some time that was not very far away but is also not now, there's this story of the first Buddhist missionaries being merchants! Which was framed as this way to show that Buddhism was tied to commerce, but I want to say that it really shows that commerce was tied to Buddhism, which is a pretty minute distinction, but one that I feel is important. It's not that Buddhism went where commerce went, it's that commerce grew where Buddhism was present and BECAUSE of Buddhism.

I don't think it's anything inherent to Buddhism - I'm sure any other religion could have done the same thing - but I think that Xuanzang' story shows just how much Buddhism dragged commerce along with it.
Xuanzang left China with essentially nothing, and ended up with massive amounts of presents and things, given by King A for Kings B through B-prime. This is a form of goods exchange - the kings he visited gave him presents back in exchange for these, and he heads off every time to see someone else and give and get presents. Really awesome presents, too.

Furthermore - and finally, I guess - the information exchange that we see between trade partners is the same information exchange we see here. Xuanzang is learning about Theravada Buddhism (and teaching about Mahayana, something that I think is super important given his route through the Himalayas and the interesting contents and origins of Himalayan Buddhism), but he's also learning about all the petty kingdoms - and the not-so-petty ones, and the nomadic tribes, and India itself. Xuanzang ends up becoming an advisor to the emperor when he gets back, and all because he has this wealth of information about lands previously shrouded in mystical mystery. And the trade relations between India and China really start happening once the emperor has this adequate information about India and once all the various Indian rulers have this adequate information about China. Commerce followed on Xuanzang's heels (sometimes so close it was essentially in his shoes), as commerce follows on the heels of religion in general.

Things Xuanzang has taught me: that Step Thirteen should be Be a religious pilgrim - you get to explore the world, get presents, get political clout, and get credit for starting commerce. 

Step Eight

So I've been reading some sections of The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Language, and I'm seriously getting the vibe that language is much too important of an issue to be relegated to a single step. Therefore, I present Further Arguments on the Importance of Language, alternatively titled Step Eight: You're not just changing the gene pool, so prepare yourself accordingly.


According the CEL (which is an acronym I just made up now, either because I am an incredibly lazy typist or an incredibly clever/witty person in general), languages are fascinatingly complex. One of the main ideas here is that of this language called "proto-Indo-European", which is supposed to be this foundational languages from which 55 languages sprung. I didn't read anywhere about a foundational language called "proto-everything-that's-not-Indo-European", but, for the sake of this post, let's just assume that there is one.

And let's assume that we have access to a time machine - one of my most cherished desires - and that, furthermore, we are fully functional crossbreeds of the historical linguist and the classic philologist (BIG NOTE: those disciplines apparently clash over the value of the historical record vs. the value of direct structural analysis, but CEL's experts have determined that the two are complementary). So, with our handy-dandy time machine, we had back to travel along the Silk Road(s) in the party of, say, a Genoese trader.

The question I have is, with a good knowledge of proto-Indo-European and any other proto-languages, would we be any better equipped than your average Genoese trader to deal with the different peoples and language groups we'd encounter?

I'm looking at this huge long process of scholarship that has led to the development of grammatical treatises and an alphabet and vocabulary for proto-Indo-European, and there's a big part of me that doesn't see the practical value in it. I suppose one could say the same thing about any number of scholarly disciplines - astrophysics, for instance, does not affect my daily life in any way - but all the examples I can think of have SOME bearing to SOMETHING in reality. I guess linguistic archaeology is something like regular archaeology, in the sense that it really ends up being knowledge for knowledge's sake, but, thinking like a traveller of the Silk Road(s), I think I would much rather understand a culture's history than understand that their language came from the same basic root as mine.

But I digress. What we're looking at here is the importance of language, and I want to bring this back to Christian's idea of EXCHANGE rather than TRADE. The CEL makes the point that sometimes it's really hard to tell the relationship between languages because the markers that would put them in the same family might only be there because of a cultural exchange - like all the French words and grammatical structures in English from way back in the Norman Conquest. To what extent, I wonder, are languages part of the Silk Road exchange - and not just, like I mentioned in Step Seven, to learn other languages, but to INFLUENCE them.

If I look at the CEL's handy map of language group distribution, I can see a ton of points of interaction between languages. The majority of the Silk Road(s) didn't include speakers of Indo-European languages, which means a massive amount of interplay not only between, say Indo-Iranian and Italic languages, but also between the Indo-European languages and other entire FAMILIES of languages.

And when you break down the Uralic languages (for which, sadly, the CEL does not have a nice little chart), or the Caucasian languages, or the Palaeosiberian or Altaic or Chinese languages, or the languages that don't fit into any of those like Korean or Japanese, you're talking a massive number of possible interactions, if you do the whole thing where you multiple <number of things> by <number of thing> to get the possible permutations of those things?

I feel like this has two major implications for journeying the Silk Road(s).

One: whatever you do, whoever you meet, they will be influencing your language and you will be influencing theirs.
Two: Step Seven is significantly easier said than done.

And implication number two brings back the question - would knowledge of proto-languages help your plight in  any way? Because if so, I feel like yet another alternative title for Step Eight would be be a linguist. 

Step Seven

So I'm sitting here figuring that Seven is an Important Number and should thus have something vaguely scholarly attached to it, when my computer pops up with a reminder that I have programmed into my calendar: Practice Sanskrit. Languages are not my forte. But doing anything with Buddhist or Hindu studies really requires at the very least Sanskrit, and other languages are pretty helpful. Islamic studies'll take Arabic, but I figure: ONE new alphabet at a time, right?

And I'm having my little pity party as I pull out my practice notebook and my list of words and phrases to transliterate, and suddenly it strikes me: for anyone travelling the Silk Road(s), language would've been an issue, too.

I mean, for starters, even if Christian is wrong about the pastoralists, you've still got quite the large difference between people in different cities. Think about India! Or pre-colonial North and South America! Or England for most of the Middle Ages! The idea that people who are essentially next door neighbours can't understand each other takes on huge significance when we look at it from the perspective of people who lived significantly further apart, and probably had a bare minimum of common cultural practices to provide some context for conversation. And when you update the issue to the heyday of the Silk Road, when there really were only a few giant cohesive routes stretching from the Mediterranean to the Gobi Desert, well. You've got quite the conundrum.

What I want to know is: were there translators? I mean, aside from buying slaves/indentured servants along the way and hoping that
a) they spoke your language
b) they were fluent enough in their own language to function as an interpreter
c) they knew the language of your next destination
AND THEN: would you sell them when you got to your next stop and buy someone else who fit the criteria, but for the city after? And do the same coming back?

Would you communicate through signs? Body language is super different East to West, so would there be tons of miscommunication and offensive behaviour to one side or the other, and eventually gruesome death for ticking off the wrong person?

Because communication is important - not just for successful trade (although it's kinda key there as well) but also to avoid the kind of misapprehensions that come from poor communication. Orientalism is something that's come up a lot in modern scholarly work focusing on the world west of the Mediterranean, and where did Orientalism come from? The root of the problem, it seems to my untutored eye, is the lack of real communication.

And not just on the part of, say, Chinese national to Venetian dude. No, Venetian dude'll tell the rest of his trade caravan what Chinese national said, and a Genoese dude who splits from the party to head back early with a half dozen other guys + entourages, encounters a Ladakhi guy on his way back. And he tells this story to the Ladakhi, who goes on his way to wherever he's headed. He stops in an inn on the way and talks to a Buddhist pilgrim who's on his way to Bodghaya, re-telling the story. The Buddhist, in Bodghaya, stays with a Muslim who's on his way to Mecca for his own pilgrimage, and tells him the story one night when it's too hot to sleep. On his way to Mecca, the Muslim stops at the home of a distant cousin, a trader who's on his way to Venice, and recounts the story to him because they don't have much else to say to each other. The trader cousin gets to Venice, and is sitting on the quay watching the sunset one evening when a Venetian dude sits down next to him. They start to talk, and the trader cousin tells the Venetian dude his story, and the Venetian dude - the same one from the beginning - doesn't recognize the tale. Information getting ANYWHERE along the Silk Road must've been a massive and disgustingly confusing game of Broken Telephone, and a dangerous one, too.

The last time I played Broken Telephone, I didn't end up believing what I heard at the end because I knew that it was inevitably distorted. But trading information and stories along the Silk Road(s) was not a game, and nobody knew that everything would be inevitably distorted.

Obviously, miscommunication happens even when people speak the same language. But, really: how much worse is the situation when hundreds of languages are in play?

Therefore, logical Step Seven is hereby christened Learn some languages. Or hire an amazing translator who knows everything.