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| 0675 |
Innermost Asia : vol.1 |
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from the desert to the north-west of the Jade Gate barrier.¹⁸ I have shown in *Serindia* that this
route between the Jade Gate and Posterior Chü-shih, first opened A. D. 2, must necessarily have
crossed the T'ien-shan by the easy saddle over which passes the present Chinese cart-road from
Hāmi to Guchen, between the stations of Ch'i-ku-ching and Ta-shih-t'o (Map No. 31. c. 1; D. 2).¹⁹
Eastern Chü-mi, like the rest of the small 'kingdoms' dependent on Posterior Chü-shih, must
have lain on the northern side of the T'ien-shan. Hence we can safely locate it in the valleys and
plateaus to the west of the Barkul lake which are reached across that saddle and which we crossed
on our way from Barkul to Guchen, as seen in Maps Nos. 34. A. 1; 31. A–D. 1.
I shall have occasion farther on to give a brief description of this region; but I may at once
observe that its physical character entirely agrees with what the *Hou Han shu* tells us of the
Eastern Chü-mi.²⁰ The territory is there said to include over three thousand households and
some two thousand fighting men. Its people are described as nomads living in huts and tents
and leading a pastoral life, agriculture being practised only to a small extent. The T'ien-shan
sinks to a much lower elevation to the west of Barkul, before it rises again to a crest line carrying
permanent snow in that portion of the range which divides Guchen from Turfān. Consequently
there is less moisture to be found in the valleys west of Barkul until the forest-clad slopes east of
Mu-li-ho (Map No. 31. A. 1) are reached. Yet grazing grounds are to be found in most of this
area, and also patches of cultivation, which gradually increase in size and importance as the tract
of Guchen is approached. Since Western Chü-mi is not mentioned in the Later Han Annals we
may conclude with their commentator, quoted by M. Chavannes, that this territory had then
probably been absorbed by Eastern Chü-mi.²¹ This again would account for the latter being
credited with a population considerably in excess of that attributed to I-chih or the Barkul basin.
From this survey of the territories along the northern slopes of the T'ien-shan with which
Barkul appears, at any rate for a time, to have been linked, we may now return to the remaining
historical data concerning it preserved in records of the Later Han period. The freedom from Hun
inroads secured by Pan Yung was destined to be but a short one. As early as A. D. 131 we read that
the Chinese were under the necessity of placing a military colony at I-wu or Hāmi in order to prevent
the Hsiung-nu from making it a base for their depredations.²² In A. D. 135 Posterior Chü-shih was
again attacked by the Hu-yen king of the Northern Hsiung-nu, and a Chinese force sent against
him from Tun-huang failed to achieve success.²³
A better result attended the effort made two years later by P'ei Ts'ên 裴岑, prefect of Tun-
huang, of whose victory the only surviving memorial is an inscription, originally set up in a temple
by the Barkul lake and now preserved in a temple outside the north-west corner of Barkul town.²⁴
It records the success gained by P'ei Ts'ên, who, with a force of three thousand men, is said to have
destroyed the king Hu-yen and his people in a battle fought in September A. D. 137. But this
victory, too, which curiously enough the historical texts of the Later Han pass over in silence, had
no lasting result. In A. D. 151 the Hu-yen king, as the *Hou Han shu* tells us, was ravaging I-wu
or Hāmi with three thousand horsemen. A Chinese detachment sent to the east of the P'u-lei or
Barkul lake was completely annihilated by him. A Chinese force sent from Tun-huang in the same
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684
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