National Institute of Informatics - Digital Silk Road Project
Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books

gested by Hudson, because the profit to be derived from it had become obvious to
even the more barbaric peoples along the routes.


A. THE ROADS.

In considering the course of the main roads along which the silk trade flourished
I restrict myself to those parts which fall inside the eastern Tarim Basin and its
nearest surroundings. They have been tentatively marked on the map Fig. 4. Lateral
roads also existed but they have been left out of the discussion here as they are of
more local interest.
Ch'ang-an, the Han capital of China, may be regarded as the true starting point
of the Silk Road, and its western terminus was probably Antioch in Syria. This
means a distance of nearly 7000 km.
At Tun-huang the road divided into two branches, and later on a third was added
(Chavannes 1905, pp. 528 ff). Baron von Richthofen, the famous German geo-
grapher, has coined the name Silk Road for these ancient caravan routes, and this
name has since been widely used by Westerners, though hardly by the Chinese
themselves.
From Tun-huang the southern route ran inside or along the Astin-tagh as far as
Miran, and thence followed the southern rim of the vast Taklamakan desert to
Khotan, Yarkend and across the Pamirs.
The northern or new road was opened in the period 1—5 A. D. and ran north-
westwards from Tun-huang (or the old Yü-men-kuan outside Tun-huang) to Tur-
fan, whence it may have followed the present trunk road via Urumchi to the Ili
valley. It is said to have rejoined the Road of the Centre at Kucha. The course of
this road between Yü-men-kuan and Turfan is absolutely unknown, and I have
marked it on the map Fig. 4 only after much hesitation.
The present trunk road from Turfan to Qara-shahr and Korla cannot have been
of any use for the through traffic with silk until after A. D. 127, the year when
Yen-ch'i (Qara-shahr) submitted to Chinese power. But by this Tun-huang—Turfan
road silk reached the Wu-sun in the Ili valley and around the Issiq-köl, and may
have been forwarded westwards by the Wu-sun.
After the capture of Hami in A. D. 73 the present cart roads Anhsi—Hami and
Tun-huang—Hami—Turfan were opened by the Chinese for a short period, but
this part was very insecure as long as the Huns exercised any power south of the
T'ien-shan mountains.
The Road of the Centre, which is probably of the same age as the southern one
became by far the most important line of communication for the overland trade be-
tween China and the West from the end of the second century B. C. until the change
in the course of the lower Tarim made it untrafficable sometime during the second

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