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0080 On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks : vol.1
中央アジア踏査記 : vol.1
On Ancient Central-Asian Tracks : vol.1 / 80 ページ(カラー画像)

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doi: 10.20676/00000214
引用形式選択: Chicago | APA | Harvard | IEEE

OCR読み取り結果

It is difficult to believe that under the political conditions
prevailing from the ninth to the twelfth century the Tarim
basin could have played so important a part as a channel
for the interchange of cultural influences between Western
Asia and China as before. It was a time when China, under
the weakening rule of the T'ang and then later under the
Sung dynasty, was obliged to maintain towards Central
Asia a policy of passive defence if not of rigid seclusion.

The phenomenal rise of the Mongols under the great
Chingiz Khan, another Napoleon, in the first quarter of the
thirteenth century brought about vast changes in political
conditions throughout Asia. By the time he died in Kansu,
A.D. 1227, his astonishing conquests had brought all countries
from the Black Sea to the Yellow river under direct control
of the Mongol 'Great Khan'. The operations continued by
his immediate successors ended some thirty years later in
uniting the whole of China under the same Mongol dynasty
which by its several branches held sway over all Central Asia
as far as Persia, and over a great part of Eastern Europe as
well. The establishment of one sovereignty across the whole
of Asia again cleared the way for direct intercourse and
trade between China, the Near East and Europe.

For more than a century the trade routes to the north and
south of the T'ien-shan saw an undisturbed flow of traffic.
The accounts preserved to us of envoys, traders and travellers
from Europe then seeking far-off Cathay tell us a good deal
of those routes and of the ground which they crossed. None
of these accounts, in accuracy of detail and human interest,
approach the immortal record of Marco Polo, the greatest
of mediaeval travellers.

The Mongol dominion over China which Marco Polo still