Serindia : vol.3 / 64 ページ（白黒高解像度画像）

0064	Serindia : vol.3
セリンディア : vol.3

Kao Chü-hui obviously implies that they, too, at one time held the mountain tracts through which
the preceding rapid survey has taken us. At his own time these must have belonged to the Hui-ho,
or Uigurs, 迴紇, then in possession of Kan-chou. But what is of particular historical interest
for us is the fact that in Kao Chü-hui's days local tradition evidently still remembered those
Nan-shan valleys and uplands having served as grazing grounds for the ancient Little Yüeh-chih
Little Yüeh- of Han times. An important passage of Ssü-ma Ch'ien's history tells us that when the Great
chih left
behind in Yüeh-chih, before masters of the whole region between Liang-chou and Tun-huang, had been
Nan-shan. defeated by the Hsiung-nu and had started about the middle of the second century B.C. on the
great exodus which was to carry them to the Oxus and ultimately, as the Indo-Scythians, to
the Indus, 'a small number among them, unable to depart, remained behind and took refuge
among the Ch'iang 羌 of the Nan-shan 南山; they received the designation of the Little Yüeh-
chih 小月氏'.¹⁶

Little Yüeh- From the Later Han Annals we learn that the Little Yüeh-chih, after having found a refuge
chih under
Later Han among the Ch'iang or Tibetan tribes in the Hsi-ning region, made their submission to the Chinese
and after. when the Hsiung-nu had been driven from the Kan-su borders in 121 B.C., and that subsequently
a portion of them regained their old seats near Kan-chou.¹⁷ As late as A.D. 189 a reference is made
in the same Annals to a revolt which took place among the Little Yüeh-chih settled about Kan-chou
against the Chinese administration.¹⁸ There is reason to believe that the object which guided the
imperial authorities in this repatriation of a portion of the Little Yüeh-chih was the same as that
underlying the later settlement on this ground of the Sha-t'o and Sarö and Shera Yogurs, i.e. to
secure auxiliaries for the defence of the border more warlike than the local Chinese. But other remnants
Little Yüeh- of the Yüeh-chih evidently survived in the mountains much further to the west. Thus the Wei lio,
chih in
mountains composed between A.D. 239 and 265, mentions Yüeh-chih remnants, along with various tribes evidently
near Tun- of Tibetan descent, as living in the 'mountains of the South' that stretch from Tun-huang to the
huang. Ts'ung-ling.¹⁹ Kao Chü-hui, too, when passing in A.D. 939 through the territory of the Chung-yün
仲雲, a tribe inhabiting the desert mountains west of Tun-huang, records the tradition that 'the
Chung-yün are a branch which has remained of the Little Yüeh-chih'.²⁰ They are described as brave
and warlike men, dreaded by the inhabitants of Kua-chou and Sha-chou.

Importance These historical notices, mere glimpses as they are, will help us to appreciate better the impor-
of Nan-shan
grazing. tant bearing which the favourable physical conditions prevailing in the valleys and uplands of the
Central Nan-shan must have had upon the history of the territory stretching along its northern foot
from Liang-chou to Su-chou and beyond. Were it not for the abundant summer grazing grounds to
be found there, this narrow belt of cultivable ground between the foot of the Richthofen Range
and the arid sandy wastes adjoining it northward would certainly not have played the part it has in
history as a coveted goal of conquest for a long succession of nomadic nations such as the Wu-sun,
Yüeh-chih, and Hsiung-nu, Tibetans and Uigurs, Tanguts and Mongols.

Nan-shan For the Chinese, indeed, who ever since their first occupation more than two thousand years
on flank of
Chinese ago have struggled to keep nomadic invaders out of this 'land of passage', its possession was indis-
'passage pensable, quite irrespective of the physical aspects of those mountains; they needed it because it
land'.

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『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

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国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト 『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ

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国立情報学研究所 - ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ