Dayuan
Nation | Defunct
329 BCE to 30 CE
The Dayuan or Ta-Yuan (Chinese: lit.
“Great Yuan”) are a people of Ferghana in Central Asia, described in the Chinese historical works of Records of the Grand Historian and the Book of Han.
It is mentioned in the accounts of the famous Chinese explorer Zhang Qian in 130 BCE and the numerous embassies that followed him into Central Asia.
The country of Dayuan is generally accepted as relating to the Ferghana Valley.These Chinese accounts describe the Dayuan as urbanized dwellers with Caucasian features, living in walled cities and having "customs identical to those of the Greco-Bactrians", a Hellenistic kingdom that is ruling Bactria at that time in today’s northern Afghanistan.
The Dayuan are also described as manufacturers and great lovers of wine.
The Dayuan are probably the descendants of the Greek colonists that were settled by Alexander the Great in Ferghana in 329 BCE, and prosper within the Hellenistic realm of the Seleucids and Greco-Bactrians, until they are isolated by the migrations of the Yuezhi around 160 BCE.
Alternatively, it has also been suggested that the name "Yuan" was simply a transliteration of the words “Yona”, or “Yavana”, used throughout antiquity in Asia to designate Greeks (“Ionians”), so that Dayuan (lit.
“Great Yuan”) would mean "Great Ionians".The interaction between the Dayuan and the Chinese is historically crucial, since it represents one of the first major contacts between an urbanized Indo-European culture and the Chinese civilization, opening the way to the formation of the Silk Road that was to link the East and the West in material and cultural exchange from the 1st century BCE to the 15th century.
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The nomadic tribes of the Yuezhi, according to the Han chronicles, following a crushing defeat in 162 BCE by the Xiongnu (Huns?), flee from the Tarim Basin towards the west, crosses the neighboring urban civilization of the "Dayuan" (probably the Greek possessions in Ferghana), and resettle north of the Oxus in modern-day Kazakhstan and Uzbekistan, in the northern part of the Greco-Bactrian territory.
The Dayuan are to remain a healthy and powerful urban civilization that is to have numerous contacts and exchanges with China from 130 BCE.
The Yuezhi apparently occupy the Greco-Bactrian territory north of the Oxus during the reign of Eucratides, who is busy fighting in India against the Indo-Greeks.
Nomads overrun the independent Greek kingdom of Bactria in 128 BCE.
The Yuezhi are visited by a Chinese mission, led by Zhang Qian in 126 BCE, that is seeking an offensive alliance with the Yuezhi to counter the Xiongnu threat to the north.
Although the request for an alliance is denied by the son of the slain Yuezhi king, who prefers to maintain peace in Transoxiana rather than to seek revenge, Zhang Qian makes a detailed account, reported in the Shiji, that gives considerable insight into the situation in Central Asia at this time.
Zhang Qian, who spends a year with the Yuezhi and in Bactria, relates that "the Great Yuezhi live two thousand or three thousand li (832-1,247 kilometers) west of Dayuan (Ferghana), north of the Gui (Oxus) river.
They are bordered on the south by Daxia (Bactria), on the west by Anxi (Parthia), and on the north by Kangju (beyond the middle Jaxartes).
They are a nation of nomads, moving from place to place with their herds, and their customs are like those of the Xiongnu.
They have some 100,000 or 200,000 archer warriors."
Although the Yuezhi had remained north of the Oxus for a while, they have apparently obtained the submission of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom to the south of the Oxus.
The Yuezhi are organized into five major tribes, each led by a yabgu, or tribal chief, and known to the Chinese as Xiūmì in Western Wakhān and Zibak, Guishuang in Badakhshan and the adjoining territories north of the Oxus, Shuangmi in the region of Shughnan, Xidun in the region of Balkh, and Dūmì in the region of Termez.
Details from Chinese sources seem to indicate that the nomad invasion did not end civilization in Bactria entirely.
Hellenized cities continue to exist for some time, and the well-organized agricultural systems are not demolished.
Some time after 124 BCE, possibly disturbed by further incursions of rivals from the north and apparently vanquished by the Parthian king Mithridates II, successor to Artabanus, the Yuezhi move south to Bactria.
Bactria had been conquered by the Greeks under Alexander the Great in 330 BCE and since settled by the Hellenistic civilization of the Seleucids and the Greco-Bactrians for two centuries.
This event is recorded in Classical Greek sources, when Strabo presented them as a Scythian tribe and explained that the Tocharians—together with the Assianis, Passianis and Sakaraulis—took part in the destruction of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom in the second half of the second century BCE: "Most of the Scythians, beginning from the Caspian Sea, are called Dahae Scythae, and those situated more towards the east Massagetae and Sacae; the rest have the common appellation of Scythians, but each separate tribe has its peculiar name.
All, or the greatest part of them, are nomads.
The best known tribes are those who deprived the Greeks of Bactriana, the Asii, Pasiani, Tochari, and Sacarauli, who came from the country on the other side of the Jaxartes, opposite the Sacae and Sogdiani."
(Strabo, 11-8-1) A description of the Greco-Bactrian kingdom is made by Zhang Qian after the conquest by Yuezhi: "Daxia (Greco-Bactria) is located over 2,000 li southwest of Dayuan, south of the Gui (Oxus) river.
Its people cultivate the land and have cities and houses.
Their customs are like those of Ta-Yuan.
It has no great ruler but only a number of petty chiefs ruling the various cities.
The people are poor in the use of arms and afraid of battle, but they are clever at commerce.
After the Great Yuezhi moved west and attacked the lands, the entire country came under their sway.
The population of the country is large, numbering some 1,000,000 or more persons.
The capital is called the city of Lanshi (Bactra) (modern Balkh) and has a market where all sorts of goods are bought and sold."
In a sweeping analysis of the physical types and cultures of Central Asia that he visited in 126 BCE, Zhang Qian reports that "although the states from Dayuan west to Anxi (Parthia), speak rather different languages, their customs are generally similar and their languages mutually intelligible.
The men have deep-set eyes and profuse beards and whiskers.
They are skillful at commerce and will haggle over a fraction of a cent.
Women are held in great respect, and the men make decisions on the advice of their women."