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The First Chinese Buddhism (2) |
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E Bruce Brooks
(University of Massachusetts at Amherst) Abridged Paper (2) The Geographical Affinities of Lu It would seem that Lu, more a northern state, would be in contact with the steppe zone to the north of the Sinitic world, and that this zone, well established as the route of the silk trade which reached Bactria not later than 0330, would have been its highway to India. The historical evidence however does not support this very natural supposition. It suggests instead a southern route. It is notable that in the Chun/Chyou, the surviving court chronicle of Lu for the years 0722-0479, the southern nonSinitic state of Chu is mentioned from very early times, but the northern Sinitic state of Yen is never mentioned at all. Except for its large and troublesome neighbor Chi, on the other side of the Taishan, Lu knows nothing beyond the Taishan, and even the campaign against the indigenous peoples living in the fastnesses of the Taishan was not even a joint affair, but was carried out by Chi alone, Lu merely acquiescing. With the states further down the Sz River, on the other hand, and with those along the lower and middle Yangdz, it would seem that Lu had early knowledge and contact. This amounts to saying that its geographical affinities were southward, not northward, in this early period, the end of which just precedes the early Analects whose meditation evidence we are here concerned to explain. The circulation of Chu coins in Warring States times further reinforces the idea that Chu influence and later on, Chu conquests, reached as far north as the Taishan (including Lu in both categories), but no further. The Chu economic sphere may roughly be described as an L-shaped area, comprising the middle and lower Yangdz with a northward branch up the Hwai Valley. North of the Taishan, Chi currency and Chi political influence took over. Not to anticipate the results of discussion at the Conference on just this point, but it seems further notable that the degree of geographical knowledge available to Chin, considered as being that implied by the admittedly schematized lists of mountains in the core of the Shan/Hai Jing, shows a suggestive thinness in more or less this same zone; famous mountains are registered, but there is relatively little detail available to whoever compiled the core record (SHJ 1-5) about the Chu and Min zones, and even about the Hwai and Sz area, which would include Lu. The Chu economic zone thus complements the Chin known geographical zone, and neither very greatly obtrudes into the other. Within that area, Chu may be thought of as a northmost Sinitic protuberance in an otherwise non-Sinitic and generally southern culture zone. I take it as not requiring discussion that here, as so frequently elsewhere, cultural and technical information is most commonly carried by traders, and that profit is the essential motive for the journeys of traders. Trade Routes That trade took place along these intersecting river systems goes almost without saying. For Yangdz trade, we have the so-called V-jywn Tallies, which authorize a prince of Chu to trade in certain goods, transferred by very large parties who were to be given official hospitality, along the Yangdz valley. We may note the elite nature of this one documented case of officially permitted trade. Smaller parties might well have attempted to evade rather than exploit the local police and hospitality system, but the fact of trade is undeniable. This means that Lu, in the period in question (the 05c), was and in certain respects had long been part of a trading and political contact network that embraced the middle and lower Yangdz. The question is whether the upper Yangdz could be reached from, or as part of, this network, and whether, from that point if reached, the journey to northeastern India could be successfully undertaken. The answer seems to Yes to both. For large parties, travel beyond the usual Chu trading area was impractical, but smaller and nonthreatening parties might apparently hope to get through the intervening tribes and states, most importantly the Dyen in what is now Ywnnan, and by small bridges and occasional portages reach the lower Brahmaputra with their provisions holding out and their saddlebags carrying sufficient high-yield goods to make the journey worthwhile. One variant of the route in question, still part of the Southeast Asian narcotic smuggling network, was retraced a century ago by Young, and later research confirms the practicality of the enterprise, though always with the proviso that the traders are small parties rather than large caravans. We may note in passing that the Dyen area, as late as Han, was not only nonSinitic in character, but was part of the culture zone to which northern Burma and Assam also belong. This is the area where the crossbow originated, to be developed as a modern weapon by Chu craftsmen. Those who had once learned the manners and mores of that culture, would find themselves in possession of a cultural lingua franca that would remain valid form them well into the territory now accounted Indian. There was not an endless succession of local ways to be learned, merely four cultural spheres, of which the home Sinitic, and probably also the neighboring Chu, were already familiar to any conjectural Lu traders embarking on long-distance enterprises with their higher risks, but also greater price differentials to balance the risks. It would seem, from evidence and direct investigation, that high-volume trade was possible within the Chu trade zone, with low-volume and small-party trade possible also southwest of that zone.
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