tang dynasty times

The Road to Shu 蜀への道

And speaking of the Road to Shu-- while I fear my traveling days are behind me (at least for awhile), still I cannot help, in splendid longing, to hope one day to see the Kingdom of Shu.

The Kingdom of Shu.

Divided from the rest of the empire by  tall mountains and deep valleys, it has long been a place of exile where emperors and kings sent those in disfavor. Our monk Xuanzang, himself, fled to Chengdu when the Sui dynasty collapsed in 618. Countless many of China's famed scholar-artists have traveled there as well-- either in forced or in self-exile. Living in rustic huts, these scholar-artists composed some of the finest poetry and calligraphy in Chinese history. 

It should come as no surprise, then, that our Tang Emperor would flee West into the mountains of Shu when the time came to escape certain death at the hands of An Lushan and his men.

The Metropolitan Museum has a famous Tang painting called Emperor Xuanzong's Flight to Shu. Unfortunately, I can't find an online reproduction. Somehow, though, even without the actual image in front of me, I can still see them there in my mind: the Emperor and his party on the Road to Shu. In what is a Tang processional painting, there is a long line of men on horseback, each carrying banners of the emperor or weapons (swords or bow and arrows)-- except for one lonely figure in brilliant crimsome robes. The Emperor. His head is turned back in the direction from which they had just come. Probably trying to get one last glimpse of his beloved-- now dead.

Tang poet Bai Juyi (Pai Chu'i 白居易, or HAKURAKUTEN 白楽天) wrote of the Emperor's tremendous lonliness:

His majesty, covering his face, could not save her,
He turned to look back, his face streaming with blood and tears...
Under Mount Emei, a scattering of marching men,
Flags and banners colorless in the fading sunset

君 王 掩 面 救 不 得。回 看 血 淚 相 和 流。黃 埃 散 漫 風 蕭 索。雲 棧 縈 紆 登劍 閣。 峨 嵋 山 下 少 人 行。旌 旗 無 光 日 色 薄。

Known for its silk broacdes and bamboo products. I think it was the Han Emperor's man Zhang Qian, who during his miraculous Journey West (even earlier than Xuanzang's great journey) was stunned to find the products of Shu in the markets of Daxia (the ancient Greek state of Bacrtia). He was baffled to find Chinese products this far West-- especially considering the Xiongnu (sometimes perhaps erroneously referred to as the Huns) had placed a huge trade embargo on any movement of goods in the area. How did they get past the barbarians, he wondered?

Well, apprently there was an alternate route (isn't there always?) west through India.

The Brocades of Shu (蜀錦) have been legendary for 2000 years for their vibrant colors. Shipped far and wide, one of my books has a map showing the route they traveled to market-- from Chengdu, they moved east to Chang'an; then from Chang'an west through the Jade Gate (and most probably also east toward Japan). The other "unofficial" route (the one that so intrigued the Han Emperor) was south from Chengdu to Kunming and then straight west into India, moving north to Bactria.

"Green waters and blue mountains-- the Road to Shu was hard "

As Shu waters flow green, Shu mountains show blue,
His majesty's love remained, deeper than the new.
White moon of loneliness, cold moon of exile.
Bell-chimes in evening rain were bronze-edged heartbeats.

蜀江水碧蜀山青， 聖主朝朝暮暮情。 行宮見月傷心色， 夜雨聞鈴腸斷聲。 天旋地轉迴龍馭， 到此躊躇不能去

**

May 12,

The day after I wrote this post, Sichuan was hit by a massive earthquake. A whopping 8 magnitude earthquake, the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake caused 40,000 plus deaths. The images on the news each night of the collapsed schools are heartbreaking.

**

A few days later-- with Shu still unshakeably on my mind-- I inadvertently purchased my first-ever audio book, The Man Who Loved China. I have long felt a kind of aversion to audio books, but had been debating buying this particular one since I didn't particularly want to wait for the paperback edition to come out. A few accidental clicks and flicks and it was downloaded before I even realized what was happening... (the story of my life!)

Simon Winchester is a man attracted-- it seems-- by natural disasters and maverick scholars. His book on the creators of the Oxford  English Dictionary is one I have also been meaning to read for years. In fact, I have been meaning to read many of Winchester's books for years.

For the audio book, the author himself is narrating the story-- which if you haven't heard about it already-- is on the life of Joseph Needham, most famous for his monumental Science and Civilization of China series. The many volumes of the series are quoted in so much of everything you read in English about China-- they are also incredibly expensive books-- all 15 or so volumes.

One reviewer remarked that

"Science and Civilisation in China" is a work so massive and so detailed it is almost impossible to imagine reading all of it, much less writing it, even if it does rank, as Needham biographer Simon Winchester writes in "The Man Who Loved China," "among the great intellectual accomplishments of all time."

I've only just started listening, but the early part of the story also happens to take place in Sichuan-- during the 1940s. This was before Chongqing was the super mega-city it is today. (Chongqing is no longer even part of Sichuan -- reporting directly to Beijing like a Province). At the time Needham arrived (traveling to Western China over The Hump from Calcutta), Chongqing was the capital of China-- itself in exile.  

It was the city not only of the government-in-exile, but was the place where all the country's intellectuals, scientists and revolutionaries had fled. It was also where a large portion of the art collection had been hand-carried and then hidden in caves in the surrounding hills. Lying along the Yangzi, the city was known for its spicy food, exquisite brocades and pretty women. It was also known for the hundreds of slimy steps leading up to the city from the river.

Arriving, Needham was in bliss. After nearly half a lifetime of studying all things Chinese (not to mention being deeply in love with a Chinese woman), Needham remarked in his diary during his first few days in Chongqing that,

It was the China of which he dreamed. He stepped of the plane at Kunming's military airstrip into a crisp early spring afternoon...Everything seems so strangely familiar-- after having thought of China for so long. And yet, it is also like a dream.

By the time he reached the ornate buildings of the consulate, he was immediately and uncontrollably happy; everything instantly delightful... 

If you haven't noticed, this is a love story. Chongqing was (as Barthes wrote about Paris) Adorable-- and China was the beloved.

And, being a love affair (because, yes, I believe people can fall in love with places every bit as much as they can with people) the reviewer's compaint below, I think is unwarranted-- indeed, I think what has become known as "Needham's Grand Question" is the less interesting aspect of the story; indeed the question itself is deeply flawed, I think.

So there is much to learn from "The Man Who Loved China," an enjoyable, breezy read, well suited for reading on the chaise longue, gin-and-tonic in hand. But there is also a telling, unresolved paradox running through Winchester's tale. After an early and hugely successful career as a biochemist, capped off by being named a member of the ultra-prestigious Royal Society at the tender age of 41, Needham devoted the remainder of his life to, on the one hand, documenting how technologically far ahead China had been for millennia when compared to the West, and on the other hand, striving to understand why Europe suddenly jumped in front -- a monumental tectonic shift that dominates the reality of globalization to this day.

That, again, is "the Needham question," and the great irony is that despite the 24 volumes, 15,000 pages and 3 million words written by Needham and his collaborators and successors, we still don't have a satisfactory answer to that question. It could be that very indeterminacy that explains why Winchester devotes far more time to telling us about Needham's rambunctious, irrepressible love life and his freewheeling socialist politics than he does to teasing out the implications of this central conundrum. If Needham was baffled, what hope for a mere biographer? But that's a shame, because the Needham question is a challenge that forces all students of China, or, for that matter, students of the history of science, or of history in general, to wrinkle their brow. A truly satisfactory appraisal of Needham's life would make "the Needham question" a central theme, rather than sequester it off in a few paragraphs in an epilogue.

Couldn't disagree more.

I haven't gotten to the end which is where Winchester apparently tries to tackle the Big Question. However, Jonathon Dresner at Frog in a Well explains the hype in his post Needling Needham. You can follow the links if you're interested. His response to Winchester's NYT op-ed is short but sweet-- in one paragraph he pretty much takes care of the "needling" question---- that is, if one even accepts that the Question (which begs several questions in itself) is a valid one in the first place. See this, for example.

Why didn't China invent the steam engine? Was China even on that particular technological course? And does scientific development happen in a vacuum anyway? It's kind of like spending time wondering why Japan isn't Canada? Yes, expatriats do sit around pondering questions which boil down to just that.

**

The Road to Shu is Hard. Another Tang dynasty poem, it was written by Li Bai (李白). Yes, the road to Shu is hard. It is so today as much as ever it seems. One of my favorite translations of the famous poem is by Vikram Seth. Another version  here is also worth looking at.

The Road to Shu is Hard

Ah! it's fearsome--oh! it's high!
The Road to Shu is hard, harder than climbing to the sky.
The Kings Can Cong and Yu Fu
Founded long ago the land of Shu
Then for forty-eight thousand years
Nothing linked it to Qin frontiers.
White Star Peak blocked the western way.
A bird tried to cut across Mount Emei--
And only when the earth shook, hills collapsed , and brave
                                  men died
Did cliff roads and sky-ladders join it to the outside.

噫吁戯危乎高哉　　　ああ　ああ　危ういかな　高いかな、
蜀道之難難於上青天　蜀道の難きは　青天に上るよりも難し、
蠶叢乃魚鳬　　　　　蠶叢（さんそう）と魚鳧（ぎょふ）と、
開国何茫然　　　　　国を開く　何ぞ茫然たる。
爾来四萬八千歳　　　爾来　四萬八千歳、
不興秦塞通人煙　　　秦塞（しんさい）と人煙を通ぜず。
西當太白有鳥道　　　西のかた　太白に当って鳥道あり、
可以横絶峨眉巓　　　以て峨眉の巓（いただき）を横絶すべし
地崩山摧壮士死　　　地は崩れ山は摧（くだ）けて壮士死し、
然後天梯石桟相鉤連　然るのち天梯石桟　相鉤連す。

**

On Green Waters and Blue Mountains (青緑山水)

Finally, before I quit Shu for the night-- this is from another blog I stumbled upon explaining the wondrous colors of the Ming dynasty painting at the top of the page. T, who was also quitestruck by the painting, said, "It seems to depicts that preceise moment up on the mountain when Xuanzong lost both his country and his beloved. Gazing at the picture is almost like being able to participate in history itself."   

More than the painting, I think the famous Ming work of calligraphy (also part of the John B. Elliot Collection) below is unsurpassed in its swiftly descending and wildly commanding strokes for expressing the great emotion of "the moment" when all was lost.

Behold for yourself below:

The five traditional colours in China are white, black, red, yellow and blue-green. These correspond to metal, water, fire, earth and wood. The blue-green colour, qīng (青), is discussed in a footnote to John Minford's translation of the Pu Songling story 'The Snake Charmer'. Minford says that qīng is defined in dictionaries as "the colour of nature, a dark neutral tint, green, bluish-green, greenish-blue, blue, grey, black etc... when used of bamboo, hemp, peas, plums, moss, grass, olives, dragons, flies and tea, it is green; of the sky, the collar, orchids and porcelain, it is blue; of oxen and foxes, horses, cloth and hair, it is black." The word qīng is used to describe the moss in Wang Wei's poem 'Deer Park.'

The painter Li Zhaodao (Li Chao-tao) was a contemporary of Wang Wei in early eighth century China. He was one of the originators of the qinglu (blue and green) style of landscape painting, which the JAANUS site describes as'heavily colored with mineral pigments, especially blue azurite *gunjou 群青 and green malachite *rokushou 緑青' and 'which pays much attention to realistic detail rather than seeking to create an atmospheric impression.' Perhaps the most famous Tang dynasty blue and green landscape is The Emperor Ming-huang's Journey to Shu, a copy of a composition sometimes attributed to Li Zhaodao.

 

Pearls of the Taklamakan

 The almond groves of Samarqand,
Bokhara, where red lilies blow.
And Oxus, by whose yellow sand
The grave white-turbaned merchants go --Oscar Wilde

Samarkand and Bukhara-- the names still evoke images of the great silk road. Part of the vast Persian empire, it was the Central Asian people of Sogdiana who monopolized these ancient trade routes connecting the East with the West. Known in Latin as "Transoxiana," or "land beyond the Oxus River," the place was made famous during Alexander the Great Times, during his great exploits East. During Alexander's times in 4th century BC, Transoxiana was the northeastern-most point of Hellenistic culture. Populated by Iranian peoples, it was incorporated into the Persian Empire first during the Achaemenid Empire. A colonial outpost of the Persian Empire during later Sassanid times, it became known as Sogdiana.

With their "contemplative green eyes flashing" and their "purple beards flying in the wind," the hardy Sogdian traders of Samarkand and Bukhara led caravans on camel-back and horseback over the treacherous mountain passes of the Roof of the World and across the endless stretches of sand of the Taklamakan Desert toward China. And, it was their language, Sogdian, which was the lingua franca of the East during Tang dynasty times.

I can well imagine what the fine citizens of ancient Sogdiana were like having spent time in Kashmir. Another Central Asian Persian people, trade is in their blood. With its teeming markets and colorful bazaars, Alexis kept mumbling, "We're in Central Asia. Finally, Central Asia." Sultan kept repeating, "To make a sale is to make a friend." Talking over unending cups of Kashmiri chai-- cinnamon and cardamom, and a dash of milk-- it was always how business was going, or talk about some purchase--buying a new silk carpet or a Pashima shawl-- that dominated conversation. This is how I imagine the Sogdians.      

Starting at the eastern edge of the Persian empire, the Kingdom of Sogdiana reached almost to Kashgar. There, the Silk Road split into two routes: one north and one south of the desert of death. With a name which means "if you go in, you'll never come back out," the Taklamakan Desert is one of the largest sandy deserts on earth. With virtually no available water, it was extremely hazardous to try and cross the desert, and so the Silk Road split into two routes. And, it was along these two routes skirting the northern and southern edges of the Desert that a string of Buddhist Kingdoms dotted the oases.

 On the Southern Route, there was the Kingdom of Khotan--famous for its exquisite jade and felt carpets; and Kashgar-- which has always been a city of legend. Of course, the world's most famous Silk Road site, Dunhuang, was also located just west of where the Northern and Southern Routes met back up again. Famous for its library, Dunhuang is also the location of the Mogao Caves of A Thousand Buddhas. Located just West of the Jade Gate, Dunhuang was just West of China proper.

 Along the Northern Route were the oasis cities of Gaochang, Turfan, Urumqi, and of course, Kucha. Gaochang was perhaps the most important Buddhist Kingdom. Built at the foot of the Flaming Mountains, the Bezeklik Caves of a Thousand Buddhas, located close to the ancient city, are renown for their dazzling murals. With paintings of Uighur princesses and Western traders, the place during Tang times was a magnet for people from the four corners of the civilized world.

To me, while I can imagine Sogdiana in all its Persian glory-- that there existed flourishing Buddhist Kingdoms which were centers of great scholarship in this inhospitable desert-- well, it actually boggles my mind. But, the cities located along the desert were, in fact, places of learning where the greatest minds of the Buddhist world gathered to discuss Buddhist doctrine. These cultural exchanges were conducted in the languages of scholarship of the day--Tibetan, Sanskrit, Chinese and various Prakrit. One of the most famous translators of Buddhism, Kumarjiva, was from Kucha (his mother was a Kuchan princess while his father was Kashmiri). So brilliant some legends have it that he was carried off by the Chinese. Dragged back to the capital he was made to translate the important Buddhist treatises of the time. Others say he went willingly. Whatever the case were it not for Kumarjiva, China and Japan would probably not have quite the same cast of Buddhism it has today-- such was his influence.

The great problem of the time: how to translate abstract philosophical terms from Sanskrit (a language with an extraordinarily rich philosophical lexicon that perhaps more then any language extinct or extant could express abstract concepts with specific vocabulary) into Chinese (a language poor in abstract vocabulary). Words had to be invented.

It was a huge linguistic gap that had to be overcome. Herculean. Kumarjiva, to get the closest Chinese approximation of the Sanskrit possible would engage in long discussions with a hundred students to try and fit a Sanskrit word to the Chinese mind before trying to come up with a new combination of characters.

Something very similar went on when China opened up to the west in more modern times. Both the Chinese and the Japanese had to think quick to come up with new vocabulary to express Western concepts of democracy or freedom (an entire lexicon, had to be come up with for terms used in discussing the fine arts before Japan could participate in one of the legendary World Exhibitions, for example).

They call him the world's greatest translator. A proponent of i-yaku 意訳 (meaning-oriented translation) over that of choku-yaku 直訳 (direct or literal translations), Kumarjiva is not only known for the tremendous breadth of his translations but also for the beautiful flowing smoothness of the language-- which is to say it reads beautifully. And, it needs to be stated again that is is all the more of an achievement because of the fact that he was working in what is the most obtuse area of Buddhist philosophy.

Born a Theravada Buddhist, Kumarjiva converted to Mahayana Buddhism during his student days in Kashgar and spent much time working on advancing the ideas contained in the great Indian philosopher Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka theory.

"Form is void, void is form" -- Heart Sutra

The philosophy is way too complicated for me to even attempt to think about, and due to its slippery slope vocabulary that attempts to explain a state of existence where "nothing comes into being independently" (got that?), the nature of the Chinese language just could not cope. Kumarjiva devoted the later years of his life with the task of translating this body of work, but many gnawing questions remained.

It was to this task that our hero, Xuanzang, the Tang period Buddhist monk who made his historic "Journey to the West" devoted his entire life. If you don't know who he is-- you should. In East Asia, he is a household name-- and even in India, most educated people know of the great travels of Xuanzang.

Passing through the Jade Gate, Xuanzang traveled through all the Buddhist Kingdoms along the Northern and Southern Route before turning south to India. He almost didn't make it to India, though, so intent was the devout Buddhist King of the Kingdom of Gaochang to keep the pilgrim there that the King tried to hold him there hostage. Rather than from any ill-will, the King quite simply could not bear to let such a stimulating conversationalist and brilliant debater leave his realm.

You can hardly blame him, actually.

Some people consider Xuanzang to be the greatest traveler of all time. Marco Polo perhaps traveled further in terms of distance-- but well, that was about 450 years later (and things were more comfortable then). More importantly, though, while Polo traveled for personal reasons of wealth and fame, our man from Chang-an traveled to find the Truth-- to understand the nature of reality, not just for himself but for the sake of all sentient beings. His great journey took him first across the desert Kingdoms and then to Kashmir, which was a great center of Buddhist learning at the time. He continued South where he ended up at Nalanda University. There he studied Buddhist philosophy, logic and Sanskrit. Returning to China, he hauled a library of books back wit him and spent the remainder of his days teaching and translating.

**

 About five years ago, New York Times book critic Richard Bernstein wrote a book, called the Ultimate Journey, about his travels re-tracing the path taken by Xuanzang. While very interested in the both the monk's and the New Yorker's travels across the lands of Central Asia and India, this book remained impossible for me. The author just engaged in far too much self-psychoanalysis. It quite simply kept getting on my nerves.

The beginning, for example, was devoted to a long explanation of why, he a Jew from New York would be undertaking this trip. No, he explains, this was not a mid-life crisis (which of course it was) and he goes into pretty excruciating detail of how it was between taking this trip, or retreating to a farm in upstate New York to spend a year making Quaker furniture. I never did quite get how the trip won out over the furniture but this is followed by long passages of his inability to commit (he does not want to be alone, it seems, and yet has had trouble committing). Then there are long passages about his ambiguity toward both Buddhism as well as Judaism-- and then finally by India, he turns cranky. And that is where I finally just had to put the book down-- three times, in fact!

 Well, I guess India does that to people. He described seeing a little boy so crippled that he was crawling in the dirt with his legs twisted up behind his neck like a scorpion. I saw a little boy just like that. I must have pushed it back into some dark corner of my mind, but well-- this time, I finished the book...And, I can finally say-- I actually recommend it!

Which is perhaps only to say that maybe I am more sympathetic to mid-life crises! :(

Here he is in all his glory:

I was experiencing a kind of quarrel with bourgeois life, bathed in its ease and pleasures but aware too of its smallness and ordinariness-- its lack of excitement. Most of us middle-aged men are among that species of routinized, rationalized beings that Max Weber called "specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart." We start out idealists and we end up creatures of habit, more concerned about the state of the lawn than of the spirit.

Get the picture? And yet so fascinated with this monk who believed that "An escape from suffering lay not in worldly pleasure, in sex, wealth or power, but in the quiet cultivation of one's own mind" that he picked up and traveled half-way around the world to follow in the monk's footsteps is pretty impressive. It is very rough territory. And, he is not a young man either.

My original frustrations remained-- not many people travel in that part of the world, so rather than descriptions of personal angst, "Will I ever commit?" I would have preferred more descriptions of the places he was passing through. At the same time, perhaps I am finally at a point in my life to really appreciate someone grappling with this kind of existentialist ambiguity-- our outer life versus the life of the spirit; or the feeling of being atheist by default as this is perhaps the author's main theme? For he does not feel at home in his own religion (Judaism) any more than that of the exotic Asian one. It is a question of authenticity.

Finally, I gotta hand it to him-- he remained the ever pragmatist right till the end. For someone prone to long bouts of self-psychoanalysis, he goes on to be surprisingly pragmatic in the face of what is sometimes extreme poverty, visiting orphanages and donating money, offering to buy an old woman a slice of watermelon when he hears her complaining how expensive it is.  I think there is a lesson in there somewhere too-- I am just not sure what!!!

And now for something really entertaining-- where fact is more unbeliable than fiction: The Pickle King of Islamistan (It's the best thing I've read in at least a week!)

 The almond groves of Samarqand,
Bokhara, where red lilies blow.
And Oxus, by whose yellow sand
The grave white-turbaned merchants go --Oscar Wilde

Samarkand and Bukhara-- the names still evoke images of the great silk road. Part of the vast Persian empire, it was the Central Asian people of Sogdiana who monopolized these ancient trade routes connecting the East with the West. Known in Latin as "Transoxiana," or "land beyond the Oxus River," the place was made famous during Alexander the Great Times, during his great exploits East. During Alexander's times in 4th century BC, Transoxiana was the northeastern-most point of Hellenistic culture. Populated by Iranian peoples, it was incorporated into the Persian Empire first during the Achaemenid Empire. A colonial outpost of the Persian Empire during later Sassanid times, it became known as Sogdiana.

With their "contemplative green eyes flashing" and their "purple beards flying in the wind," the hardy Sogdian traders of Samarkand and Bukhara led caravans on camel-back and horseback over the treacherous mountain passes of the Roof of the World and across the endless stretches of sand of the Taklamakan Desert toward China. And, it was their language, Sogdian, which was the lingua franca of the East during Tang dynasty times.

I can well imagine what the fine citizens of ancient Sogdiana were like having spent time in Kashmir. Another Central Asian Persian people, trade is in their blood. With its teeming markets and colorful bazaars, Alexis kept mumbling, "We're in Central Asia. Finally, Central Asia." Sultan kept repeating, "To make a sale is to make a friend." Talking over unending cups of Kashmiri chai-- cinnamon and cardamom, and a dash of milk-- it was always how business was going, or talk about some purchase--buying a new silk carpet or a Pashima shawl-- that dominated conversation. This is how I imagine the Sogdians.      

Starting at the eastern edge of the Persian empire, the Kingdom of Sogdiana reached almost to Kashgar. There, the Silk Road split into two routes: one north and one south of the desert of death. With a name which means "if you go in, you'll never come back out," the Taklamakan Desert is one of the largest sandy deserts on earth. With virtually no available water, it was extremely hazardous to try and cross the desert, and so the Silk Road split into two routes. And, it was along these two routes skirting the northern and southern edges of the Desert that a string of Buddhist Kingdoms dotted the oases.

 On the Southern Route, there was the Kingdom of Khotan--famous for its exquisite jade and felt carpets; and Kashgar-- which has always been a city of legend. Of course, the world's most famous Silk Road site, Dunhuang, was also located just west of where the Northern and Southern Routes met back up again. Famous for its library, Dunhuang is also the location of the Mogao Caves of A Thousand Buddhas. Located just West of the Jade Gate, Dunhuang was just West of China proper.

 Along the Northern Route were the oasis cities of Gaochang, Turfan, Urumqi, and of course, Kucha. Gaochang was perhaps the most important Buddhist Kingdom. Built at the foot of the Flaming Mountains, the Bezeklik Caves of a Thousand Buddhas, located close to the ancient city, are renown for their dazzling murals. With paintings of Uighur princesses and Western traders, the place during Tang times was a magnet for people from the four corners of the civilized world.

To me, while I can imagine Sogdiana in all its Persian glory-- that there existed flourishing Buddhist Kingdoms which were centers of great scholarship in this inhospitable desert-- well, it actually boggles my mind. But, the cities located along the desert were, in fact, places of learning where the greatest minds of the Buddhist world gathered to discuss Buddhist doctrine. These cultural exchanges were conducted in the languages of scholarship of the day--Tibetan, Sanskrit, Chinese and various Prakrit. One of the most famous translators of Buddhism, Kumarjiva, was from Kucha (his mother was a Kuchan princess while his father was Kashmiri). So brilliant some legends have it that he was carried off by the Chinese. Dragged back to the capital he was made to translate the important Buddhist treatises of the time. Others say he went willingly. Whatever the case were it not for Kumarjiva, China and Japan would probably not have quite the same cast of Buddhism it has today-- such was his influence.

The great problem of the time: how to translate abstract philosophical terms from Sanskrit (a language with an extraordinarily rich philosophical lexicon that perhaps more then any language extinct or extant could express abstract concepts with specific vocabulary) into Chinese (a language poor in abstract vocabulary). Words had to be invented.

It was a huge linguistic gap that had to be overcome. Herculean. Kumarjiva, to get the closest Chinese approximation of the Sanskrit possible would engage in long discussions with a hundred students to try and fit a Sanskrit word to the Chinese mind before trying to come up with a new combination of characters.

Something very similar went on when China opened up to the west in more modern times. Both the Chinese and the Japanese had to think quick to come up with new vocabulary to express Western concepts of democracy or freedom (an entire lexicon, had to be come up with for terms used in discussing the fine arts before Japan could participate in one of the legendary World Exhibitions, for example).

They call him the world's greatest translator. A proponent of i-yaku 意訳 (meaning-oriented translation) over that of choku-yaku 直訳 (direct or literal translations), Kumarjiva is not only known for the tremendous breadth of his translations but also for the beautiful flowing smoothness of the language-- which is to say it reads beautifully. And, it needs to be stated again that is is all the more of an achievement because of the fact that he was working in what is the most obtuse area of Buddhist philosophy.

Born a Theravada Buddhist, Kumarjiva converted to Mahayana Buddhism during his student days in Kashgar and spent much time working on advancing the ideas contained in the great Indian philosopher Nagarjuna's Madhyamaka theory.

"Form is void, void is form" -- Heart Sutra

The philosophy is way too complicated for me to even attempt to think about, and due to its slippery slope vocabulary that attempts to explain a state of existence where "nothing comes into being independently" (got that?), the nature of the Chinese language just could not cope. Kumarjiva devoted the later years of his life with the task of translating this body of work, but many gnawing questions remained.

It was to this task that our hero, Xuanzang, the Tang period Buddhist monk who made his historic "Journey to the West" devoted his entire life. If you don't know who he is-- you should. In East Asia, he is a household name-- and even in India, most educated people know of the great travels of Xuanzang.

Passing through the Jade Gate, Xuanzang traveled through all the Buddhist Kingdoms along the Northern and Southern Route before turning south to India. He almost didn't make it to India, though, so intent was the devout Buddhist King of the Kingdom of Gaochang to keep the pilgrim there that the King tried to hold him there hostage. Rather than from any ill-will, the King quite simply could not bear to let such a stimulating conversationalist and brilliant debater leave his realm.

You can hardly blame him, actually.

Some people consider Xuanzang to be the greatest traveler of all time. Marco Polo perhaps traveled further in terms of distance-- but well, that was about 450 years later (and things were more comfortable then). More importantly, though, while Polo traveled for personal reasons of wealth and fame, our man from Chang-an traveled to find the Truth-- to understand the nature of reality, not just for himself but for the sake of all sentient beings. His great journey took him first across the desert Kingdoms and then to Kashmir, which was a great center of Buddhist learning at the time. He continued South where he ended up at Nalanda University. There he studied Buddhist philosophy, logic and Sanskrit. Returning to China, he hauled a library of books back wit him and spent the remainder of his days teaching and translating.

**

 About five years ago, New York Times book critic Richard Bernstein wrote a book, called the Ultimate Journey, about his travels re-tracing the path taken by Xuanzang. While very interested in the both the monk's and the New Yorker's travels across the lands of Central Asia and India, this book remained impossible for me. The author just engaged in far too much self-psychoanalysis. It quite simply kept getting on my nerves.

The beginning, for example, was devoted to a long explanation of why, he a Jew from New York would be undertaking this trip. No, he explains, this was not a mid-life crisis (which of course it was) and he goes into pretty excruciating detail of how it was between taking this trip, or retreating to a farm in upstate New York to spend a year making Quaker furniture. I never did quite get how the trip won out over the furniture but this is followed by long passages of his inability to commit (he does not want to be alone, it seems, and yet has had trouble committing). Then there are long passages about his ambiguity toward both Buddhism as well as Judaism-- and then finally by India, he turns cranky. And that is where I finally just had to put the book down-- three times, in fact!

 Well, I guess India does that to people. He described seeing a little boy so crippled that he was crawling in the dirt with his legs twisted up behind his neck like a scorpion. I saw a little boy just like that. I must have pushed it back into some dark corner of my mind, but well-- this time, I finished the book...And, I can finally say-- I actually recommend it!

Which is perhaps only to say that maybe I am more sympathetic to mid-life crises! :(

Here he is in all his glory:

I was experiencing a kind of quarrel with bourgeois life, bathed in its ease and pleasures but aware too of its smallness and ordinariness-- its lack of excitement. Most of us middle-aged men are among that species of routinized, rationalized beings that Max Weber called "specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart." We start out idealists and we end up creatures of habit, more concerned about the state of the lawn than of the spirit.

Get the picture? And yet so fascinated with this monk who believed that "An escape from suffering lay not in worldly pleasure, in sex, wealth or power, but in the quiet cultivation of one's own mind" that he picked up and traveled half-way around the world to follow in the monk's footsteps is pretty impressive. It is very rough territory. And, he is not a young man either.

My original frustrations remained-- not many people travel in that part of the world, so rather than descriptions of personal angst, "Will I ever commit?" I would have preferred more descriptions of the places he was passing through. At the same time, perhaps I am finally at a point in my life to really appreciate someone grappling with this kind of existentialist ambiguity-- our outer life versus the life of the spirit; or the feeling of being atheist by default as this is perhaps the author's main theme? For he does not feel at home in his own religion (Judaism) any more than that of the exotic Asian one. It is a question of authenticity.

Finally, I gotta hand it to him-- he remained the ever pragmatist right till the end. For someone prone to long bouts of self-psychoanalysis, he goes on to be surprisingly pragmatic in the face of what is sometimes extreme poverty, visiting orphanages and donating money, offering to buy an old woman a slice of watermelon when he hears her complaining how expensive it is.  I think there is a lesson in there somewhere too-- I am just not sure what!!!

And now for something really entertaining-- where fact is more unbeliable than fiction: The Pickle King of Islamistan (It's the best thing I've read in at least a week!)

Kuchean Dancers and the Sogdian Whirl

There is a rumor that circulates in India that Jesus-- rather than finishing out his days on the cross--  spent his later years journeying through Kashmir; or even that he made it all the way to Japan where he spent his last years as a rice farmer in a small village in Aomori. Indeed, grave hunters spend their fine careers visiting the various "graves of Jesus" that dot remote areas of the East.

Well, there is a similar rumor about our Persian Prince Pirooz. And that is that Prince Pirooz, actually traveled even further East-- to Japan. And there, he is said to have spent many years influencing the elegant Iranification of that land.

Japan is, of course, one of the world's great civilizations-- but, alas, it was a late bloomer. During Tang times, it was still more or less an illiterate, rather unsophisticated society. Therefore, most Japan-scholars will acknowledge that Japan must have got a lot of help from "foreign advisors" during this period. For the most part, the Koreans are credited for the direction of the great surge in artistic and intellectual productivity of the Asuka and Nara periods. There are those, too, who say Iranians had a large (if indirect) part to play-- and even that our Prince Pirooz came to lend a hand. Marrying a Japanese lady, the legend has it that he left her and their children behind when he returned to China in his later years. And so his legacy lives on in the Land of the Rising Sun as well.

Even if he himself did not come-- which he most probably did not-- Persian musicians and dancers did. And, so did beautiful objects of art. Glassware was one of the miraculous items brought to Japan from the West. Unlike the Chinese, Persian royalty and aristocrats, preferred glass and metalware to ceramics and their glassware was particularly exquisite. There is one particularly stunning piece of cobalt blue cut glass in the Shosoin Collection. A goblet, 22 cobalt color glass rings are fused to the outer walls of the glass, which has a beautiful etched silver stem and base. Carried on the backs of horses and camels across the deserts of Central Asia, Japanese emissaries to the Tang Court brought them back to Japan from China where they stole the hearts of the Japanese. Of extremely high quality, these objects were treasured in Japan and most of the finest remaining examples of this early glass are preserved there today.

It is one of the peculiar tendencies of the Japanese to treasure and preserve what is fine, and this almost obsessive antiquarianism is one of the traits that sets the Japanese apart. For while "Roman," or Sassanian Glass objects are found here and there from Damascus to the markets of Tehran, the glass is usually milky or silvery from exposure. Those pieces preserved in Japanese collections, however have retained their original sparkling transparency in a way that is stunning.

Perhaps even more phenomenal is what happened with music and dance.

Have you ever heard of the Sogdian Whirl?

A rigorous, twirling dance, the Sogdian Whirl was usually performed on a colorful felt carpet. The dance took the Tang capital by storm. Not only the emperor, but his favorite concubine, the infamous Yang Guifei-- along with her "favorite," the 400 pound Sogdian-Turk An Lushan could perform this exotic dance, snacking on Lychees from Canton and sipping grape wine out of Roman cut glass goblets, all night long. There were Sogdian dances danced to Persian melodies, played on Persian lutes and harps, Indian dances and music and those from the Northern steppes and Korea. Without a doubt, most famous of all the Tang dances was the music and dance of Kucha.

As is well known, at Kashgar the Silk Road, in order to skirt the desert of death, splits into two routes, the northern and southern. Here, where now there is nothing but dusty, long forgotten outposts (oasis sounds too charming) in the desert, there once thrived a great Buddhist civilization. Among the first Buddhist Kingdoms on earth, the cities on both sides of the desert were not only bustling trading centers of goods from both east and west, but they were great centers of Buddhist scholarship. Of all the Kingdoms from Khotan to Dunhuang, Kucha was the largest. And Kucha was famous-- very famous-- for its dances, music and instruments.

Located on the Northern Route, not far from present-day Aksu, it was a place where Theravada Buddhism reigned. The King was particularly devout and it was said the city was full of temples, monks and music. The palace was made of gold, as the kingdom was wealthy from its rich mineral deposits of gold, copper and iron. Another highly cosmopolitan Silk Road garrison city-state, a dozen languages could be heard in the marketplaces, including Chinese, Tibetan, Persian and Kuchean (which was itself an Indo-Euopean language).

Susan Whitfield in her wondrous, Life Along the Silkroad, desribes Kuchean dance as being "not unlike Indian dance, with its emphasis on hip movements, changes of gesture and expressive eyes, but it also adapted dance forms taken from other places, such as the famous Sogdian 'whirling dance,' performed by both men and women."

"Music, song and dance," says Whitfield, "were Silk Road commodities, bought and sold like silver and jade. Itinerent dance troops from India, Burma, Cambodia and Sogdiana performed at both the royal court and the public marketplace in every silk road town." We have Tang period pottery of "Western" dancers and musicians on camelback. These statutes still fascinate and are proudly preserved in museum collectons in many places from Shanghai and Tokyo to Paris.   

The dances of the Silk Road were taken up by the Tang Court and there they were performed with native and other foreign elements to be transformed into the music and dance that today is known as ancient Tang music. And, what is perhaps the most fascinating part of the entire story, this music and these dances were then "borrowed"-- in what is often referred to as the "great borrowing of continental culture"-- by the ancient Japanese of the Nara period.

When we speak of ancient Tang music, the influence from Kucha cannot be overstated. The Tang court music itself was based, explains Whitfield, on the tuning of the Kuchean lute and most of the Tang emperors were proficient at playing the Kuchean drum, as well. Like golf among the wealthy today, the Kuchean drum was "de rigueur among emperors and noblemen of China." Emperor Xuanzong had some 30,000 musicians and dancers housed within the walls of the Palace, and many of those performed in the Kuchean style, playing orchestral pieces, as well as performing great dance dramas perhaps similar to those still performed in South India and in Java today.

Don't you wish you could hear it? Of course, the great civilizations of the desert are long since gone. Covered in sand, if it weren't for the murals of Dunhuang and the Tang chronicles, we would hardly even know of their existence. Not only the civilizations, but the languages too are long since dead. Kuchean, Sogdian, Khotanese, they are nothing but echoes in the desert. In China, too, we only have the written record.

Believe it or not though, these Persian and Central Asian melodies and dances still exist in Japan much as they were 1500 years ago. Just like the perfectly preserved roman glass goblets, the Japanese Imperial Household has preserved this music for a millenium. Japanese Imperial Court Music and Dance, called Gagaku (or "elegant music"), is made up of three bodies: Saibara (native Shinto), Komagaku (Korean and Manchurian) and Togaku (Tang Music). Amazingly, you can still see these dances and listen to this music today in Japan; performed either by the Imperial Household Department of Music (which performs both Western classical music as well as all forms of gagaku) or by groups formed by former members of the Imperial Household Department of Music who form their own groups (most famous has to be Hideki Togi, who performs to sold-out concert halls in Japan and Europe. Read about this gorgeous superstar here).   

"Like whale song, a haunting blend of flutes rising up from the deep, accompanied by the strumming of silk strings and the rumble of drums." Says National Geographic.

"The group was officially designated as “maintainers of a significant cultural asset,” a kind of Japanese National Treasure. They were playing gagaku, literally “gracious music,” which the Japanese claim as the oldest surviving orchestral music in the world. It is ancient music, which came to Japan by way of Korea and China well over a thousand years ago and still survives as the official music of the Japanese Imperial Court.

That venerable legacy stretches back to the beginnings of Japan’s imperial family, which is thought to be the longest running monarchy in the world. The music exists today because of the Emperor’s patronage, which supports the carefully chosen, rigorously trained court musicians who perform at official palace functions, garden parties, religious occasions, and public concerts.

Whale songs with a deep drumbeat.... Well, at first listen, it certainly does sound pretty bizarre. The more you listen, however, the more the music intrigues. Especially the range of various instruments. Other-worldly best sums it up, I think.

You can listen to a sample here.

As National Geographic hints, yes, without the unique antiquarianism of the Japanese and the loyal patronage of 100 or so generations of Japanese emperors, this music certainly would have been long lost. For it remains the oldest, pre-composed music for large orchestras on earth, and inside the Imperial Household, the music is accompanied by 1500 year old dances with costumes and masks reminiscent of their ancient Central Asian originals-- actually, some masks are originals.

As other wiser men have noted before me, Persian music bears little resemblance to Arab or Ottoman music. It is another tradition altogether. The Persian Sassanian Empire was to make waves that floated all the way to the Eastern shores of the earth-- all the way to Japan, where they were prized and then preserved by 100 generations of Japanese emperors.

As one friend paints it

Now think about it, a civilization dead these 1500 years has left us a legacy in the form of the most ephemeral of all art, music, in places as distant from each other as Japan and Persia. The past, though passed, is still with us in mysterious ways and the dead musicians of the Taklamakan continue to whisper in the conchlea of our ear.

It boggles the mind. A cup of fossil tea anyone?

I'd love a cup, actually.

Finally, as BBC's Melvyn Bragg took pain to stress in his newsletter of last week, compared with other great empires of the past, less is known about the Sassanids. This is because the language is dead and there is a huge paucity of written records.  They were-- like Bragg-- devoted to the oral tradition. The ancient Persians were Zoroastrians, who as a religion stressed prayer, chanting and the oral tradition (having less faith in the written word, which they thought could be corrupted). So, little actually remains from their great empire. And, yet the cultural triumphs of the dynasty still informs Iranian identity.

**

There is one more legend about Prince Pirooz that bears repeating. After his death in China, Prince Pirooz's life story came to be melded into the Zooroastrian myth of "Shah Bahram  Varjavand." Like the Moshiach of the Jews, Shah Baham Varjavand is the Coming Messiah of the Zooroastrian religion. People believed that it would be Shah Bahram Varjavand who would rise in the East to come and avenge Iran's occupation by the Arabs and restore the glory of the empire.

Another more modern persona considered to be the "Shah Bahram Varjavand," is-- of course--  Baha'u'llah, founder of the Bahai faith.

Born in Iran, the Bahai faith is perhaps the most spread out religion on earth. And, of the some 5 million adherents, 2.5 are in India. For the life of me, I cannot recall know how I ended up touring the famous Bahai Lotus Temple in New Delhi, but the place has vividly stuck in my mind for twenty years. It is as if I was there yesterday.

Like Zen, the Bahai faith appeals to Westerners in search of something they can believe in-- and all over Kashmir and in Northern India, I met American and European Bahai faithful. Perhaps, it was having met so many British and Americans talking about "the Bab" and Baha'u'llah that led me to want to see the famed temple for myself. Whatever the reason, it truly was as close to an ideal image of a temple as I can imagine. I couldn't find any good images online, but what really struck me was the lack of ornamentation inside the great temple. There was no altar or statues or candles-- just a simple wooden lectern, pews and beautiful Persian carpets.

More than anything, it was the quiet of the place that struck me. I don't know how to describe it, but it was perfectly, beautifully quiet, and I remember thinking what great possibilities quiet like that could have.

It has been some twenty years since I really thought about the Bahai movement. I suppose what is so resonent for Westerners is its stress on unity (one God with all religions being different expressions of God's message) and peace. The religion is also strongly rooted in social service and community (discouraging asceticism and monasticism in any form). The Bahai is one of the only religions I know of that has not acrimoniously split into factions either. Because of their commitment to unity (unity with God and unity in humankind) they are vehemently opposed to war. 

It was so hot and dusty as trudging up the path toward the temple. The simple beauty and deep quiet of the inside of the temple, though, was cool and refreshing as a glass of water. The founder of the Bahai faith, Baha'u'llah, was believed to be Shah Bahram Varjavand, the Messiah. He is also asserted to be a descendent of  Yazdgerd III, the last monarch of the Sassanian Dynasty  (See, Prince Pirooz).

There is a rumor that circulates in India that Jesus-- rather than finishing out his days on the cross--  spent his later years journeying through Kashmir; or even that he made it all the way to Japan where he spent his last years as a rice farmer in a small village in Aomori. Indeed, grave hunters spend their fine careers visiting the various "graves of Jesus" that dot remote areas of the East.

Well, there is a similar rumor about our Persian Prince Pirooz. And that is that Prince Pirooz, actually traveled even further East-- to Japan. And there, he is said to have spent many years influencing the elegant Iranification of that land.

Japan is, of course, one of the world's great civilizations-- but, alas, it was a late bloomer. During Tang times, it was still more or less an illiterate, rather unsophisticated society. Therefore, most Japan-scholars will acknowledge that Japan must have got a lot of help from "foreign advisors" during this period. For the most part, the Koreans are credited for the direction of the great surge in artistic and intellectual productivity of the Asuka and Nara periods. There are those, too, who say Iranians had a large (if indirect) part to play-- and even that our Prince Pirooz came to lend a hand. Marrying a Japanese lady, the legend has it that he left her and their children behind when he returned to China in his later years. And so his legacy lives on in the Land of the Rising Sun as well.

Even if he himself did not come-- which he most probably did not-- Persian musicians and dancers did. And, so did beautiful objects of art. Glassware was one of the miraculous items brought to Japan from the West. Unlike the Chinese, Persian royalty and aristocrats, preferred glass and metalware to ceramics and their glassware was particularly exquisite. There is one particularly stunning piece of cobalt blue cut glass in the Shosoin Collection. A goblet, 22 cobalt color glass rings are fused to the outer walls of the glass, which has a beautiful etched silver stem and base. Carried on the backs of horses and camels across the deserts of Central Asia, Japanese emissaries to the Tang Court brought them back to Japan from China where they stole the hearts of the Japanese. Of extremely high quality, these objects were treasured in Japan and most of the finest remaining examples of this early glass are preserved there today.

It is one of the peculiar tendencies of the Japanese to treasure and preserve what is fine, and this almost obsessive antiquarianism is one of the traits that sets the Japanese apart. For while "Roman," or Sassanian Glass objects are found here and there from Damascus to the markets of Tehran, the glass is usually milky or silvery from exposure. Those pieces preserved in Japanese collections, however have retained their original sparkling transparency in a way that is stunning.

Perhaps even more phenomenal is what happened with music and dance.

Have you ever heard of the Sogdian Whirl?

A rigorous, twirling dance, the Sogdian Whirl was usually performed on a colorful felt carpet. The dance took the Tang capital by storm. Not only the emperor, but his favorite concubine, the infamous Yang Guifei-- along with her "favorite," the 400 pound Sogdian-Turk An Lushan could perform this exotic dance, snacking on Lychees from Canton and sipping grape wine out of Roman cut glass goblets, all night long. There were Sogdian dances danced to Persian melodies, played on Persian lutes and harps, Indian dances and music and those from the Northern steppes and Korea. Without a doubt, most famous of all the Tang dances was the music and dance of Kucha.

As is well known, at Kashgar the Silk Road, in order to skirt the desert of death, splits into two routes, the northern and southern. Here, where now there is nothing but dusty, long forgotten outposts (oasis sounds too charming) in the desert, there once thrived a great Buddhist civilization. Among the first Buddhist Kingdoms on earth, the cities on both sides of the desert were not only bustling trading centers of goods from both east and west, but they were great centers of Buddhist scholarship. Of all the Kingdoms from Khotan to Dunhuang, Kucha was the largest. And Kucha was famous-- very famous-- for its dances, music and instruments.

Located on the Northern Route, not far from present-day Aksu, it was a place where Theravada Buddhism reigned. The King was particularly devout and it was said the city was full of temples, monks and music. The palace was made of gold, as the kingdom was wealthy from its rich mineral deposits of gold, copper and iron. Another highly cosmopolitan Silk Road garrison city-state, a dozen languages could be heard in the marketplaces, including Chinese, Tibetan, Persian and Kuchean (which was itself an Indo-Euopean language).

Susan Whitfield in her wondrous, Life Along the Silkroad, desribes Kuchean dance as being "not unlike Indian dance, with its emphasis on hip movements, changes of gesture and expressive eyes, but it also adapted dance forms taken from other places, such as the famous Sogdian 'whirling dance,' performed by both men and women."

"Music, song and dance," says Whitfield, "were Silk Road commodities, bought and sold like silver and jade. Itinerent dance troops from India, Burma, Cambodia and Sogdiana performed at both the royal court and the public marketplace in every silk road town." We have Tang period pottery of "Western" dancers and musicians on camelback. These statutes still fascinate and are proudly preserved in museum collectons in many places from Shanghai and Tokyo to Paris.   

The dances of the Silk Road were taken up by the Tang Court and there they were performed with native and other foreign elements to be transformed into the music and dance that today is known as ancient Tang music. And, what is perhaps the most fascinating part of the entire story, this music and these dances were then "borrowed"-- in what is often referred to as the "great borrowing of continental culture"-- by the ancient Japanese of the Nara period.

When we speak of ancient Tang music, the influence from Kucha cannot be overstated. The Tang court music itself was based, explains Whitfield, on the tuning of the Kuchean lute and most of the Tang emperors were proficient at playing the Kuchean drum, as well. Like golf among the wealthy today, the Kuchean drum was "de rigueur among emperors and noblemen of China." Emperor Xuanzong had some 30,000 musicians and dancers housed within the walls of the Palace, and many of those performed in the Kuchean style, playing orchestral pieces, as well as performing great dance dramas perhaps similar to those still performed in South India and in Java today.

Don't you wish you could hear it? Of course, the great civilizations of the desert are long since gone. Covered in sand, if it weren't for the murals of Dunhuang and the Tang chronicles, we would hardly even know of their existence. Not only the civilizations, but the languages too are long since dead. Kuchean, Sogdian, Khotanese, they are nothing but echoes in the desert. In China, too, we only have the written record.

Believe it or not though, these Persian and Central Asian melodies and dances still exist in Japan much as they were 1500 years ago. Just like the perfectly preserved roman glass goblets, the Japanese Imperial Household has preserved this music for a millenium. Japanese Imperial Court Music and Dance, called Gagaku (or "elegant music"), is made up of three bodies: Saibara (native Shinto), Komagaku (Korean and Manchurian) and Togaku (Tang Music). Amazingly, you can still see these dances and listen to this music today in Japan; performed either by the Imperial Household Department of Music (which performs both Western classical music as well as all forms of gagaku) or by groups formed by former members of the Imperial Household Department of Music who form their own groups (most famous has to be Hideki Togi, who performs to sold-out concert halls in Japan and Europe. Read about this gorgeous superstar here).   

"Like whale song, a haunting blend of flutes rising up from the deep, accompanied by the strumming of silk strings and the rumble of drums." Says National Geographic.

"The group was officially designated as “maintainers of a significant cultural asset,” a kind of Japanese National Treasure. They were playing gagaku, literally “gracious music,” which the Japanese claim as the oldest surviving orchestral music in the world. It is ancient music, which came to Japan by way of Korea and China well over a thousand years ago and still survives as the official music of the Japanese Imperial Court.

That venerable legacy stretches back to the beginnings of Japan’s imperial family, which is thought to be the longest running monarchy in the world. The music exists today because of the Emperor’s patronage, which supports the carefully chosen, rigorously trained court musicians who perform at official palace functions, garden parties, religious occasions, and public concerts.

Whale songs with a deep drumbeat.... Well, at first listen, it certainly does sound pretty bizarre. The more you listen, however, the more the music intrigues. Especially the range of various instruments. Other-worldly best sums it up, I think.

You can listen to a sample here.

As National Geographic hints, yes, without the unique antiquarianism of the Japanese and the loyal patronage of 100 or so generations of Japanese emperors, this music certainly would have been long lost. For it remains the oldest, pre-composed music for large orchestras on earth, and inside the Imperial Household, the music is accompanied by 1500 year old dances with costumes and masks reminiscent of their ancient Central Asian originals-- actually, some masks are originals.

As other wiser men have noted before me, Persian music bears little resemblance to Arab or Ottoman music. It is another tradition altogether. The Persian Sassanian Empire was to make waves that floated all the way to the Eastern shores of the earth-- all the way to Japan, where they were prized and then preserved by 100 generations of Japanese emperors.

As one friend paints it

Now think about it, a civilization dead these 1500 years has left us a legacy in the form of the most ephemeral of all art, music, in places as distant from each other as Japan and Persia. The past, though passed, is still with us in mysterious ways and the dead musicians of the Taklamakan continue to whisper in the conchlea of our ear.

It boggles the mind. A cup of fossil tea anyone?

I'd love a cup, actually.

Finally, as BBC's Melvyn Bragg took pain to stress in his newsletter of last week, compared with other great empires of the past, less is known about the Sassanids. This is because the language is dead and there is a huge paucity of written records.  They were-- like Bragg-- devoted to the oral tradition. The ancient Persians were Zoroastrians, who as a religion stressed prayer, chanting and the oral tradition (having less faith in the written word, which they thought could be corrupted). So, little actually remains from their great empire. And, yet the cultural triumphs of the dynasty still informs Iranian identity.

**

There is one more legend about Prince Pirooz that bears repeating. After his death in China, Prince Pirooz's life story came to be melded into the Zooroastrian myth of "Shah Bahram  Varjavand." Like the Moshiach of the Jews, Shah Baham Varjavand is the Coming Messiah of the Zooroastrian religion. People believed that it would be Shah Bahram Varjavand who would rise in the East to come and avenge Iran's occupation by the Arabs and restore the glory of the empire.

Another more modern persona considered to be the "Shah Bahram Varjavand," is-- of course--  Baha'u'llah, founder of the Bahai faith.

Born in Iran, the Bahai faith is perhaps the most spread out religion on earth. And, of the some 5 million adherents, 2.5 are in India. For the life of me, I cannot recall know how I ended up touring the famous Bahai Lotus Temple in New Delhi, but the place has vividly stuck in my mind for twenty years. It is as if I was there yesterday.

Like Zen, the Bahai faith appeals to Westerners in search of something they can believe in-- and all over Kashmir and in Northern India, I met American and European Bahai faithful. Perhaps, it was having met so many British and Americans talking about "the Bab" and Baha'u'llah that led me to want to see the famed temple for myself. Whatever the reason, it truly was as close to an ideal image of a temple as I can imagine. I couldn't find any good images online, but what really struck me was the lack of ornamentation inside the great temple. There was no altar or statues or candles-- just a simple wooden lectern, pews and beautiful Persian carpets.

More than anything, it was the quiet of the place that struck me. I don't know how to describe it, but it was perfectly, beautifully quiet, and I remember thinking what great possibilities quiet like that could have.

It has been some twenty years since I really thought about the Bahai movement. I suppose what is so resonent for Westerners is its stress on unity (one God with all religions being different expressions of God's message) and peace. The religion is also strongly rooted in social service and community (discouraging asceticism and monasticism in any form). The Bahai is one of the only religions I know of that has not acrimoniously split into factions either. Because of their commitment to unity (unity with God and unity in humankind) they are vehemently opposed to war. 

It was so hot and dusty as trudging up the path toward the temple. The simple beauty and deep quiet of the inside of the temple, though, was cool and refreshing as a glass of water. The founder of the Bahai faith, Baha'u'llah, was believed to be Shah Bahram Varjavand, the Messiah. He is also asserted to be a descendent of  Yazdgerd III, the last monarch of the Sassanian Dynasty  (See, Prince Pirooz).

Letters from the Silk Road

 The sun has risen over the Borobudur. My thoughts turn to the outward-looking spirit of the eighth century. There were no cultural boundaries then. Peoples absorbed each other's cultures like travellers slacking their thirst together. Have those far off times gone forever? I cannot believe that they have. Down in the water lotuses communicate with each other through their roots. Dewdrops on petals reflect the same moon that shines down on white flowers thousands of miles apart. And the sun that shines on Mount Merapi once shone on pilgrims' faces at a time when beauty was the splendor of truth -- Eiji Hattori

--For Khourosh

Reading history-- of course-- engages the mind. But, nothing demands us to really think like philosophy. Stuck for so long in Tang and Song dynasty histories, I have not had the chance to read much philosophy lately. However, I just finished a book of essays by a Japanese thinker, Eiji Hattori, which-- while not philosophy-- still gave me great pleasure in reading-- and in thinking.

With two doctorates (one from Kyoto University and the other from the Sorbonne), Hattori has an impressive academic background. And yet, rather then entering academia, he chose instead to join UNESCO at their Paris headquarters, where he served for 21 years as a director of the cultural events section. He is perhaps best known at UNESCO for his work on the "Silk Roads-- Roads of Dialogue" Project (which I believe he started and headed).

Here is yet another case of a contemporary thinker holding up the ancient Silk Road as a symbol for an alternative the "Globalization as Americanization," "Clash of Empires" scenerios  of the past decade. Yo Yo Ma's Silk Road Project is one example of this. I have been seeing-- not just in scholarship concerning the arts but in other fields as well, this type of dialog concerning the Silk Road and have become interested in learning more about the line of thinking involved in trying to connect what was an ancient trade route to future paradigms of internationalization and cross-cultural dialog.

Why the silk road? I wondered.

In my last post, in fact, I went to great lengths describing the historic Silk Road Battle of Talas. In my mom's words, "there has always been warfare," and that was no different during the 8th-11th century. But then again, Andre Malraux (you gotta love him) once commented that "the 21st century must become the century of global culture." Why? Because the 20th had been one of war. Many philosophers agree that in no time in history has war been as deadly nor practiced on such a wide-scale as this past one. As a possible trend, this is-- for the obvious reasons-- disturbing.

A truly global culture would at least (in theory) make war over ideology obsolete since if we truly had a global culture these problems of differing ideology would become far less threatening. That is because when we cease to find other cultural (or socio-economic, or religious) practices threatening to our way of life, there will no longer be a "clash of civilizations."

In any case, this is not what intrigued me to buy this book. My personal question was concerned with learning in what way the Silk Road is being viewed as an inspiration for an alternative style of global interaction. Because of course, there was war and battles occurring up and down the silk road for its entire history. I couldn't help but wonder whether all these people knew something about the silk road that I didn't!

Susan Whitfield in her Life Along the Silk Road tells us that territory during these times was sought and won, not only through battles, but more often through marriage alliances and trade. As this almost exclusively took place along the Silk Road, in this sense, the road itself served as a conduit for inter-cultural dialog. Indeed, in no time in history, she writes, has the spread of ideas been so tightly interwoven with the practice and commitment to maintaining international trade. In addition, even during such early times as the 8th century, the towns and cities of the Silk Road were characterized by their stunning cosmopolitanism. For even in the smallest, most isolated towns, we know that dozens of languages could be heard from people of many different races who interacted with each other to a surprising degree considering the early time period. This interaction took various forms, from extensive international trade to international marriage and cultural borrowings.

I myself have spent much of the past 7 years ensconced happily in the Song dynasty. At night, though, it tends to be the Tang dynasty I dream about. When I think about why that is-- perhaps one reason is the phenomenal cosmopolitanism of the Silk Road cities during the Tang that appeals to my sense of adventure and imagination. The exotics listed in Edward Schafer's Peaches of Samarkand and even more his Vermilion Bird have delighted me-- like so many others-- for years. And, it is true, in the markets of Chang'an, you could hear two dozen languages all being spoken by peoples from such such far-flung lands as Syria, the Levant, the Arabian peninsula, India, Champa and Korea. Many of the languages and many of the countries themselves no longer exist. But, we know these people interacted in a way much different then people of differing countries do today.

In contrast to the modern "melting pot" of pluralistic societies we see today, people during silk road times interacted with each from standpoints of their own unique cultures. Modern-day Penang immediately comes to mind. I really fell in love with Penang, and one of the most striking things to me about the island was the way in which the Chinese, South Indians and Malays-- rather then coming together to form a new melting pot culture-- instead live there amongst each other speaking their native languages, cooking their native foods, wearing their native clothes and living lives pretty much as they would have back in their respective countries. I felt it was a very different model to the pluralistic modern one that we see in Western countries (and of course very different from what we find in ostensibly mono-racial places like Japan or Korea).

You could say that there is much less interaction between the various cultures under such a system, but I am not sure that is so. I would really need to live there or in Singapore to give an opinion. It did strike me at the time, however, as being interesting and different from what I was used to, which in Los Angeles, is really a melting of all cultures into one dominant one-- and sure, the dominant one is influenced by the various minority cultures, but this is too a much lesser degree (and to the degree that it suits the dominant culture) than as presented by Tang dynasty times. In Penang, it felt very appealing.

Khourosh-- of course-- does not agree and finds that in theory at least, the modern idea of one melting pot where we are "all brothers" above race or culture to be the more enlightened model. And, he is correct in the sense that Silk Road cosmopolitanism in a great respect could be described as widescale extraterritorialism (as groups of people lived in segreated areas which were governed by the respective laws and customs of their own native countries).

Regarding this "silk road style" multi-culturalism, Hattori's main point is that during silk road times, dialogs between cultures were two way. That is, it was not a power relationship dominated by one side talking but rather a two way street based on trade. He writes:

*Travellers went searching, not selling (their object was precious goods, even ideas)
*They knew sharing not monopoly
*Trade was an international accomplishment achieved by people from many nations; it was not done by one nation alone.

From his vantage point in Paris (not to mention his extensive travel to pretty much every corner of the planet), Hattori perhaps more than most people knows what people are thinking around the world. I too am doing more and more translations by Japanese business executives who are complaining loudly that they wish the Americans would remember that their form of capitalism is but *one way* of doing business. They seem to want to remind us that "American style capitalism" is not the only form of capitalism. And, from the government here as well, we read much about their wish to reject American food practices from hormones in American beef to fast food. The slow food movement is gaining momentum here as well as in Europe. Indeed, Japan is naturally drifting ever-closer to Europe. 

Along these lines, two weeks ago, Khourosh from Paris remarked that while people in Europe know what we in America are thinking, do we know what the rest of the world is thinking? This is something repeated again and again from Europe to Asia to Africa. My Jordanian friend Ghaleb used to express heart-felt frustration about this wish to be seen/wish to be understood.

Going back to Hattori's ideas, though-- traffic on the Silk Road was two way traffic. This is perhaps his main point (or rather his main lament). No one economic system nor historical perspective reigned supreme above all the rest during the Tang dynasty. And, people interacted with each other from the framework of their own various cultures. This is the famous cosmopolitanism of the Tang. And when you think that what was arguably the greatest of all empires of the time, the Tang actually built mosques and churches in their capital city to welcome the many traders who came from afar-- well, it cannot help but impress. A mosque already stood in Canton during the Prophet's lifetime.

And while it is next to impossible imagining President Bush playing the sitar, in fact, at the court in Chang'an, being proficient at the Kuchean drum became "de rigueur among emperors and noblemen," and of the 30,000 (!) musicians housed within the walls of the imperial palace, a great majority of them were from foreign countries, such as Persia, Kucha and India. The emperors' advisors of the time were composed of various nationalities as well. And, this great internationalism was as evident in Baghdad as it was at Chang'an.

All along the silk roads, countries, kingdoms and empires sought to build ties with each other through diplomatic missions, gifts and international marriage. When I think about that, I cannot come up with one world leader of a powerful country today with a foreign spouse. In today's world a foreign spouse would most probably be a grave liability. I wonder why that is? Hattori also holds up the caravan-sarai as another example of the Tang period "living together" of different cultures. The lords of all silk road cities erected inns where traders and travelers could stay for up to 3 days free of charge. The passing of the caravan, brought riches and wisdom and was something which most leaders hoped to support. 

Hattori again and again brings up colonialism as the opposite of the kind of dialog he idealizes-- for colonialism only brought one-way conversation ("conservation" being of course a euphemism). And this one-way conversation is still wrecking havoc in our post-colonialist world where one still does not see much of a spirit of "learning, giving and sharing" as equal partners in our multi-cultural conversations.

In his extensive travels, he finds over and over again, historical instances of cross-cultural sharing and links between different lands located oftentimes extremely far from one another. Examples abound of from architectural borrowings seen at the Borobudur and Japan to cultural borrowings seen in places as far away from each other as Tana Toraja and Madagascar (his essay on Tana Toraja was my favorite in the entire book, and it is one to which I want to devote an entire post). 

Hattori's recent research is turning increasingly to what he calls "the Significance of Islam in the Dialogue among Civilizations: Correcting Distorted Images," as he feels strongly that to neglect the absolutely pivotal role that Islamic civilizations have had on that of the West is what is fostering the current "Clash of Civilizations" (or as he calls it, "The Clash of Ignorance"). This is a theme that is gaining real currency among scholars. In fact, the Muslim body of knowledge during the middle ages and its role in European history is something we are hearing an overwhelmingly lot about lately. Toward the end of the book, Hattori urges that "Once Central Asia was the center of history... and by neglecting Central Asia, the European West and the Far East cannot meet each other now as they once did so gloriously in the past." Yes, the Centrality of Central Asia.

Finally, in true Japanese logic, Hattori takes his point concerning the symbiotic nature of cultures and civilizations throughout history and infers the same relationship between that of humans and the environment. Therefore the last two essays are devoted to environmental destruction in Africa and in Central Asia. In particular, the environmental disaster of Lake Aral is something I knew nothing about. How can that be? (Another case of disaster in the name of ideology. See, for example: here or the wiki article).

**

An interesting read about other ways-- right or wrong-- of thinking about things

Eiji Hattori's Unesco Speech: Civilations Never Clash--Ignorance Does Clash is here

All the Peonies of Chang'an

I am re-reading for the third of forth time Yasushi Inoue's Tun-Huang. Inoue has long been one of my favorite Japanese writers and this is my all-time favorite of his books. As the translator of his other great one, Roof Tile of Tempyo, writes: "Although his works are considered as being historical novels in Japan, artistic historical narrative would be a better description." I think so too, and no where is this more true than for Tun-Huang.

The story opens faraway from the legendary desert city of the title, instead beginning in the center of the world: at the Sung capital of Kaifeng. Our hero, Chao Hsing-te, has arrived in the city of dreams to sit for the Palace Examination.

Yes, he is the son of a scholar. But not all those sitting for the exam were of his background as the imperial examination was open to all males in Chinese society regardless of their social class (with the notable exception of actors, slaves, policemen and the children of prostitutes). This open education system, while it can be traced back all the way to Tang times, really came into functionality during the Song dynasty. This happened right from the start, in fact, with the First Song Emperor Taizu and his systematic subordination of the military. And from that time onward, the scholar-officials saw their numbers and power at Court dramatically increase-- something which continued right down till the end of the imperial system in modern times.

You may say, "Well, I am not much impressed by meritocracies." Well, what was so revolutionary about all this was not just that the system was based on merit (though this was stunningly unique in and of itself as Europe wouldn't see anything similar until well into modern times), but rather that education and individual artistic cultivation came to be given the highest priority-- above political power, money or commerce. To be educated and artistically cultivated were characteristics that money could not buy. And this focus on education was something that came straight from the top!

To impress upon his subjects the importance of education, the narrator in the novel explains that the third Song Emperor Zhenzong personally composed the following poem:

No need to acquire rich lands to increase the family's wealth
For in books are a thousand measure of millet.
No need to build mansions in which to dwell in peace
For in books are abodes of gold
You who would realize your aspirations,
Use the light from your window and recite the Six Classics.

There were three distinct levels to the Song imperial examination system. The first level was the qualifying exam, given throughout the provinces in the major cities every three years. Success at this level brought a great amount of social distinction, including the privilege of being allowed to wear special student robes and having one’s family exempted from paying taxes. Holders of the first-level degree, called the “cultivated talent” degree, were then permitted to sit for the second level, also held once every three years at the imperial capital by the Ministry of Rites. There the “cultivated talents” spent several days packed in large halls (and in later times crammed into individual cells) with only their writing brushes, ink and inkstones. The examinees faced rigorous tests of their knowledge of the Confucian classics, as well as on essay and poetry composition. At this stage, the competition was fierce with only a small percentage of those examinees passing. Those who did pass were granted the degree known as “recommended man.” They could then go on that following autumn to take the final exam at the Palace itself.

Tun-Huang opens up the day before our hero, Chao Hsing-te, is about to face this last exam. He had arrived at the capital from his hometown in Hunan province in the spring of 1026 and had done brilliantly. Out of 33,000 candidates, only 500 were chosen to go on to the final top exam, and he had been one of them. His future looked very bright and he had every reason to be on top of the world.

During Song times, this last exam was supervised directly by the Emperor. Those few who passed became known as “presented scholars” (or jinshi). This degree was similar to having obtained a doctorate in the West, but in effect was far more prestigious. Indeed, in the long history of this examination system, there is many a story of a poor man’s son and his stunning rise to stardom after having obtained this degree, for the holders of the jinshi degree became the luminous elite of their day.

First feted at the Palace, those with the top scores-- the season’s cream of the crop-- were posted at Court, either to assist at the Hanlin Academy or to serve as advisors to the Emperor, with the rest of the candidates being scattered at different posts throughout the empire. Because education was given such an esteemed place in Chinese society, these scholars were held in tremendous awe. Rising to the top level of this rigorous examination system required literally half a lifetime, and the scholars who were able to graduate at the top were assured brillinat futures. In a land where literacy was a rarity to say the least, that these men could not only read and write, but could compose letters and poems of such impossible elegance and beauty as to be valued as works of fine art led them to be seen as viewed as larger than life by the general population-- much like the Hollywood movie stars of America today.

Chao is aware of all of this and has very high hopes-- as well as high aspirations. On the day of the final exam-- the most important day of his life-- he waits outside the Examination Hall along with several dozen other final candidates. It was a warm, early fall day and as he waits for his name to be called, the unthinkable happens. He falls asleep. Dreaming that he is giving his final oral examination in the presence of the Emperor, he is given the question of arguing on Ho Liang's Frontier Security Proposal for dealing with the barbarians along China's western border. 

The Hsi-hsia (or Xixia 西夏) were a Tibetan peoples who formed a large military threat along China's western edges. As this was the corridor that ran along the silk road into Central Asia, it was very strategically important that China contain control over their frontier garrisons there. The Xixia were becoming more and more of a threat as they raided Chinese-occupied towns and  forts in the gray areas, and China was becoming increasingly more concerned. Ho Liang's proposal had taken a hard line, and in his dream, Chao Hsing-te gave an impassioned-- and yet brilliant-- oral argument for why Ho Liang's approach remained the only logical strategy.

Unfortunately rather then ending in accolades, Chao Hsing-te awoke to find himself laying face-down under the great huai tree in the courtyard of the examination hall. His future was over before it had even begun. Rejected, he leaves the courtyard, thinking of a famous poem by Meng Chiao:

Elated by the spring breeze
My horse quickens its pace
In but one short day
Do I view all the peonies of Chang'an

Meng Chiao (or Meng Jiao of Pink Floyd fame) had composed the poem in celebration of finally passing the Palace Examination at the age of 50. With that passing result, all in the blink of an eye had changed for Meng. For Chao Hsing-te, everything had changed as well. The narrator of the story remarks that, "For Hsing-te there would be no peonies." Indeed, all his high aspirations "had been reduced to the ashes of a dream."

But then something amazing happens. Walking home in a daze, Chao finds himself in the marketplace outside the city walls. The alleys are lined with shops selling hot noodles and dumplings and the smell of oil makes him realize he is hungry. At that moment he catches sight of a woman who is being sold in the marketplace. The man who is selling her announces that he plans to sell her piecemeal-- and to add impact to his words proceeds to cut off two of her fingers. Chao is amazed that the beautiful woman does not cry out in any way. Without thinking, he shouts that he will buy her, and handing over the money walks away, saying, "you are free." We know understand that our hero is perhaps not the complete fool we may have thought he was slumbering away in the Emperor's courtyard!

Rushing after him, she hands him a piece of paper and says, "This is all I have, take it." Looking at the writing on the paper, he realized that it is not a language he has ever seen before so he demands to know what it says. She explains that, since she cannot read she doesn't know for sure but she thinks it may state her name and place of birth. With that, she turns and disappears in the teeming crowd of the dark marketplace.

This is how it always is, is it not? One's fate. There is no rythmn nor reason. It is all passion and it happens in the blink of an eye.

Gone 100% out of his mind is the exam, which had been up till now the most important thing in his life. Now, only one thought occupies him-- that piece of paper. He takes it to the Minister of Rites and begs to be told what language it is. The Minister is stumped. The characters are, he says, "worthless imitations of our Chinese characters." And, he mutters after asking Chao how he came to possess the scrap of paper that who would have known such barbarians actually had their own script.

Not much was known of the Xixia people and their language, but Chao resolves to find out everythibng there is to know, and henceforth immediately sets out for the border of the empire. Tun-huang is the story of one man's fate. It is also the story of the great Buddhist kingdom of Dunhuang (Tun-huang). More than anything, however, it is a story -- like all Inoue's novels-- that expresses the profound pathos caused over the realization that often our lives make no real impact at all.

Just like the Japanese monk Gogyo who spends his entire life translating all the great sutras of China into Japanese only to see the countless volumes of his life work wash overboard during a storm at sea, Chao too lives to realize that the great task he has set himself-- his life's work-- amounted to "nothing but an eddy in the broad flow of time."

And yet, while that was Chao's fate-- and no matter how many times I read the novel, I am always left with the feeling that Chao's was a happy one. For inconsequential or not, both Chao and Gogyo never waivered. They knew what their hearts were telling them and followed that regardless of whatever that path would bring.

Of the great scholar-official that was his anti-fate-- or his fate not to be? In an instant this path was closed to Chao. But in the blink of an eye, another path opened up. Of the other path? Well, in many ways, those highly educated men were over-qualified for any kind of work, and with abundant time on their hands, many turned to the arts-- especially to the arts of calligraphy, ink painting, poetry and music-- arts at which they truly excelled. And so it came to be that in China, the civil service, scholarship and the arts of painting and calligraphy became inextricably linked in a very unique way. For not only did our scholar-officials create most of the greatest masterpieces for which China is now famous, but they also participated in art scholarship, connoisseurship, and collecting-- and when we talk of art history in China, until very recent times, it was these same scholar-officials who wrote most of the books.

++

*Dunhuang Project Newsletter (always interesting): http://idp.bl.uk/archives/news_current/news_current.a4d
*The best book so far on the dramatic rise and significance of the shi during the Song dynasty:
Peter Bol’s “This Culture of Our’s”: Intellectual Transitions in T’ang and Sung China (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1992)
*All details regarding the examination system are from F.W. Mote, Imperial China 900-1800 (Harvard U.P., 1999) For more details: Ichisada Miyazaki’s China’s Examination Hell. Trans. by Conrad Schirokauer (Yale Univ Press, 1976)

I am re-reading for the third of forth time Yasushi Inoue's Tun-Huang. Inoue has long been one of my favorite Japanese writers and this is my all-time favorite of his books. As the translator of his other great one, Roof Tile of Tempyo, writes: "Although his works are considered as being historical novels in Japan, artistic historical narrative would be a better description." I think so too, and no where is this more true than for Tun-Huang.

The story opens faraway from the legendary desert city of the title, instead beginning in the center of the world: at the Sung capital of Kaifeng. Our hero, Chao Hsing-te, has arrived in the city of dreams to sit for the Palace Examination.

Yes, he is the son of a scholar. But not all those sitting for the exam were of his background as the imperial examination was open to all males in Chinese society regardless of their social class (with the notable exception of actors, slaves, policemen and the children of prostitutes). This open education system, while it can be traced back all the way to Tang times, really came into functionality during the Song dynasty. This happened right from the start, in fact, with the First Song Emperor Taizu and his systematic subordination of the military. And from that time onward, the scholar-officials saw their numbers and power at Court dramatically increase-- something which continued right down till the end of the imperial system in modern times.

You may say, "Well, I am not much impressed by meritocracies." Well, what was so revolutionary about all this was not just that the system was based on merit (though this was stunningly unique in and of itself as Europe wouldn't see anything similar until well into modern times), but rather that education and individual artistic cultivation came to be given the highest priority-- above political power, money or commerce. To be educated and artistically cultivated were characteristics that money could not buy. And this focus on education was something that came straight from the top!

To impress upon his subjects the importance of education, the narrator in the novel explains that the third Song Emperor Zhenzong personally composed the following poem:

No need to acquire rich lands to increase the family's wealth
For in books are a thousand measure of millet.
No need to build mansions in which to dwell in peace
For in books are abodes of gold
You who would realize your aspirations,
Use the light from your window and recite the Six Classics.

There were three distinct levels to the Song imperial examination system. The first level was the qualifying exam, given throughout the provinces in the major cities every three years. Success at this level brought a great amount of social distinction, including the privilege of being allowed to wear special student robes and having one’s family exempted from paying taxes. Holders of the first-level degree, called the “cultivated talent” degree, were then permitted to sit for the second level, also held once every three years at the imperial capital by the Ministry of Rites. There the “cultivated talents” spent several days packed in large halls (and in later times crammed into individual cells) with only their writing brushes, ink and inkstones. The examinees faced rigorous tests of their knowledge of the Confucian classics, as well as on essay and poetry composition. At this stage, the competition was fierce with only a small percentage of those examinees passing. Those who did pass were granted the degree known as “recommended man.” They could then go on that following autumn to take the final exam at the Palace itself.

Tun-Huang opens up the day before our hero, Chao Hsing-te, is about to face this last exam. He had arrived at the capital from his hometown in Hunan province in the spring of 1026 and had done brilliantly. Out of 33,000 candidates, only 500 were chosen to go on to the final top exam, and he had been one of them. His future looked very bright and he had every reason to be on top of the world.

During Song times, this last exam was supervised directly by the Emperor. Those few who passed became known as “presented scholars” (or jinshi). This degree was similar to having obtained a doctorate in the West, but in effect was far more prestigious. Indeed, in the long history of this examination system, there is many a story of a poor man’s son and his stunning rise to stardom after having obtained this degree, for the holders of the jinshi degree became the luminous elite of their day.

First feted at the Palace, those with the top scores-- the season’s cream of the crop-- were posted at Court, either to assist at the Hanlin Academy or to serve as advisors to the Emperor, with the rest of the candidates being scattered at different posts throughout the empire. Because education was given such an esteemed place in Chinese society, these scholars were held in tremendous awe. Rising to the top level of this rigorous examination system required literally half a lifetime, and the scholars who were able to graduate at the top were assured brillinat futures. In a land where literacy was a rarity to say the least, that these men could not only read and write, but could compose letters and poems of such impossible elegance and beauty as to be valued as works of fine art led them to be seen as viewed as larger than life by the general population-- much like the Hollywood movie stars of America today.

Chao is aware of all of this and has very high hopes-- as well as high aspirations. On the day of the final exam-- the most important day of his life-- he waits outside the Examination Hall along with several dozen other final candidates. It was a warm, early fall day and as he waits for his name to be called, the unthinkable happens. He falls asleep. Dreaming that he is giving his final oral examination in the presence of the Emperor, he is given the question of arguing on Ho Liang's Frontier Security Proposal for dealing with the barbarians along China's western border. 

The Hsi-hsia (or Xixia 西夏) were a Tibetan peoples who formed a large military threat along China's western edges. As this was the corridor that ran along the silk road into Central Asia, it was very strategically important that China contain control over their frontier garrisons there. The Xixia were becoming more and more of a threat as they raided Chinese-occupied towns and  forts in the gray areas, and China was becoming increasingly more concerned. Ho Liang's proposal had taken a hard line, and in his dream, Chao Hsing-te gave an impassioned-- and yet brilliant-- oral argument for why Ho Liang's approach remained the only logical strategy.

Unfortunately rather then ending in accolades, Chao Hsing-te awoke to find himself laying face-down under the great huai tree in the courtyard of the examination hall. His future was over before it had even begun. Rejected, he leaves the courtyard, thinking of a famous poem by Meng Chiao:

Elated by the spring breeze
My horse quickens its pace
In but one short day
Do I view all the peonies of Chang'an

Meng Chiao (or Meng Jiao of Pink Floyd fame) had composed the poem in celebration of finally passing the Palace Examination at the age of 50. With that passing result, all in the blink of an eye had changed for Meng. For Chao Hsing-te, everything had changed as well. The narrator of the story remarks that, "For Hsing-te there would be no peonies." Indeed, all his high aspirations "had been reduced to the ashes of a dream."

But then something amazing happens. Walking home in a daze, Chao finds himself in the marketplace outside the city walls. The alleys are lined with shops selling hot noodles and dumplings and the smell of oil makes him realize he is hungry. At that moment he catches sight of a woman who is being sold in the marketplace. The man who is selling her announces that he plans to sell her piecemeal-- and to add impact to his words proceeds to cut off two of her fingers. Chao is amazed that the beautiful woman does not cry out in any way. Without thinking, he shouts that he will buy her, and handing over the money walks away, saying, "you are free." We know understand that our hero is perhaps not the complete fool we may have thought he was slumbering away in the Emperor's courtyard!

Rushing after him, she hands him a piece of paper and says, "This is all I have, take it." Looking at the writing on the paper, he realized that it is not a language he has ever seen before so he demands to know what it says. She explains that, since she cannot read she doesn't know for sure but she thinks it may state her name and place of birth. With that, she turns and disappears in the teeming crowd of the dark marketplace.

This is how it always is, is it not? One's fate. There is no rythmn nor reason. It is all passion and it happens in the blink of an eye.

Gone 100% out of his mind is the exam, which had been up till now the most important thing in his life. Now, only one thought occupies him-- that piece of paper. He takes it to the Minister of Rites and begs to be told what language it is. The Minister is stumped. The characters are, he says, "worthless imitations of our Chinese characters." And, he mutters after asking Chao how he came to possess the scrap of paper that who would have known such barbarians actually had their own script.

Not much was known of the Xixia people and their language, but Chao resolves to find out everythibng there is to know, and henceforth immediately sets out for the border of the empire. Tun-huang is the story of one man's fate. It is also the story of the great Buddhist kingdom of Dunhuang (Tun-huang). More than anything, however, it is a story -- like all Inoue's novels-- that expresses the profound pathos caused over the realization that often our lives make no real impact at all.

Just like the Japanese monk Gogyo who spends his entire life translating all the great sutras of China into Japanese only to see the countless volumes of his life work wash overboard during a storm at sea, Chao too lives to realize that the great task he has set himself-- his life's work-- amounted to "nothing but an eddy in the broad flow of time."

And yet, while that was Chao's fate-- and no matter how many times I read the novel, I am always left with the feeling that Chao's was a happy one. For inconsequential or not, both Chao and Gogyo never waivered. They knew what their hearts were telling them and followed that regardless of whatever that path would bring.

Of the great scholar-official that was his anti-fate-- or his fate not to be? In an instant this path was closed to Chao. But in the blink of an eye, another path opened up. Of the other path? Well, in many ways, those highly educated men were over-qualified for any kind of work, and with abundant time on their hands, many turned to the arts-- especially to the arts of calligraphy, ink painting, poetry and music-- arts at which they truly excelled. And so it came to be that in China, the civil service, scholarship and the arts of painting and calligraphy became inextricably linked in a very unique way. For not only did our scholar-officials create most of the greatest masterpieces for which China is now famous, but they also participated in art scholarship, connoisseurship, and collecting-- and when we talk of art history in China, until very recent times, it was these same scholar-officials who wrote most of the books.

++

*Dunhuang Project Newsletter (always interesting): http://idp.bl.uk/archives/news_current/news_current.a4d
*The best book so far on the dramatic rise and significance of the shi during the Song dynasty:
Peter Bol’s “This Culture of Our’s”: Intellectual Transitions in T’ang and Sung China (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1992)
*All details regarding the examination system are from F.W. Mote, Imperial China 900-1800 (Harvard U.P., 1999) For more details: Ichisada Miyazaki’s China’s Examination Hell. Trans. by Conrad Schirokauer (Yale Univ Press, 1976)

The Persian Prince Pirooz (1)

--For Guita-jahn

Sometime around 670, the son of the last Sassanid King-- still a young boy-- arrived in the Tang capital to ask for protection against the Arab invaders who now ocuppied his country. Exhausted and covered in dust from the journey, the young prince was led into the Great Hall. It had taken him the best part of a decade to arrive; in fact, he never believed he would actually make it; imagining instead being murdered or dying from cold and exhaustion in the great mountains and deserts through which he had passed on his way East. Somehow, though, he had made it, and arriving at dusk, just before the gates of the great city were secured shut for the night, a regiment of guards from the Chinese Emperor's Palace were there to escort him through the city.

The City. When he was a child, his father had told him much about the great capital to the East-- larger and richer than even Rome or Byzantium. Rome, of course, had been sacked two centuries before, and Byzantium was itself in decline. And then there was his empire-- it still brought tears to his eyes just thinking of it. The Sassanid Empire had been the greatest empire on earth-- rivaled only by Byzantium to the West and China to the East, but it now lay in ruins. His family all dead, his heritage scattered like the sands of the desert blown here and there in the wind. Gone forever.

When the Arabs had invaded, he and his family-- along with a great entourage of supporters-- had fled eastward. Born in 226 a.d. the ancient Persian Sassanid Empire had stretched from the Levant and Constantinople in the West to the Indian subcontinent in the East and had encompassed all of present-day Iraq, Armenia and Afghanistan; as well as much of Turkey, Syria, Arabia and Pakistan. These lands-- as well as the Persian colonies in Central Asia-- were all part of the Persian sphere of influence; whose emperors were held as equals by both the Roman emperors and the Chinese emperors.

For 400 years, they had been called Shahanshah-- or, the "King of Kings." And, theirs was the last great Persian empire prior to the invasion of the Arabs and the influx of Islam. Zoorastrians by religion, it was a Kingdom ruled by a federation of aristocratic families whose splendid cultural achievements would be taken up by their Arab conquerers with gusto. In fact, much of what later came to be known as Islamic culture-- from calligraphy and poetry to garden design and architecture-- was borrowed largely from the Sassanian empire.

When the Arab conquerers stormed the Persian capital of Ctesiphon in 637, such were their numbers that his Father's only choice had been to flee. From Ctesiphon, located on the Tigris, just a bit downstream from Baghdad (founded about 150 years later), on horseback they had raced East in the hope of gathering support for their cause. None of the great families, however, had agreed to help them mount an army to oust the Arab invaders, and by the time they had reached Merv, on the Eastern edge of their empire, they were spent.

It was there that the greatest tragedy of all happened. His Father had been murdered-- right in front of his own eyes. And what had been perhaps the greatest blow of all was that he had been murdered by a commoner. Robbed and murdered for his purse, the great Shahanshah, Yazdgerd III, had been killed by a miller. It was 651, and they had been in flight for some 14 years. 

So, that had been that. With their cause now dead, the aristocratic and ruling families who had followed them East decided to stay and put down roots in Merv, as well as in the nearby Persian areas of Sogdiana, Tashkent and Khotan. Our young Prince, however, would always live with a price on his head. He, therefore, required protection. He thought and thought, but there seemed nowhere to turn-- until he remembered his sister. Before he was born, she had already been married off to the great Tang Emperor to the East. And, so he had set out East--to China.

It was the heyday of the Silk Road, so he had just followed the well-worn path of other Persians before him. First into Sogdiana and then crossing the Pamirs, he had had to make it across the unending stretch of sand of the deserts of inner Asia. Skirting the southern edges of the Taklamakan Desert, first he traveled to Kashgar; then on to Yarkand, Khotan, and all the way to Dunhuang. From there, it had just been a matter of descending down off the plateau and heading East, toward the capital.   

Persian peoples dominated the entire route. The great middle men of the Silk Road, Persian communities (and most notably the Sogdians) had greeted him in every town he passed through along the way. From Merv to Changan, whenever he stopped, he had stayed in Persian inns, eaten Persian foods and had spoken in the refined Persian of the Court-- and he was, for the most part-- understood.

He would be further stunned to see of his country's influence in China proper as well. It gave him heart. Yes, theirs had been the greatest civilization of the world-- for even the Chinese thought so.

The Chinese capital, though, he had to admit, had surpassed even the Persian capital during its height. As French scholar Michel Beurdeley has noted, “the title of Middle Kingdom was richly deserved by China during the Tang dynasty,” as the high civilization and celebrated cosmopolitanism of the Tang dynasty truly had no precedent anywhere on earth prior to that time-- not even Byzantium saw such a rich display of goods and peoples.

While the Tang capital of Changan was the largest, most international city in the world of the time, the Second Capital of Loyang was no less impressive. Both cities were inhabited by traders, entertainers and religious teachers and students from places as far-flung as Syria, Oman, Iran, Khotan, Sogdiana, Turkestan, Tibet, India, Champa, Funan, Korea, and Japan, just to name a few. There were Mosques, Jewish, Manichean and Zoroastrian temples, Nestorian churches, as well as Buddhist monasteries of all sects, some of which were great centers of scholarship. Most surprising (considering the inward turn China would take in the coming centuries) was how stunningly exotic and open the city was.

It was a city where fine ladies adorned their cheeks with crimson laq from Vietnam and anointed their bodies with perfumed oils of Cambodia; where aristocrats kept falcons from Korea, parrots from the jungles of Java and lapdogs from Samarkand. Sleeping in Turkish felt tents was the latest fashion as were the dance moves from Sogdiana. And, the music. The capital saw glorious performances by dancers from Central Asia and India showing dances of such beauty that the famed Tang poets of the time composed poem after poem about them. Grape wine had also come into fashion and was served in glass ewers from Persia. There were lychees from Canton and those oh-so famous peaches of Samarkand.

Of all the foreign fashions, the influence of Iran was without a doubt most significant of all. During the Tang, anything Persian-- from music and dancing, to clothes, hairstyles and the game of Polo-- enjoyed huge popularity at Court and among the aristocracy-- indeed, they were considered to be the very height of fashion. This surprising turn in history came about as part of the Tang Dynasty’s political and military incursions further and further West, into Central Asia (to the land of their prized “blood sweating” stallions and jade) as well as into the Middle East (where beautiful glass and the mineral cobalt was secured).

It was the Iranian Sogdian peoples who held the greatest influence. They were the great merchants, traders and entertainers of the legendary silk road. Known in Chinese as hu jen 胡人, their cultural influence among the Chinese aristocrats was remarkable. It is written in the Tang histories that “the food of the aristocrats was hu food, their music hu music, and their women clothed in the most exotic hu robes that money could buy.” Indeed, in the words of one Japanese scholar, the Tang capital of Chang-an was “painted entirely in the colors of hu.”      

And so our Persian Prince was pleasantly surprised. Such was the Chinese Emperor's great appreciation of the accomplishments of the Persian civilization that upon their first meeting they declared themselves brothers. Following the Palace Guards down long and wide halls, the Prince could just make out the sound of music. He had heard the Emperor had musical skills that rivaled that of professional musicians and the young Prince thought he could hear a drum and loud clappers. He seemed to be walking through a cloud of perfume as incense smoke billowed out of braziers set in the corners of all the rooms. Truly, it smelled of paradise.

Born and raised the song of a King, the Prince knew not to make eye-contact with the Son of Heaven, and instead fell to his knees. The great Emperor rose to his feet and stepping off his dais, he bent down to bid the young Prince to his feet.

"You've come a long way. Have no more fears. For you are my brother and this is your new home."

With tears in his eyes, Pirooz knelt again and thanked the great Emperor. Prince Pirooz was to spend the rest of his days within China. He is said to have learned Kung Fu and then went on to become a general in the army. Sent West to fight their mutual enemies the Arabs, the Persian Prince used his remaining money and resources to make whatever trouble he could. He had probably given up all hope of re-taking his empire-- still it must have felt good to win a battle or two. The Tang chronicles state that when the Chinese emperor died, Pirooz and his son Narseh were allowed to be stationed along the western border garrisons by the new Chinese emperor. Immediately, they started clashes against the Umayyad Arabs. Soliciting the aid of Turkish tribes, Prince Pirooz spent the rest of his days fighting the Arabs along China's Western corridor. 

He died around 700 in the West, still fighting the Arabs wherever he could. His son-- who also begame a respected general in the Chinese army, wrote this in his diary (from Frank Chang's article which is pretty much the only thing around online about Prince Pirooz):

Pirooz requested only a simple burial and the Chinese emperor approved. The entire exiled court was in attendance along with the Chinese emperor. The Chinese emperor held Pirooz's shaking hands. Pirooz looked west and said: "I have done what I could for my homeland (Persia) and I have no regrets." Then, he looked east and said: "I am grateful to China, my new homeland." Then he looked at his immediate family and all the Persians in attendance and said: "Contribute your talents and devote it to the emperor. We are no longer Persians. We are now Chinese." Then, he died peacefully. A beautiful horse was made to gallop around his coffin 33 times before burial, because this was the number of military victories he had during his lifetime. Pirooz was a great Chinese general and great Persian prince devoted and loyal to his people.

And so our Prince died in one of the most remote regions on earth; fighting his enemies till the very end. He was buried facing West.

**

One of Iran's great contemporary playwrights, Bahram Beyzaie, wrote a very popular play about the murder of the last Sassanian King (Pirooz's father) called the Death of Yazdgard. Put on just after the Revolution in Iran, it was not well-received by the authorities. Still it was made into a film and has been staged several times outside Iran (as recently as 2006, in fact). The play, which is compared to in significance to that of A Streetcar Named Desire or Death of a Salesman, basically explores issues of invasion (on many levels) and good kingship. This article about the Darvag performance in Berkeley and San Francisco is really interesting, especially about how they had to purge the play for any references about the ancient Arab invasion, because "we didn't want to cause any misunderstandings-- especially after 9-11."

BBC Radio Program of Sassanian Empire: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime_20071213.shtml

And from the Berkeley Daily Planet (a blast from the past) http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/article.cfm?archiveDate=09-17-04&storyID=19668

--For Guita-jahn

Sometime around 670, the son of the last Sassanid King-- still a young boy-- arrived in the Tang capital to ask for protection against the Arab invaders who now ocuppied his country. Exhausted and covered in dust from the journey, the young prince was led into the Great Hall. It had taken him the best part of a decade to arrive; in fact, he never believed he would actually make it; imagining instead being murdered or dying from cold and exhaustion in the great mountains and deserts through which he had passed on his way East. Somehow, though, he had made it, and arriving at dusk, just before the gates of the great city were secured shut for the night, a regiment of guards from the Chinese Emperor's Palace were there to escort him through the city.

The City. When he was a child, his father had told him much about the great capital to the East-- larger and richer than even Rome or Byzantium. Rome, of course, had been sacked two centuries before, and Byzantium was itself in decline. And then there was his empire-- it still brought tears to his eyes just thinking of it. The Sassanid Empire had been the greatest empire on earth-- rivaled only by Byzantium to the West and China to the East, but it now lay in ruins. His family all dead, his heritage scattered like the sands of the desert blown here and there in the wind. Gone forever.

When the Arabs had invaded, he and his family-- along with a great entourage of supporters-- had fled eastward. Born in 226 a.d. the ancient Persian Sassanid Empire had stretched from the Levant and Constantinople in the West to the Indian subcontinent in the East and had encompassed all of present-day Iraq, Armenia and Afghanistan; as well as much of Turkey, Syria, Arabia and Pakistan. These lands-- as well as the Persian colonies in Central Asia-- were all part of the Persian sphere of influence; whose emperors were held as equals by both the Roman emperors and the Chinese emperors.

For 400 years, they had been called Shahanshah-- or, the "King of Kings." And, theirs was the last great Persian empire prior to the invasion of the Arabs and the influx of Islam. Zoorastrians by religion, it was a Kingdom ruled by a federation of aristocratic families whose splendid cultural achievements would be taken up by their Arab conquerers with gusto. In fact, much of what later came to be known as Islamic culture-- from calligraphy and poetry to garden design and architecture-- was borrowed largely from the Sassanian empire.

When the Arab conquerers stormed the Persian capital of Ctesiphon in 637, such were their numbers that his Father's only choice had been to flee. From Ctesiphon, located on the Tigris, just a bit downstream from Baghdad (founded about 150 years later), on horseback they had raced East in the hope of gathering support for their cause. None of the great families, however, had agreed to help them mount an army to oust the Arab invaders, and by the time they had reached Merv, on the Eastern edge of their empire, they were spent.

It was there that the greatest tragedy of all happened. His Father had been murdered-- right in front of his own eyes. And what had been perhaps the greatest blow of all was that he had been murdered by a commoner. Robbed and murdered for his purse, the great Shahanshah, Yazdgerd III, had been killed by a miller. It was 651, and they had been in flight for some 14 years. 

So, that had been that. With their cause now dead, the aristocratic and ruling families who had followed them East decided to stay and put down roots in Merv, as well as in the nearby Persian areas of Sogdiana, Tashkent and Khotan. Our young Prince, however, would always live with a price on his head. He, therefore, required protection. He thought and thought, but there seemed nowhere to turn-- until he remembered his sister. Before he was born, she had already been married off to the great Tang Emperor to the East. And, so he had set out East--to China.

It was the heyday of the Silk Road, so he had just followed the well-worn path of other Persians before him. First into Sogdiana and then crossing the Pamirs, he had had to make it across the unending stretch of sand of the deserts of inner Asia. Skirting the southern edges of the Taklamakan Desert, first he traveled to Kashgar; then on to Yarkand, Khotan, and all the way to Dunhuang. From there, it had just been a matter of descending down off the plateau and heading East, toward the capital.   

Persian peoples dominated the entire route. The great middle men of the Silk Road, Persian communities (and most notably the Sogdians) had greeted him in every town he passed through along the way. From Merv to Changan, whenever he stopped, he had stayed in Persian inns, eaten Persian foods and had spoken in the refined Persian of the Court-- and he was, for the most part-- understood.

He would be further stunned to see of his country's influence in China proper as well. It gave him heart. Yes, theirs had been the greatest civilization of the world-- for even the Chinese thought so.

The Chinese capital, though, he had to admit, had surpassed even the Persian capital during its height. As French scholar Michel Beurdeley has noted, “the title of Middle Kingdom was richly deserved by China during the Tang dynasty,” as the high civilization and celebrated cosmopolitanism of the Tang dynasty truly had no precedent anywhere on earth prior to that time-- not even Byzantium saw such a rich display of goods and peoples.

While the Tang capital of Changan was the largest, most international city in the world of the time, the Second Capital of Loyang was no less impressive. Both cities were inhabited by traders, entertainers and religious teachers and students from places as far-flung as Syria, Oman, Iran, Khotan, Sogdiana, Turkestan, Tibet, India, Champa, Funan, Korea, and Japan, just to name a few. There were Mosques, Jewish, Manichean and Zoroastrian temples, Nestorian churches, as well as Buddhist monasteries of all sects, some of which were great centers of scholarship. Most surprising (considering the inward turn China would take in the coming centuries) was how stunningly exotic and open the city was.

It was a city where fine ladies adorned their cheeks with crimson laq from Vietnam and anointed their bodies with perfumed oils of Cambodia; where aristocrats kept falcons from Korea, parrots from the jungles of Java and lapdogs from Samarkand. Sleeping in Turkish felt tents was the latest fashion as were the dance moves from Sogdiana. And, the music. The capital saw glorious performances by dancers from Central Asia and India showing dances of such beauty that the famed Tang poets of the time composed poem after poem about them. Grape wine had also come into fashion and was served in glass ewers from Persia. There were lychees from Canton and those oh-so famous peaches of Samarkand.

Of all the foreign fashions, the influence of Iran was without a doubt most significant of all. During the Tang, anything Persian-- from music and dancing, to clothes, hairstyles and the game of Polo-- enjoyed huge popularity at Court and among the aristocracy-- indeed, they were considered to be the very height of fashion. This surprising turn in history came about as part of the Tang Dynasty’s political and military incursions further and further West, into Central Asia (to the land of their prized “blood sweating” stallions and jade) as well as into the Middle East (where beautiful glass and the mineral cobalt was secured).

It was the Iranian Sogdian peoples who held the greatest influence. They were the great merchants, traders and entertainers of the legendary silk road. Known in Chinese as hu jen 胡人, their cultural influence among the Chinese aristocrats was remarkable. It is written in the Tang histories that “the food of the aristocrats was hu food, their music hu music, and their women clothed in the most exotic hu robes that money could buy.” Indeed, in the words of one Japanese scholar, the Tang capital of Chang-an was “painted entirely in the colors of hu.”      

And so our Persian Prince was pleasantly surprised. Such was the Chinese Emperor's great appreciation of the accomplishments of the Persian civilization that upon their first meeting they declared themselves brothers. Following the Palace Guards down long and wide halls, the Prince could just make out the sound of music. He had heard the Emperor had musical skills that rivaled that of professional musicians and the young Prince thought he could hear a drum and loud clappers. He seemed to be walking through a cloud of perfume as incense smoke billowed out of braziers set in the corners of all the rooms. Truly, it smelled of paradise.

Born and raised the song of a King, the Prince knew not to make eye-contact with the Son of Heaven, and instead fell to his knees. The great Emperor rose to his feet and stepping off his dais, he bent down to bid the young Prince to his feet.

"You've come a long way. Have no more fears. For you are my brother and this is your new home."

With tears in his eyes, Pirooz knelt again and thanked the great Emperor. Prince Pirooz was to spend the rest of his days within China. He is said to have learned Kung Fu and then went on to become a general in the army. Sent West to fight their mutual enemies the Arabs, the Persian Prince used his remaining money and resources to make whatever trouble he could. He had probably given up all hope of re-taking his empire-- still it must have felt good to win a battle or two. The Tang chronicles state that when the Chinese emperor died, Pirooz and his son Narseh were allowed to be stationed along the western border garrisons by the new Chinese emperor. Immediately, they started clashes against the Umayyad Arabs. Soliciting the aid of Turkish tribes, Prince Pirooz spent the rest of his days fighting the Arabs along China's Western corridor. 

He died around 700 in the West, still fighting the Arabs wherever he could. His son-- who also begame a respected general in the Chinese army, wrote this in his diary (from Frank Chang's article which is pretty much the only thing around online about Prince Pirooz):

Pirooz requested only a simple burial and the Chinese emperor approved. The entire exiled court was in attendance along with the Chinese emperor. The Chinese emperor held Pirooz's shaking hands. Pirooz looked west and said: "I have done what I could for my homeland (Persia) and I have no regrets." Then, he looked east and said: "I am grateful to China, my new homeland." Then he looked at his immediate family and all the Persians in attendance and said: "Contribute your talents and devote it to the emperor. We are no longer Persians. We are now Chinese." Then, he died peacefully. A beautiful horse was made to gallop around his coffin 33 times before burial, because this was the number of military victories he had during his lifetime. Pirooz was a great Chinese general and great Persian prince devoted and loyal to his people.

And so our Prince died in one of the most remote regions on earth; fighting his enemies till the very end. He was buried facing West.

**

One of Iran's great contemporary playwrights, Bahram Beyzaie, wrote a very popular play about the murder of the last Sassanian King (Pirooz's father) called the Death of Yazdgard. Put on just after the Revolution in Iran, it was not well-received by the authorities. Still it was made into a film and has been staged several times outside Iran (as recently as 2006, in fact). The play, which is compared to in significance to that of A Streetcar Named Desire or Death of a Salesman, basically explores issues of invasion (on many levels) and good kingship. This article about the Darvag performance in Berkeley and San Francisco is really interesting, especially about how they had to purge the play for any references about the ancient Arab invasion, because "we didn't want to cause any misunderstandings-- especially after 9-11."

BBC Radio Program of Sassanian Empire: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/history/inourtime/inourtime_20071213.shtml

And from the Berkeley Daily Planet (a blast from the past) http://www.berkeleydailyplanet.com/article.cfm?archiveDate=09-17-04&storyID=19668