What Kind Of Animals Were Used On The Silk Road

In Western mythology, the most famous horse is that of Troy, the behemothic wooden ruse that the Greeks used to wrong-pes their enemy.

If there is any equine image in the East that can match the stature of its Western counterpart, it is probably that of the "heavenly horses" - horses that in one case traveled the ancient Silk Route connecting the Chinese empire with the vast land lying to its westward.

And if the Trojan horse embodied military subterfuge, then the heavenly horses, tianma, represented raw speed and stamina. The latter take likewise spawned numerous works of art, ones that remind usa not only of a powerful ruler's ambition, but as well of the transcontinental merchandise road this appetite somewhen gave birth to.

Han Dynasty painted wooden horse, unearthed in Gansu province. Photos Provided to China Daily

That ruler was Emperor Wudi of the Han Dynasty (206 BC-Advertizement 220), under whose reign Red china gained prosperity and might that was without precedent. Mindful of the constant harassment of his land by the steppe nomads, Wudi sought to solve the consequence one time and for all, past forming an invincible cavalry that could strike with the same lightning speed as had those fierce horsemen. (These nomads, known as Xiongnu, had once laid siege to his great-grandfather and founder of the Han Empire.)

To do that, he needed the warhorse, a breed native to the kingdom of Da Yuan, a Central Asian country in the Ferghana Valley. So around 139 BC, the emperor sent out a convoy headed by a homo named Zhang Qian on a w journey that somewhen took them to Fundamental Asia. Their 2 most of import tasks: to seek a military alliance with other countries who were enemies of the Xiongnu, and to wait for the reputed horses.

During an eventful journey that lasted 13 years, Zhang Qian was captured by the Xiongnu twice. When he arrived back in the Han upper-case letter in 126 BC, he was accompanied by simply one man - and there were no horses.

However, according to Houhanshu (the Book of Later Han, penned by a Chinese historian during the fifth century and considered an authoritative record of the Han history betwixt 25 and 220), nigh ten, or at least five or 6, diplomatic groups were dispatched annually by the Han court to Central Asia during this menstruation to purchase horses.

"For the Han people, the horses had become a fetish and a cult, as evidenced by their newly assigned proper name, heavenly horses," says Rong Xinjiang, a professor of history at Peking University and an proficient on the Silk Road.

"Compared with the ethnic Chinese breeds, these heavenly horses had longer and spikier ears that made them look more than vigilant. They too had elongated bodies that appeared both athletic and elegant."

Ane prototype that best illustrates this kinetic elegance is a bronze equus caballus unearthed in Gansu province, Northwest Communist china, across which the ancient Silk Road wound. With mouth open, ears pricked and nostrils flared, the steed charges alee at full tilt. Its air current-whipped mane conveys momentum, but what really captures its speed and renders this sculpture an iconic piece of work of fine art is a sparrow that appears under ane hind hoof of the equus caballus. It is as if the galloping horse, in a fleeting moment as information technology overtakes the low-flying sparrow, is stamping on the bird's wings.

The horse, coated in greenish patina, turned upwardly in the tomb of a Han full general, with a whole legion comprising lance-holding horsemen and horse-drawn chariots. In most cases, the mane on the horses' brow is portrayed as beingness tied high upward and diddled back by potent current of air. Another distinct feature is the tail, raised to form ane curve or ii. It is as if a powerful life force has charged through the equus caballus, head to hind, and reached its endpoint undiminished.

According to historical records, the Han government later prepare convenance grounds in Gansu, hoping to localize the superior genes of the heavenly horses.

Perhaps the best proof of the horses' indelible popularity can exist found in tombs of the Tang Dynasty (618-907), some other golden period in Chinese history that was separated from the Han era by four centuries. There they abounded as polychrome glazed ceramic sculptures, mirroring the fact that in 725, during the reign of the Tang Emperor Xuanzong, the number of bred heavenly horses was put at virtually 430,000.

Another type of animate being that often plant itself standing adjacent with the horses in the burial chamber of their masters was the camel, on whose back almost the entire history of the ancient Silk Road was sustained.

The animal, a veritable novelty when it first gear up its split hoof in Han China, was no uncertainty oblivious to the marvel and confusion information technology aroused with the locals. Seeing a camel for the get-go time, many believed they were "horses with swollen backs", to quote a piece of contemporaneous writing.

However, it was not long before the animate being was impressing all and sundry with its ability to endure hardship. The two species - the single-humped camels of West Asia and the double-humped ones of Central Asia - became the virtually preferred pack animals for all traders trekking dorsum and forth forth the ancient Silk Road.

I specially bright rendering can be found in a glazed ceramic camel unearthed in a suburb of Xi'an, capital in the Han and Tang dynasties. Craning its cervix upward, the animal seems to be grunting loudly. Whether it is because of the heavy load and a crushing sense of tiredness or the glimpse of an haven or something else volition forever remain a mystery.

Ge Chengyong, a Silk Road research skilful who acted as a consultant for a previous exhibition in Hong Kong, where the camel was on display, says that "a lot could be deciphered by merely looking into what is betwixt a camel'south double humps", pointing to some other ceramic rendition of the animal from a slightly before time.

Straddling its back are a pair of sacks busy with a drunk propped against another human and a woman.

"The drunk with a thick beard and potbelly is Dionysus, the greek vino god who could bring people a good harvest - recollect grape harvest in particular - and good fortune," Ge says. "Those on his left and right are two of his disciples. ... The images are telltale signs of a grape wine culture that originated in the Mediterranean and kept the Chinese intoxicated - literally and metaphorically - throughout the 7th and eighth centuries."

It was even blamed for preventing Tang from staying sober, when the powerful and prosperous empire, convulsed by sudden rebellion that erupted in 755, plunged headlong into a downward spiral from which it never quite recovered.

Other things that oftentimes weighed heavily on a camel's back included h2o flasks and, more than important, bundles of silk that, sold in Constantinople, could fetch hundreds of times their cost price in People's republic of china.

But that is non all, says Li Yongping of the Gansu Provincial Museum, who compares the trading caravans to an itinerant circus. The aboriginal Silk Road cut through Gansu during its westward extension.

"That circus was stuffed with a large variety of animals - monkeys and eagles, peacocks and ostriches, lions and leopards, and possibly elephants and rhinos," Li says.

Later on a journeying that must have been extremely demanding, if not costly in lives, most of these rare animals ended upward in the individual gardens or enclosures of the aristocrats, to be looked at by a privileged few. Artistic renderings also appeared, often in the burial chambers of these men who had gone to great lengths to brand sure that their afterlife would be lived in the style to which they had get accustomed.

Ane example involves a pair of splendidly realized gilt bronze leopards, their spotted bodies curled upwardly and optics ready with rubies. The Han people liked to place themselves in a kneeling position, and the leopards, designed as mat weights, would proceed the mat from moving as the sitter shuffled. They belonged to Liu Sheng (165-113 BC), a Han Dynasty vassal rex who was the one-half brother of Emperor Wudi, the man who was backside the opening of the Silk Road.

The leopard can also be constitute on a gilt silver plate unearthed in Gansu and dated to quondam between the fourth and sixth centuries. On the brute's dorsum sits Bacchus, the Roman equivalent of Dionysus, a fact that has led researchers to attribute the beautifully wrought plate to craftsmen from the Byzantine Empire.

"By connecting the dots, you get a line of not only the trade route, just as well the ii-manner flow of civilization," Li says.

Another animal that left its paw prints on the cultural history of ancient China was the lion. The ferocious animate being, native to today's India and Iran, is believed to accept first entered Han People's republic of china through the Silk Road, and was soon adopted as a decorative motif. The within centre of a Tang Dynasty silver basin unearthed in Eleven'an was occupied by a pair of confronting lions, highlighted by gilding.

A 16-piece set of jade belt ornaments was found in the same place. A lion appeared on all just 1 piece, each of which features the animal in a uniquely different posture. Although jade traditionally came from Hetian (likewise known every bit Khotan) in what is now the Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, past the Tang era information technology had long entered canonical Chinese culture.

Tang emperors routinely gave jade or jade-embedded gilt belts to their loftier-level officials. The majestic favor was bestowed non on a mere whim but co-ordinate to strict protocol that dictated, among other things, the specific pattern that would appear on the belt plaques.

"The combination of a 'foreign' motif with a typical Chinese carving material, as well equally its incorporation into the court civilisation, all signaled an assimilation process that lay at the heart of the Silk Route exchanges," Li says.

Unearthed in Xinjiang and dating back to Tang is a clay rendition of the lion trip the light fantastic toe, widely performed during the Chinese lunar new year's day then and at present. The two pairs of legs protruding from the underbelly of the lion indicate that there were two performers.

Compared with Han, the Tang Dynasty had remarkably more true-to-life portrayals of lions past artists and artisans, who, presumably, had more opportunity to observe the animal firsthand. Concrete details bristle where free imagination used to reign.

But that does non hateful there was little room for imagination; in fact, the opposite is truthful. A Tang Dynasty cup unearthed in Henan province had a peacock's resplendent tail wrapped around it to form a horn shape, the peacock itself being an exotic bird. The conical shape points unequivocally to a specific type of vino container known equally a rhyton, which first appeared in the Aegean region during the Bronze Age, before being produced over wide areas of ancient Eurasia. This particular ane, realized in Tang Dynasty tri-colored porcelain (yellow, green and white), is near likely the work of a Chinese craftsman.

Another imported animate being worth noting is the elephant, non simply because of its bulk, but also because of its shut association with Buddhism, which connected to exert its influence through the aboriginal Silk Road. Bricks painted with white elephants have been discovered in the city of Dunhuang, Gansu, whose fabled grottoes are habitation to gorgeous religious paintings and rare Buddhist scriptures.

More earthly versions could be constitute in a gilt bronze elephant and a rhinoceros, unearthed in the burial ground of a Han Dynasty vassal king in East China. Both animals were accompanied by their grooms, who must have traveled the same altitude before arriving in Mainland china 2 millennia ago.

In life equally well as in death, these existent-life animals had competed with mythical ones to win the favor of artists, and thus the hazard of eternal life. The latter group included the makara, a sea beast in Hindu mythology that has the body of a fish and the caput of a dragon. Some other was the kalavinka, a Buddhist creation with a bird'southward trunk, a human head and the almost exquisite vocalization. Very often their images grace a gilt argent plate or fifty-fifty gold hairpin for an aloof lady.

Culture and commerce, spiritual and mundane, the Silk Road animals are emblems for all.

On display at the previous Hong Kong exhibition were a polychrome painted equus caballus and its tamer, both unearthed in the central Chinese city of Luoyang, a bustling commercial center and destination for endless streams of caravans during the Tang era.

Despite being lavishly harnessed, the horse shows no sign of obedience. This has resulted in tension and drama betwixt the steed and the man, who, with legs wide apart, arms outstretched and veins on the wrists swelling upwards, tries badly to rein in the muscular fauna.

Ge says: "Undauntedness: Man or animal, that'due south what they need to measure the length of the Silk Road, with their ain steps. And those who did so can never be contained."

zhaoxu@chinadaily.com.cn

1. Tang Dynasty polychrome painted horse and tamer, unearthed in Luoyang city, Henan province; two. Han Dynasty gold statuary elephant and groom, unearthed in Jiangsu province; 3, v. Sui Dynasty (581-618) pottery camel and load, unearthed in Xi'an. The sacks on the camel'south dorsum are decorated with images of the greek vino god, Dionysus, and his disciples; 4. Remains of the ancient Silk Road relay station in Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region; six. 4th-sixth century Byzantine gilt silver dish, unearthed in Gansu, featuring the Roman wine god Bacchus reclining on a leopard. Photo 4 by Huang Huo / For People's republic of china Daily and The Rest Are Provided to China Daily

(China Daily European Weekly 06/01/2018 page1)

Source: http://europe.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2018-06/01/content_36311009.htm

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