《Trade and Tribute along the Silk Road before the Third Century AD》.pdf

Trade and Tribute along the Silk Road before the Third Century A.D. Byung-Joon Kim* INTRODUCTION The Silk Road trade refers to the long-distance commercial routes that extended past the Pamir Plateau and beyond Central Asia, as well as encompassing the oases of the Taklimakan desert. It is not easy to travel the length of the Silk Road route even today; historically, the arduousness of the journey effectively separated East and West into worlds of their own. Nevertheless, despite the difficulties, these two worlds traded substantial quantities of goods. Important items such as horses and carts found their way into China from the West around 3,000 years ago, and the history of trade in the western part of the Pamir Plateau can be traced back even further.1 The fact that goods from the West such as gold and silverware were also common in China before the third century B.C.2 is testimony to the power of merchants to surmount the geographical barriers to trade. Although goods and cultures had been transferred between East and West since before 1,000 B.C., the Silk Road is not said to have been opened up until the second half of the second century B.C., when Zhang Qian (張騫) made his journey to the West.3 Why, we may ask, did it take so long for the Silk Road trade to become established? A look at the topography of Central *Hallym University (Gangwon-do, Korea) Journal of Central Eurasian Studies, Volume 2 (May 2011): 1–24 © 2011 Center for Central Eurasian Studies 2 Byung-Joon Kim Asia indicates that the route could not have changed between 1,000 B.C. and the time Zhang Qian set out. What was it about Zhang Qian’s journey in particular that led to the opening up of the Silk Road? A consideration of potentially analogous cases may help shed some light on this. For example, although it is said that Cai Lun (蔡倫) invented paper during the Later Han Dynasty, archaeological excavations have confirmed that it was invented much earlier. This