In the sixth century, it was the era of chaos in the Northern and Southern Dynasties. The Xiongnu, Xianbei, Jie, Di, Qiang and other ethnic groups in the north took advantage of the collapse of the northern defense line to compete in the Central Plains and claim kingship and hegemony. The regime established by these northern ethnic minorities was called the Northern Dynasties. .
The Sogdians also followed the trend of barbarians entering China. They followed the Western Region city-states along the Silk Road and traveled to the Hexi Corridor, Guanzhong and the Central Plains of the Northern Dynasties. They mainly traveled to and from the four towns in Hexi, Chang'an, Luoyang and Taiyuan.
If the confrontation between the Northern and Southern Dynasties had not prevented the Sogdians from going south to do business, their footsteps would have spread all over the misty land south of the Yangtze River. In the late Southern Dynasties, Hu Jia from the Western Regions began to cross the Qinling Mountains through the Guanzhong Plain and along the Han River to Shu and Xiangyang. This opened up the trade channel to the Southern Dynasties.
By the Sui and Tang Dynasties, the Sogdians had migrated from the Kangju Kingdom in the Western Regions to Guanzhong and the north. In the process, they gradually became Hanized, extinguishing their respective national surnames and replacing them with Cao, An, Shi, Kang, Shi, Luo, Bai, Mi, etc. The Han surname was his original surname, and he relied on the influence of the clan at that time to take root in Guanzhong.
In order to distinguish them, the government often calls them "Nine Surnames Hu people" or "Nine Surnames Zhaowu". At this point, the Sogdians and the "Nine Surnames Zhaowu" are bound together. They are good at doing business and operating in a routine manner, and they settled in Han areas. After that, I quickly sensed a huge business opportunity.
In order to maintain the international situation, although the Sui and Tang officials encouraged the Hu people to come to China, they implemented the policy of separating the Hu and Han people. This was mainly reflected in the fact that the Hu people were not allowed to intermarry with the Han people, nor were they allowed to appear in places where the Han people lived together, or even be allowed to Han men and women were sold into slavery and taken out of the country.
These bans were indeed detrimental to them, but one thing was completely beneficial to them - the government focused on agriculture and suppressed business, and prohibited Han people from migrating long distances and engaging in international trade.
Under this ban on the separation of Hu and Han, the Sogdians seized the opportunity of the Han people not being allowed to engage in overseas trade, absorbed the spare wealth of the Han people, and became their overseas trade agents.
This opportunity allowed the Sogdians to quickly monopolize international trade including silk, jewelry, curios, livestock, slaves, and interest. It can be said that it covered all aspects of people's lives at that time and controlled most of the important Hu markets. If To go further, it is to control the lifeblood of Silk Road trade.
Under their monopoly, many Sogdian merchants began to appear in the north who were extremely wealthy and had huge fortunes. The "Chang'an Ban Ji" unearthed from Dunhuang recorded that "Shi Potuo, a native of Chang'an County, had a prosperous family, a huge wealth, and a rich body." There are distinguished officers and knights, their gardens, ponds, houses, clothes and utensils are as good as those of princes."
The literal meaning is that the Sogdian in Chang'an County, Jingzhao Prefecture, is named Shi Potuo. His family makes a living as a merchant and has accumulated more than ten thousand yuan of property. In addition, he also has honorary officers and knights awarded by the government, gardens and ponds in his house. , houses, palaces, clothes, curiosities, and servants are comparable to those of princes.
These records can almost prove the success of Sogdian merchants in business and trade. At that time, let alone ordinary merchants in the Central Plains, even the well-dressed sons of officials for generations may not be able to match the accumulation of wealth of the Sogdian barbarians. When they They also attached themselves to Guanlong clan and official families, which added a lot of security to their wealth.
At least, the Hu people could get an official position in the court, or an honorary sinecure, by clinging to family members and officials.
Under this kind of commercial trade and clinging to power, the Hu people, including the nine surnames of Zhaowu, lived very well in the Central Plains. They also knew that their power and wealth came from the recognition of the nine surnames of Zhaowu by the officials. In other words, it was the real powerful people at that time who valued the value of the nine surnames of Zhaowu.
Under this understanding, the Sogdian people attach great importance to the transmission of family lineage. When they go out to do business, they often have to be prefixed by a certain son. The father's name is very important, as it represents the family's business reputation and financial scale. However, Grandfather and above are not that important.
In this small family model of "father and son seeking profit", the Sogdian people emphasize independence. As long as children are born, their parents will educate them in business thinking. When they reach adulthood, they will leave the family to make a living and do business.
It is said that the Sogdian coming-of-age ceremony is to go to a foreign country with a sum of money given by your parents at the age of twenty. Only when you earn your first pot of gold with the money can you return to your family with dignity, marry a wife and have children. Independence for your new little family.
After this incident, he has proved that he has the talent for business and trade. In the future, whenever city-states or families bring together trade caravans, they will give priority to cooperating with them and set up a platform for each other to do business. If these Sogdian young people do not make a penny, why not? If you have squandered all your original capital, you will be considered completely incompetent. In the future, you can only work as a handyman in the caravan, or stay with the family to support your parents, and you will have no future in your life.
From Central Asia, to the Western Regions, to the four towns of Hexi, Guanzhong, and the Central Plains, the Sogdian people continued to measure the distance between themselves and wealth with their own steps. They also spread the Sogdian language along the Silk Road during business and trade, and became the Silk Road. The most popular communication language along the road.
Song Siyuan had also read some reports on documents unearthed in Dunhuang before, and she wrote these things down. When she suddenly heard that these texts were in Sogdian, she immediately became curious: "How could Gunizi use Sogdian? Such a The writing has disappeared and is not used by any ethnic group. Even if it is spread to this day, it has been integrated into other languages.”
Sun Daqiao shook his head: "I don't know about this. I only know that the Sogdian script has been lost. It is very difficult to understand it. It is very difficult to study the text in it carefully."
Yue Guanchao looked at the Sogdian script: "Keli said that these Sogdian scripts are the handwriting of Gunizi. This shows that Gunizi can write Sogdian script. Perhaps, Keli still retains some of Gunizi's relics. , we might as well take advantage of the opportunity to hold a funeral for Guniz, and ask Tuokeli to see if there is any information about Sogdian, and maybe we can unlock the secrets of these books."
Two days after returning, Yue Guanchao and the others came to the Thousand Buddha Cave while Keli delivered the funeral notice. From a distance, they saw many musical instrument masters gathering on the cliff above the cave. Beat and beat and preach loudly.
As early as after Gunizi's accident, their family had no relatives to interact with. When Keli and Nayi moved to Thousand Buddha Cave, they had already reached the point where they had no relatives to rely on. Today's funeral should only be held by Keli and Nayi. According to the two brothers and sisters, fortunately, the poor people in Thousand Buddhas Abandoned Cave still have some humanity. After such a long time of being neighbors, they are here to see Gunizi off on his last journey.
When Yue Guanchao and others arrived at the place, they were already on the verge of being buried. They each lit incense and handed wreaths, helped Keli carry Gunizi's coffin into the tomb, filled it with earth and sealed the mound, and erected Gunizi's inscription in front of the tomb. , and after the funeral was over, Keli took them back to the abandoned cave.
Song Siyuan took out a birch bark book: "Keli, these words are in Sogdian. According to the information we currently have, Sogdian was lost as early as the ninth century, and now it has become a dead script that no one can decipher. , I was thinking that if your father can record things in Sogdian, it at least proves that he knows Sogdian. When you were counting his belongings, did you find anything about Sogdian, such as books and literature? An album, a document, or a scroll or something."
Keli gestured towards one of the side caves: "At the beginning, my father didn't leave many things behind. I sealed all these documents and other things in a big box in the study. I really didn't find much about millet at that time. You can look for Tewen’s things again, maybe you can find something new.”
While they were talking, Nayi came in from the door and saw the Sogdian booklet in their hands, her eyes became strange: "Sogdian."
"Nayi, do you know Sogdian?" Song Siyuan's eyes lit up.
Nayi nodded: "I saw my father writing this kind of writing before, and I asked him why I didn't recognize these words. He told me that the Sogdian script has been lost and now belongs to some kind of secret script in the Western Regions, which can record certain things. , but there is no way to read it out. If there is any secret, it can be written in Sogdian to ensure that no one will know it."
Mentioning this point, she paused: "At that time, I was still young, and my father taught me Sogdian. It's just that it's been a long time, and I don't have any impression of it now, but I remember that he left me a book before. I will find the classics about the Sogdian Secret Text for you."
After that, Nayi took them into the study and began to rummage through the big box left by Gunizi. After a while, she took out the ancient book with ancient decoration and cowhide cover and placed it on the table. Song Siyuan stepped forward to take a look. , the book cover has nothing to do with Sogdian script, and presumably it was also intended to conceal the contents from outsiders.
Everyone was overjoyed. They thought they would not be able to understand the contents of the booklet in a short period of time. Now that they had this Sogdian classic, Song Siyuan immediately took it in her hand and looked through it.
In the classics, the Sogdian script only has the expressive function, and most of the pronunciation has been lost. Even so, at least it is a complete training and reading classic. These things can be used to decipher the Sogdian script written by Guniz.
"That's right. Let me learn about the Sogdian classics first. It would be better if I could decipher Uncle Gunizi's book."
Song Siyuan took this opportunity to sit in her study and study Sogdian carefully. In her opinion, the loss of Sogdian was entirely due to the decline of Silk Road trade, rather than any defects in the language itself. Similar languages in the Iranian language family Under logic, as long as you have a slight grasp of the logic and meaning of certain words and sentences, you can roughly translate Sogdian without having to relearn the language.
This is completely different from the decline of Tangut script, Khitan script, and Jurchen script. The emergence of these scripts did not go through thousands of years of improvement and application, but was forced by the rulers of the time in order to consolidate their power and enhance national cohesion. The resulting text is difficult to understand and has many strokes.
These words are neither pictographic nor expressive. If it were not translated into popular Chinese, they would be incomprehensible. Once the Xixia Kingdom and the Khitan Kingdom were destroyed, these words would be discarded into the pile of old paper, and the people would naturally choose more Pictographic Chinese characters to facilitate reading and writing.
Jurchen script already had certain flaws when it was created. Most of the sentences and chapters it produced were obscure and dry. In the end, Chinese had to be fully implemented. Even the emperor in the Forbidden City could only speak Chinese in his last years. .
