Here in Beijing, a significant academic conference has just come to a close. From November 6th to November 8th, Beijing hosted the world’s first World Conference of Classics. The event was co-hosted by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Ministry of Education of China, the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of China, the Ministry of Culture of Greece, and the Academy of Athens. An important outcome of the event was the establishment of a China Classical Civilisation Research Institute in Athens. The event gathered four hundred and eighty-five scholars from over 30 countries and regions. The event reminds us that by re-discovering ancient ties, modern nations can open closer bonds of co-operation.
Amazingly, Greece and China were once geographical neighbours! What do I mean by such an absurd statement. Well it was a long time ago! We have to go back to the world just after the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC. Alexander’s military operations had taken his armies as far east as modern Afghanistan. Alexander died without an heir and his empire was fought over by his generals, with the eastern areas being controlled by his friend Seleucus Nicator (r. 312–281 B.C.). Seleucus became king of the eastern provinces—approximately modern Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon, together with parts of Turkey, Armenia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan, establishing what became known as the Seleucid Empire.
Later this kingdom split and a king called Diodotus I, founded Greco-Bactria which was a Hellenistic state in Central Asia. The result of this was that there was an extensive Greek influenced Hellenistic culture just outside the borders of Han Empire China, just at the time that the Han Emperors were beginning to send out explorers like Zhāng Qiān to look for trade routes to the west.
A map of the Seleucid Empire, connecting East and West
Remarkably, archaeological evidence has been found of contact between China and these Hellenistic central Asian kingdoms. In an excavation at a place called Kangjiagou, Lingtai County, in the western province of Gansu, five ‘coins’ made out of lead were discovered which have inscriptions in Greek. Even more amazing are the findings from a place called Sampul which is in Xīnjiāng Province. The area around Sampul is the Tarim Basin which was a critical crossroads on the ancient Silk Roads in and out of China. A tapestry has been found here which has perfectly preserved images of a Greek centaur and the head of a warrior, shown in Greek style, although probably of local origin. There are written records in Chinese histories of the time of contact with a kingdom called Dà Yuán, or the ‘Great Ionian’s’ who inhabited the Ferghana Valley, an area in modern-day Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan.
This evidence is tantalisingly small, but some scholars are convinced that there is even stronger evidence of contacts between Ancient China and Ancient Greece in the form of Buddhist art. In its earliest forms Buddhism had no statues of the Buddha, relying instead on symbols, such as a wheel. However a Greek king of Bactria in modern Afghanistan called Menander, who lived from about 160 BCE–135 BCE, converted to Buddhism. From this point onwards we find a change in the way the Buddha is shown, with statues depicting the physical figure commonly seen across Asia, including China. We all know this type of art:
And as soon as we see the Buddha figures next to Ancient Greek statues the cultural influence becomes obvious. The torso, the flowing robes, even the features of the stoic face can be traced to Greek influences. There is even a name for this artistic movement, Gandhara Art, named for the area in Afghanistan where from the first century BCE and the seventh century CE, Chinese, Greek, Roman and Indian artistic styles met in a remarkable fusion to produce Buddhist iconography.
What of far-flung, distant Britain? Surely we can’t in any way claim neighbourliness between the ancient peoples of China and a remote island in the Atlantic? The first British ship to reach China was in 1637. Tea from China began to appear on English tables from the 1650’s onwards. However there are intriguing possibilities of earlier East-West contacts. None of these are direct encounters but they at least show that the spread of trade and ideas between Europe and China reached these islands.
One of these tenuous links is the presence of silk fabrics in early medieval England. From about the third century BCE, silk began to be known in the worlds outside of China. It was popular amongst the elite classes of Ancient Rome in the first centuries CE, who paid small fortunes to the merchants who transported it across Central Asia, but they never found the secrets of silk culture, for example believing it grew on trees. The Romans called China ‘Seres’, the land of silk. We can imagine then, the fashion leaders of the Romano-British aristocracy wearing silk that had directly originated in China.No-one at that time outside of China knew the secrets of its manufacture. Ties with Rome and Roman trade weakened in the fifth and sixth centuries. There is no archaeological evidence of silk in Britain from this time.
However silk returned to Britain with the revival of the Christian religion from the seventh century on. St Augustine arrived in Kent in 597 CE and Christianity spread through Anglo-Saxon England during the seventh and eighth centuries. Intriguingly, and much less well known, at the same time Nestorian Christians were introducing the faith into China. Just like Buddhism, Christianity flowed east-west along the Silk Roads and silk cloth became a mark of rank in the church hierarchy. The legend goes that in fact, it was two monks who finally introduced the secrets of silk making to Europe, when in 552 A.D., the Emperor Justinian sent two monks on a mission to Asia, and they came back to Byzantium with silkworm eggs hidden inside their bamboo walking sticks.
This brings us to an astonishing event in 1827. One of the leading figures of early Christianity in Britain was St Cuthbert, who lived in the second half of the seventh century. He was venerated as a miracle worker and became a leading Bishop of the age. In 1827, Cuthbert’s tomb in Durham Cathedral was opened. Among the other extraordinary artefacts found there were vestments made from silk and gold thread. These were dated to the early 900’s when they were gifted to the tomb of St Cuthbert by King Athelstan, who was becoming the first ‘Rex anglorum’ or ruler of a united Britain. Athelstan based his ideas of kingship on the example of Charlemagne, who had tried to revive the Roman Empire from 800 to 814 CE. By this time silk production was slowly spreading through Europe as a result of Arab influences that were bringing a wealth of ideas and products from the east. Although they cannot be claimed as evidence of any kind of knowledge or understanding of China in the Dark Ages, these frail silk threads are at least evidence that England was not totally cut off from global ties.
King Athelstan
Another product from the east which made its way into England in the Middle Ages was paper. Paper too had been originally invented in China. There is evidence of primitive types of paper in China from the second century BCE, but traditionally a man called Cài Lún, a eunuch, is credited with standardising the manufacture of paper in 105 CE in the city of Luoyang. For the next centuries, paper remained a uniquely Chinese project, until a battle in 751 at Talas in modern Kyrgyzstan between Tang Chinese forces and Arab armies bringing the ideas of Islam east. The result of the battle was a stalemate, but the story goes that at the battle a number of Chinese paper makers were taken prisoner and carried off to Baghdad to begin paper production there.
By 714 CE, Spain had been taken into an Arab empire spreading from the borders of China to the Pyrenees. The Muslim rulers brought a wealth of knowledge from the east, engineering, medicine, astronomy, mathematics and paper manufacturing. From the eighth to the eleventh century ‘Al-Andalus’ as the area was known, was the ‘silicon valley’ of Europe, drawing scholars and innovators to centres of learning such as Cordoba. The first recorded use of paper in England is from 1309. However it was not until 1496 that we find evidence of the first paper manufacture in England, by an entrepreneur called John Tate from Hertfordshire. Some ideas take a truly long time to catch on.
A very recent book by the famous historian, William Dalrymple, has revealed another possible face of this spread of ideas and knowledge between medieval China and the UK – the idea of a university! In a fascinating new book called ‘The Golden Road’, Dalrymple traces the history of ideas and trade in south-east Asia. He links the idea of a ‘college’ for bringing scholars together to the ancient location of Nalanda in India, which was a centre of Buddhist learning and study from the third century BCE to the thirteenth century CE. In fact, in the seventh century it was Nalanda where the Chinese traveller Xuánzàng came to complete his studies in Buddhism.
From India, the idea of a centre for learning spread to Baghdad where it transformed into the Muslim idea of a ‘madrasah’. And it was through contact with Asia that the concept of a university entered Europe. Here the spotlight shines on a person of British origin, one Jocius of London, who travelled to Jerusalem at the end of the 12th century. In his eastern travels he encountered madrasahs and in 1180, he founded the first college in Europe, in Paris. It was called the ‘College des Dix~Huits’, and it went on to become one of the foundations of the University of Paris. William Dalrymple writes
‘ The ghost of Xuánzàng’s beloved yogasvsra Buddhist texts can be seen lurking somewhere in the background of many of the ideas and arguments underpinning western thought during the middle ages’
breathing new life into lost connections between east and west in a period of history when we often assume there were none.
The great challenge of our times is facing up to the forces of isolationism. But we should not despair. Every trace of connection, however much just a tiny trickle of knowledge, will join at last into a greater confluence of truth. From the long perspective of history, bridges of understanding will always outlast walls of ignorance.