by Sun Shuyun
To maximize their revenue from the Silk Road, the Turks even sought direct trade with the Romans, who, they knew, had an insatiable appetite for silk. In the eastern Roman empire, rulers, aristocrats, merchants – everybody of importance wanted to dress themselves in silk robes; Christian churches abandoned their earlier ascetic traditions in favour of decorating their altars with elaborate silk banners and cloaking their bishops in silk. Valentina told me that it was through the Western Turks that the Romans heard more about the Sere land. ‘In this vast country,’ the Romans were told, ‘there are no temples, no prostitutes, no adulterous women, no robbers, no murderers, no victims of murder.’ The Chinese were no better informed about the Romans. As late as the fifth century, the Chinese court chronicler wrote: ‘In general, the inhabitants are tall and well-built. Some of them resemble the people of the Middle Kingdom and for that we call the country Greater China.’ It was in the interests of all the peoples of the Silk Road, in particular the Persians who controlled the silk trade, to keep China and Rome from direct contact. It was not until Marco Polo that the mysteries shrouding China began to disperse.
The Khan received Xuanzang in his tent, which was decorated with golden flowers whose brilliance dazzled the eye. Inside, his officials, all dressed in embroidered silk, sat on mats in two long rows in front of him, while armed guards stood behind him. Xuanzang was given an iron chair with a cushion to sit on. Then the envoys from Gaochang presented their credentials and the state letter to the Khan. He opened the letter immediately. ‘The Chinese master is my younger brother,’ it read. ‘He wishes to go to India to search for the teaching of the Buddha. I wish the Khan will treat him with kindness just as he would treat me.’
After he finished reading the letter, the Khan ordered wine to be brought in and music to be played. ‘He drank with the envoys,’ Hui Li tells us. ‘The guests grew more and more lively, and then challenged one another to drink, clashing their cups together, filling and emptying them in turn. While this was going on, there sounded the crashing chords of barbarian music. Although they were half-savage airs, they charmed the ear and rejoiced the mind and the heart.’ In a little while food was served. Xuanzang was given a special ‘pure’ meal of grape juice, rice cakes, milk, sugar, honey and raisins, while the rest wolfed down boiled flanks of mutton and veal.
In the lively atmosphere of the banquet Xuanzang could at last relax. He was now welcomed by the man the Chinese both feared and admired. ‘He was valiant, prudent and excelled in warfare, both in attack and in defence,’ say the Tang Annals. ‘He had hegemony over the West. Never before had the barbarians been so powerful.’ This was the man who would give Xuanzang protection for the rest of his outward journey.
‘But Xuanzang was not exactly very flattering about the Khan, was he? Given the help he was going to get,’ Valentina said. She was right. This was what he said: ‘Although he was only a barbarian sovereign, living under a tent of felt, one could not look at him without a mingled feeling of admiration and respect’ – exactly what Salim had complained about. Of course Xuanzang wrote the book for the emperor – he could not praise his enemy. But he did share the Chinese bias against the barbarians, which extended to practically any non-Chinese – the Middle Kingdom mentality of superiority. For a long time I was not aware that we were in fact under ‘barbarian’ rule during half of our history. We always felt this way; if they adopted our dress, language and mores, this was our victory – we had turned them into Chinese – it was further proof of their inferiority.
Much to Xuanzang’s surprise, when the wining and dining were over the Khan asked him to ‘enhance the occasion’ by telling them something about Buddhism, of which they knew very little. Looking at the mutton and veal left on their plates, Xuanzang preached a subtle sermon about the need for love of all living creatures and the religious life that led to final deliverance. He would have then talked about the Buddhist concepts of good government. The wise ruler put his people first, and ran his country with benevolence and compassion. And perhaps he would have added a Chinese simile: the ruler and the ruled were like a boat on water; the water could carry the boat, but could also overturn it. Everything depended on the ruler being fair and just.
Whether or not the Khan liked what he heard, he was keen that this erudite young Chinese should tell him more about Emperor Taizong, his chief rival. He begged Xuanzang to stay. ‘You must not go to India. It is such a hot country that the temperature is the same in winter as in summer. I fear your face might melt there. The inhabitants are black and the majority are naked, with no respect for convention. They do not merit a visit from you.’
When Xuanzang made clear his firm intention of continuing on his way, the Khan relented. He selected a young officer who could speak Chinese to go with him, and wrote letters of introduction to his vassal states, all as requested by the king of Gaochang, whose sister had married his son. As a parting gift, the Khan presented Xuanzang with a ceremonial robe made of red satin, and fifty pieces of silk. All these proved invaluable: after his disaster in the Heavenly Mountains, Xuanzang was now guaranteed a safe journey all the way to India by the most powerful ruler in Central Asia. He must have felt very fortunate, and relieved. This was the last kindly act of the Khan, who was to die soon after in a coup.
Xuanzang might have kindled the Khan’s interest in Buddhism, but it was the Chinese settlers who made Suiye a flourishing Buddhist town on the Silk Road. Valentina fished out yet another photograph, a rubbing from a stele, which they discovered in 1982 and was now in her library. ‘See, Xuanzang’s idea of propagating the Dharma to the Khan and his people was realized. This was an inscription by Du Huaibao, the Governor of Suiye,’ she said, pointing to each of the characters in the photo. The governor said that he erected the foundations for a statue of the Buddha and two Bodhisattvas, for the purpose of protecting the emperor, all of the people in the empire, and obtaining a better life for his dead parents in another world. But Buddhism was not to last. China lost out to the Arabs, who conquered the whole region in the middle of the eighth century and spread their faith, which persists till this day. But the memory of an empire extending this far is with us Chinese still, always associated with the name of Suiye, and its most illustrious son, Li Bai.
Li Bai is arguably the best poet in Chinese history. With his bold, uncontrollable imagination and big nomad heart, his love of Chinese fine culture, his bitterness at his talent not being appreciated enough for him to secure a mandarin post, he poured out his feelings, one hundred years after Xuanzang, and left us some of our most brilliant poems. They are loved by literati and ordinary people, old and young. ‘The moonlight through the window, I thought it was frost on the floor. I looked up at the moon, then lowered my head, remembering my home town.’ I often remembered these lines when I was away from home. I tried to tell Valentina about the poem, but I did not get very far. To my surprise and pleasure, she completed the verse for me. ‘I love Li Bai. What imagination that man had,’ she said. Then she produced a line from another poem: ‘ “The path to Sichuan was hard, harder than climbing up to Heaven.” For Xuanzang, climbing over the Heavenly Mountains might have been equally difficult. But he did it. I’m sure you’ll make it too.’ She was so thoughtful, and so knowledgeable; she had really brought Suiye to life for me.
I wish I had been given a protector like the Khan to help me visit Bamiyan and Samarkand. It was said the giant Bamiyan Buddhas were built during the Khan’s time. But now there was a civil war and Afghanistan was off-limits. Samarkand is the quintessential Silk Road city, and the golden peach that the King of Samarkand sent to the Chinese court symbolized to Tang China all that was exotic. When Xuanzang came to Samarkand, he was very impressed at the variety of foreign treasures he found there. As he records, the inhabitants, the Sogdians, were the best merchants. Every caravan had a Sogdian as its leader; Sogdian was the language of the Silk Road. The Tang Annals made them even more vivid: ‘Mothers give their infants sugar to eat and put paste on the pa
lms of their hands in the hope that when they grow, they will talk sweetly and that precious objects will stick to their hands. These people are skilful merchants; when a boy reaches the age of five he is put to studying books; when he begins to understand them, he is sent to study commerce. They excel at commerce and love profit; from the time a man is twenty he goes to neighbouring kingdoms; wherever one can make money, they have gone.’
But they never forgot their home. With the riches they made abroad, including from China, they built huge mansions that were almost like palaces, and decorated them with scenes of life from distant lands, including Chinese orchestras and Chinese men and women: Xuanzang could have seen them in Panjikent, a prosperous Sogdian town outside Samarkand. In Afrasiab, the old town of Samarkand, there is a mural showing a Chinese emperor hunting with court ladies, illustrating the might and splendour of the Chinese empire, which briefly protected the small kingdom. All these were painted around the time Xuanzang passed through. I really wanted to go there.
On returning to Bishkek, I tried one last time to get an Uzbek visa. The answer was the same as in London and Beijing: No. Even the tone of rejection was the same. A man asked me in a low, rumbling voice, with a hint of menace, what I wanted – exactly how I imagined KGB agents had once sounded. I said I needed a visa.
‘What for? What is your agenda? Why now?’
I told him about my journey.
‘Are you part of a government delegation?’
I said no.
‘Then we can’t give you a visa.’ He put the phone down.
I dialled the number again.
He picked it up: ‘Don’t try again. You can’t go to Uzbekistan.’
And that was that.
SIX
Imagining the Buddha
XUANZANG’S JOURNEY through the heartland of Central Asia was long and hazardous. ‘The roads were more dangerous and harder to travel than among the ice mountains or in the desert,’ he says. ‘Thick clouds and flying snow never ceased for a moment, and at the worst places the snow piled up for scores of feet.’ It must have reminded him of his perilous encounters in the Taklamakan and over the Heavenly Mountains. He had learned his lesson: he was travelling carefully, stopping constantly to check his direction. But the whole world was one big white sheet. As he dreaded, he and his men were lost again. While they were struggling to find the way, a group of hunters appeared and guided them back to the road.
Xuanzang arrived in Peshawar in the autumn of 628, a year after he had been on the road. This was the moment he had been waiting for with great anticipation. Peshawar, the capital of the ancient Kingdom of Gandhara, was the second holy land of Buddhism, where many Mahayana sutras originated. The Buddhist canon was full of stories about the previous lives of the Buddha that had unfolded in this kingdom: where he had washed his robe, where he had left his alms bowl, where he had subdued the dragon that was terrorizing people, where he appeared in the Indus River as a fish for the starving, where he had fed himself to a hungry tigress and her cubs, and where his relics were buried. Xuanzang had been reading them since he was a child, reminding himself constantly of the sacrifices that the Buddha had made. Now he was going to see where they had happened. Peshawar had another significance for him: it was home to Asanga and Vasubandhu, two of the greatest Buddhist philosophers, and of his own Yogacara school. They had motivated Xuanzang to undertake his journey in the first place. At last he had a chance to receive instructions at the monastery of the Yogacara masters. He would be able to clarify the doubts that had been wearing him down.
But he was shocked by what he found. The White Huns, a nomadic Turk-Mongol people of the Eurasian steppes, had completely destroyed Peshawar when they passed through it on their way to conquer India two centuries before. ‘There is no king and the country is governed from the neighbouring country,’ he writes sadly. ‘Towns and villages are almost empty, and abandoned. About a thousand families live in one corner of the capital … They are timid and gentle and they love literature. Most of them are heretics and very few believe in the Dharma.’
I flew to Peshawar via Islamabad, in December 1999. My arrival was as unpromising as Xuanzang’s. I had been told to write my name on a piece of paper and hold it up for a driver to identify me. I never took it out of my pocket. Towered over by two ranks of Pashtun men on either side of the arrival gate, tall, bearded and overbearing, some with machine-guns slung over their shoulders, I shrivelled to jelly. Their faces were as cold and blank as stone, betraying nothing, but their deep eyes were sharp as knives, ready to dissect you if you dared to meet their stares. I had put on a shalwar-kameez, a long dress with trousers. But going native was no defence against their intense scrutiny – wearing a burkha might not have been a bad idea. All I could do was to focus my mind and my eyes firmly on the ground, while walking faster and faster, almost bursting into a sprint. I found myself a quiet corner behind the public telephone booth. I did not know how the driver was going to find me but I simply did not want to go back there. After what seemed to be ages, the crowds dispersed, until there was only one man standing there, anxiously looking around while talking into his mobile. That was the driver.
After his initial shock, Xuanzang settled down in one of a few monasteries that still had monks in them; it was overgrown with weeds. The very monastery where he had dreamt of studying was all but abandoned, although it still retained traces of its former glory, with long open corridors, dark spacious halls in building after building. He saw the plaque outside a room where Vasubandhu used to live, but when he enquired about Yogacara from the few monks there, they knew nothing about it. He must go on to India to continue his quest. But first, he wanted to pay his homage to the numerous sacred places associated with the Buddha in Gandhara. Travelling from one place to another, he recorded the details of the stories linked with them, and how people still worshipped there. Largely due to the precision of this information, Alfred Foucher, the great French Sanskrit scholar and archaeologist of India and Pakistan, was able to identify the most celebrated Buddhist monuments in Peshawar and the surrounding areas.
Of Peshawar’s rich Buddhist past, only some sites which Foucher located are still in evidence. But I had enough to see. My host Peter, whom I had met only once before through a mutual friend, took me to his cosy home in the quiet university area, and over dinner with his wife we discussed my plans. I told them of my experience at the airport. Peter apologized for not coming to meet me in person. He had been in Peshawar a few years, working for the United Nations. He said the place was becoming increasingly fundamentalist. Only a few days before he had seen a Pashtun waving his gun at a young woman who was not wearing a burkha. I could go around town on my own if I wanted, he said, but he did not think it a good idea. Happily, a Pashtun bodyguard had turned up who was bored – his employer had gone back to England on holiday. He would be happy to shepherd me around. After the experience at the airport, I certainly felt I could do with his presence, both for assurance and for protection.
Keewar came to pick me up in the morning. He was shorter than the Pashtuns at the arrival gate, but stocky, strong and grave, and his face was inscrutable. He had on a grey kurta pajama under a blue fleece jacket, and a pair of sunglasses. I asked him if I could bring my camera and take pictures. ‘Why not?’ He looked at me blankly from behind his dark glasses. ‘We shoot people dead in the street, no reason why you cannot take their pictures.’ I was surely in the land of the Pashtuns. I looked at him again. I was glad he did not carry a gun. That would be too much. He laughed and asked me if I wanted to see one. Like a conjuror, he slid a hand-gun out from under his fleece jacket. ‘Is it real?’ I asked. ‘Feel it,’ he said. I had never held a gun before. It was cold, hard-edged, repellent. ‘This is Peshawar. Every man, young or old, has a gun. You need one just to survive, preferably more than one,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘There’s an arms bazaar on the outskirts of Peshawar. You can buy anything you want, bandoliers, Kalashnikovs, anti-aircraft guns, even rocket-l
aunchers. Do you want to see it? It is on the way to the Khyber Pass.’ I said I would think about it.
I wanted to go to the Khyber Pass, the frontier post of Pakistan with Afghanistan. Xuanzang came through it to Peshawar. I was keen to trace it, even if backwards, to see what the place was like. First I had to get special permission from the tribal authorities. From the outskirts of Peshawar all the way to the hills of the Afghan border was the Pashtun homeland. The area was in effect out of the control of the Pakistani government – a practice inherited from the British; the Pashtuns had their own laws administered by the tribal council. In a spacious courtyard in downtown Peshawar, for a few dollars, the authorities issued me a pass, and a Pashtun frontier guard, armed with a machine-gun and a belt of bullets around his waist. He would conduct me and Keewar to the Khyber Pass and back. With him in the front seat and Keewar next to me, I never felt so safe in my life. Xuanzang had soldiers from the Khan of the Western Turks to protect him. Now I had mine, and off we went in our Morris taxi.
We did drop in at the Darra arms bazaar, just over the border of the tribal areas. From a distance, it looks like a normal bazaar, a street lined with endless shops. But as we came closer, the strange reality dawned. No fruit, vegetables or household goods, just weapons and ammunition. Heavy gear like rocket-launchers was left outside the shops; inside, over the counters, in glass cupboards, and hanging on the walls, was a range of guns, shells and bullets which I had only ever seen in films. I did not know what most of them were, and I walked as though I was on egg-shells, worried I might set something off. But Keewar and the frontier guard were like boys in a toy shop, wanting to try everything. They slung American automatics over their shoulders as I would try a handbag.
