Yuezhi: Encyclopedia II - Yuezhi - Origins

Yuezhi - Origins

The first known reference to the Yuezhi was made in 645 BCE by the Chinese economist Guan Zhong. He described the Yuezhi, or Niuzhi, as a people from the Tarim Basin who supplied jade to the Chinese. The supply of jade from the Tarim Basin from ancient times is indeed well documented archeologically: "It is well known that ancient Chinese rulers had a strong attachment to jade. All of the jade items excavated from the tomb of Fuhao of the Shang dynasty, more than 750 pieces, were from Khotan in modern Xinjiang. As early as the mid-first millennium BCE the Yuezhi engaged in the jade trade, of which the major consumers were the rulers of agricultural China." (Liu (2001), pp. 267-268)

The Yuezhi are also documented in detail in Chinese historical accounts, in particular the 1st century BCE "Records of the Great Historian", or Shiji, by Sima Qian. According to these accounts, "the Yuezhi originally lived in the area between the Qilian, or Heavenly Mountain (Tian Shan) and Dunhuang" (Shiji, 123), corresponding to the eastern half of the Tarim Basin.

The Yuezhi were apparently a Caucasoid people, as indicated by the portraits of their kings on the coins they struck following their exodus to Transoxiana (2nd-1st century BCE), and especially the coins they struck in India as Kushans (1st-3rd century CE). Ancient Chinese sources do describe the existence of "white people with long hair" (The Bai people of the Shanhai Jing) beyond their northwestern border, and the very well preserved Tarim mummies with Caucasian features, often with reddish or blond hair, today displayed at the Ürümqi Museum and dated to the 3rd century BCE, have been found in precisely the same area of the Tarim Basin.

The Indo-European Tocharian languages also have been attested in the same geographical area, and although the first known epigraphic evidence dates to the 6th century CE, the degree of differentiation between Tocharian A and Tocharian B, and the absence of Tocharian language remains beyond that area, tends to indicate that a common Tocharian language existed in the same area of Yuezhi settlement during the second half of the 1st millennium BCE.

The Yuezhi were probably part of the large migration of Indo-European speaking peoples who were settled in eastern Central Asia at that time. Another example is that of the Caucasian mummies of Pazyryk, probably Scythian in origin, located around 1,000 kilometers north of the Yuezhi, and dated also to around the 3rd century BCE.

According to Han accounts, the Yuezhi "were flourishing" during the time of the first great Chinese Qin emperor, but were regularly in conflict with the neighbouring tribe of the Xiongnu to the northeast.

Bhim Singh Dahiya has established that Kushan or Yuezhi were Jats. There were two branches of Yuezhi people. One of the branches was called "Ta-Yuezhi" which means "The great Jats". The other branch was "Siao-Yuezhi" which means "The little Jats". The Greek historian Herodotus wrote Massagetae for Ta-Yuezhi and Thyssagetae for Siao-Yuezhi. The Yuezhi people inhabited the Outer Mongolia and Gansu province of China.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Origins", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki