Dayuan

These Chinese accounts describe the "Dayuan" as urbanized dwellers with European phenotypes, living in walled cities and having "customs identical to those of the Daxia" or Greco-Bactrians, a Hellenistic kingdom that was ruling Bactria at that time in today's northern Afghanistan.

"Alexandria the Furthest") in the southwestern part of the Ferghana valley, on the southern bank of the river Syr Darya (ancient Jaxartes), at the location of the modern city of Khujand (also called Khozdent, formerly Leninabad), in the state of Tajikistan.

According to W. W. Tarn, The remaining of the Sai-Wang tribes apparently seized the Greek province of Ferghana… It was easy at this time to occupy Ferghana: Eucratides had just overthrown the Euthydemid dynasty, he himself was with his army in India, and in 159 he met his death… Heliocles, preoccupied first with the recovery of Bactria and then with the invasion of India, must have let this outlying province goThe Saka rule of Dayuan possibly started in 160 BCE.

Dayuan had probably by then become a kingdom of militaristic Saka ruling class exacting taxes and tributes from the local Hellenistic population.

Around 130 BCE, at the time of Zhang Qian's embassy to Central Asia, the Dayuan were described as inhabitants of a region corresponding to the Ferghana, far to the west of the Chinese empire.

To the south of them there is Daxia (Bactrians), to the west, Anxis (Parthians); to the north Kangju (Sogdians).The Shiji then explains that the Yuezhi originally inhabited the Hexi Corridor, before they were defeated by the Xiongnu under Mao-tun and later his son in 176 BCE, forcing them to go beyond the territory of the Dayuan and resettle in the West by the banks of the Oxus, between the territory of the Dayuan and Bactria to the south.

They have no great kings or heads, but everywhere in their walled cities and settlements they have installed small kings.They are described as town-dwellers, as opposed to other populations such as the Yuezhi, the Wusun or the Xiongnu who were nomads.

The Han envoys brought back grape and alfalfa seeds to China and the emperor for the first time tried growing these plants in areas of rich soil.

Later, when the Han acquired large numbers of the "heavenly horses" and the envoys from foreign states began to arrive with their retinues, the lands on all sides of the emperor's summer palaces and pleasure towers were planted with grapes and alfalfa for as far as the eye could see.

Later, however, when some of the Chinese soldiers attached to the Han embassies ran away and surrendered to the people of the area, they taught them how to cast metal and manufacture weapons.

[7]Following the reports of Zhang Qian (who was originally sent to obtain an alliance with the Yuezhi against the Xiongnu, in vain), the Chinese emperor Wudi became interested in developing commercial relationships with the sophisticated urban civilizations of Ferghana, Bactria and Parthia: "The Son of Heaven on hearing all this reasoned thus: Ferghana (Dayuan) and the possessions of Bactria and Parthia are large countries, full of rare things, with a population living in fixed abodes and given to occupations somewhat identical with those of the Chinese people, but with weak armies, and placing great value on the rich produce of China" (Shiji, 123) The Chinese subsequently sent numerous embassies, around ten every year, to these countries and as far as Seleucid Syria.

"Thus more embassies were dispatched to An-si (Parthia), An-ts'ai (the Aorsi, or Alans), Li-kan (Syria under the Seleucids), T'iau-chi (Chaldea), and Shon-tu (India)... As a rule, rather more than ten such missions went forward in the course of a year, and at the least five or six."

Enraged, and thinking Dayuan weak, the Chinese Emperor in 104 BCE sent out Li Guangli, the brother of his favorite concubine.

After a severe defeat at a place called Yucheng Li concluded that he was not strong enough to take the enemy capital and therefore returned to Dunhuang (about 102 BCE).

Emperor Wudi responded by giving Li Guangli a much larger army along with a huge number of oxen, donkeys and camels to carry supplies.

This is attested by at least three significant authors: This is also the time when the Buddhist faith and the Greco-Buddhist culture started to travel along the Silk Road, entering China from around the 1st century BCE.