Nicholas Sims-Williams
After studying Old and Middle Iranian languages and related
subjects at Cambridge, Nicholas Sims-Williams has spent his whole
career at the School of Oriental
and African Studies, University of London, where his
teaching has covered seven Iranian languages (Avestan, Old Persian,
Middle Persian, Parthian, Choresmian, Bactrian, Sogdian and
Khotanese) and occasionally Syriac. Although he has published on all
of these languages, he has concentrated on the Middle Iranian
languages of Eastern Iran and Central Asia, in particular Sogdian
and Bactrian. He is equally interested in the languages themselves,
with their Indo-European roots, and in their Central Asian setting,
with its stimulating mixture of languages, cultures and religions.
In addition to a two-volume edition of Sogdian inscriptions from
Northern Pakistan and a three-volume edition of Bactrian documents
from Northern Afghanistan, his books include studies of many
manuscripts in the IDP, such as documents in mixed Sogdian and Old
Turkish from the London and Paris collections and Christian Sogdian
and New Persian manuscripts in the Berlin Turfan
collection.
His chosen item is Sogdian Letter No. 2 Or.8212/95, Stein site id. T.XII.a.ii.2.
Nicholas Sims-Williams writes:
In 1907 Aurel Stein
discovered a cache of early paper documents at the site T.XII.a
to the west of Dunhuang, a guard-post on the wall protecting the
western border of China. These are known as the ‘Ancient
Letters’ because they are among the earliest documents written
in Sogdian, a language of the Iranian family formerly spoken in
Sogdiana, the region around Samarkand in present-day Uzbekistan,
and in the numerous trading colonies established by the Sogdians
along the route to central China. The Ancient Letters represent
the contents of a postbag lost in transit from China to the
west, perhaps confiscated by the Chinese authorities. Written by
Sogdians in Xinjiang and Gansu and addressed to their
compatriots in Sogdiana or Loulan, the letters provide a unique
glimpse into the lives of the Sogdian merchants on the so-called
‘Silk Road’.
Several of these letters could easily have
qualified as my favourite item — no. 6 (Or.8212/97), the only one which actually mentions
silk, or nos. 1 (Or.8212/92.1) and 3 (Or.8212/98), two letters written by a woman
abandoned in Dunhuang by her husband — but I have finally
chosen Letter no. 2 (Or.8212/95). This letter was written
by Nanai-vandak, a Sogdian agent stationed somewhere in Gansu,
possibly in Jincheng, and addressed to his partners in
Samarkand, the capital of Sogdiana, over 2,000 miles to the
west. Perhaps because of the distance it had to travel, it was
protected by an inner wrapper of brown silk and an outer
envelope of coarse fabric which bears instructions for the
delivery of the letter. The letter, which was probably written
in June or July 313 AD contains news of momentous events in
China: a severe famine in the capital Luoyang; fighting between
the Huns (Xiongnu) and the Chinese; the flight of the emperor;
and the sack of the cities of Ye (in 307) and Luoyang (in
311).
While the main importance of this letter lies in the
historical data it contains, what I find particularly affecting
are the paragraphs with which it ends, a poignant last will and
testament. Nanai-vandak regards the events described as bringing
to an end the world as he knows it and foresees nothing but ruin
and death for himself and the other Sogdian merchants in China.
Since he does not expect to return home, he asks his
correspondents in Samarkand to look after a large sum of money
which he had left on deposit there, to invest it on behalf of
the orphan Takhsich-vandak, presumably his son, who is still a
minor, and to find him a wife when he comes of age. But of
course his letter never reached its destination, so it is
unlikely that its provisions were ever carried out. We can only
speculate as to what became of the father and his son: did
Nanai-vandak survive and return home? and did his partners find
a wife for Takhsich-vandak and hand over his
inheritance?
Link to original post on IDP blog.