The current electronic text is based on the online version hosted on the Silk Road Seattle website, a project of the Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington and the Silkroad Foundation (click here).

Dan Waugh provided IDP with the html file which is the basis of the current XML version. The original preface is reproduced immediately below.

ORIGINAL INTRODUCTION by Prof. Daniel C. Waugh, University of Washington (2004)

The Sogdians, a people of Iranian origin, were important in the commerce of the Silk Road between the fourth and ninth centuries CE. From their home in the region near today's Samarkand in Central Asia (their core territory straddled what is now southern Uzbekistan and Western Tajikistan), Sogdian merchants traveled across Eurasia. Chinese chronicles noted their commercial acumen; members of the Sogdian colonies established in China came to function as administrators. The Sogdian language was used widely for communication along the trade routes, and Sogdians were among the translators of Buddhist scriptures in China. The Sogdian presence in what is now northern Pakistan is attested by inscriptions carved on rocks in the remote mountain valleys through which the trade routes passed. Archaeologists have uncovered in the Sogdian city states of Central Asia impressive architecture and painting which help document a flourishing cosmopolitan urban culture of a people who themselves never created a great empire.

Among the most important documents of Sogdian history are five nearly complete letters, discovered in 1907 by the famous British archaeologist Aurel Stein in a Chinese watch tower just west of the Jade Gate, a fortified outpost guarding the western approaches to the administrative and cultural center of Dunhuang (at the western end of today's Gansu Province). Stein's discovery was some 90 km. west of Dunhuang and 550 km. east of Lou-lan, another important outpost on the southern branch of the silk route, which skirted the Taklamakan Desert. It seems likely that the letters were confiscated by a Chinese garrison at a time when Chinese control this far west was being threatened. While there has been considerable controversy over the dating of the letters, the most persuasive arguments (supported by Prof. Sims-Williams and his colleagues) point to 313 (-314) C.E. Two of the letters were sent by a lady in distress who had been abandoned in Dunhuang (nos. 1 and 3); the other two letters reproduced here (nos. 2 and 5) concern commercial activity of the writers. While a whole archive of Sogdian documents from several centuries later has been discovered in Central Asia, the Sogdian ancient letters are the earliest substantial examples of Sogdian writing and thus provide extremely important information about the early history of the Sogdian diaspora along the eastern end of the silk route.

The author of letter 2 likely was resident in Jincheng (today, Lanzhou), a town in Gansu at the gateway to the Hexi Corridor, the passage between the southern mountains and northern deserts which leads to Dunhuang. He was writing to the "home office" in Samarkand. The first part of the letter concerns the Sogdian diaspora in China and contains the information about the destruction by the Huns of two important Chinese cities, Yeh and the then capital, Luoyang (the latter occurred in 311 CE). The second part of the letter concerns the distribution of funds that the writer had apparently left on deposit at home.

The author of letter 5 was writing from Guzang, the modern Wu-wei, located northwest of Luoyang in the Hexi Corridor. The addressee of the letter may have been resident in Khotan, an important town along the southern silk route just before it crosses the Pamir Mountains to reach the oases of Transoxania, the region between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers. This letter also refers to the chaos and difficult conditions in China; the author's position had apparently been made the more difficult when his commercial partner, Ghawtus, abandoned him. Thus the author was forced to return from Dunhuang to Guzang.

The letters include the names of several products--silver, linen and a kind of unprocessed cloth, musk (whose source was Tibet), pepper, and "white" (probably white lead powder, a valuable commodity used in cosmetics and drugs). Unfortunately the meaning of some terms for other products is not known. It appears from the quantities mentioned that the trade was relatively small-scale and, as we might expect, focussed on goods with high value for the weight.

Bibliography (provided by Prof. Sims-Williams):

Etienne de la Vaissière, Histoire des marchands sogdiens (Bibliothèque de l'Institut des Hautes Études Chinoises 32) (Paris: 2002).

For further details concerning letter 2, including the Sogdian text and linguistic commentary, see N. Sims-Williams, "The Sogdian Ancient Letter II," in M. G. Schmidt and W. Bisang (ed.),Philologica et Linguistica. Historia, Pluralitas, Universitas. Festschrift für Helmut Humbach zum 80. Geburtstag am 4. Dezember 2001(Trier: Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2001): 267-280. Colour photographs of the manuscript are included in A. L. Juliano and J. A. Lerner,Monks and Merchants: Silk Road Treasures from Northwest China(New York: Harry N. Abrams with The Asia Society, 2001): 47-48. On the date of the letter and the historical data contained in it see F. Grenet and N. Sims-Williams, "The historical context of the Sogdian Ancient Letters," inTransition periods in Iranian history, Actes du Symposium de Fribourg-en-Brisgau (22-24 Mai 1985)(Leuven: E. Peeters, 1987): 101-122.

For further details concerning letter 5, including the Sogdian text, photographs of the manuscript and historical and linguistic commentary, see F. Grenet, N. Sims-Williams and E. de la Vaissière, "The Sogdian Ancient Letter V," inBulletin of the Asia Institute, 12 (1998 [2001]) (=Alexander¹s Legacy in the East: Studies in Honor of Paul Bernard): 91-104.

On Letters 1 and 3 seeThe Silk Road: Trade, travel, war and faith(ed. S. Whitfield with U. Sims-Williams), London, 2004, pp. 248-9, which also includes colour photographs of both letters. N. Sims-Williams’ edition of Letter 1 with detailed commentary will appear in an article entitled “Towards a new edition of the Sogdian Ancient Letters” in the proceedings of the conference Les sogdiens en chine, Beijing, April 2004 (to be edited by Eric Trombert and E. de la Vaissière and published by the Ecole Française d’Extrême-Orient). A similar edition of Letter 3 is in preparation.