The ''Weilüe'' () was a Chinese historical text written by
Yu Huan
Yu Huan ( third century) was a historian of the state of Cao Wei during the Three Kingdoms period of China.
Life
Yu Huan was from Jingzhao Commandery, which is around present-day Xi'an, Shaanxi.''Shitong'' vol. 12. He is best known for writing ...
between 239 and 265. Yu Huan was an official in the state of
Three Kingdoms
The Three Kingdoms () from 220 to 280 AD was the tripartite division of China among the dynastic states of Cao Wei, Shu Han, and Eastern Wu. The Three Kingdoms period was preceded by the Han dynasty#Eastern Han, Eastern Han dynasty and wa ...
period (220–280). Although not a formal historian, Yu Huan has been held in high regard among Chinese scholars. As per the texts,
Roman
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...
(known to the Chinese as
Daqin
Daqin (; alternative transliterations include Tachin, Tai-Ch'in) is the ancient Chinese name for the Roman Empire or, depending on context, the Near East, especially Syria. It literally means "great Qin"; Qin () being the name of the founding dyn ...
) travelers and traders of those times claimed that Roman elites were descendants of immigrants from ancient Chinese nobility and
Parthian Parthian may be:
Historical
* A demonym "of Parthia", a region of north-eastern of Greater Iran
* Parthian Empire (247 BC – 224 AD)
* Parthian language, a now-extinct Middle Iranian language
* Parthian shot, an archery skill famously employed by ...
The original text of the ''Weilüe'', or “Brief Account of Wei”, by Yu Huan has been lost, but the chapter on the Xirong people was quoted by
Pei Songzhi
Pei Songzhi (372–451), courtesy name Shiqi, was a Chinese historian and politician who lived in the late Eastern Jin dynasty and Liu Song dynasty. His ancestral home was in Wenxi County, Shanxi, but he moved to the Jiangnan region later. He i ...
as an extensive footnote to volume 30 of the ''
Records of the Three Kingdoms
The ''Records or History of the Three Kingdoms'', also known by its Chinese name as the Sanguo Zhi, is a Chinese historical text which covers the history of the late Eastern Han dynasty (c. 184–220 AD) and the Three Kingdoms period (220– ...
'', which was first published in 429. Other than this chapter, only a few isolated quotes remain in other texts.
Yu Huan does not mention his sources in the text that has survived. Some of this new data presumably came to China via traders from the
Roman Empire
The Roman Empire ( la, Imperium Romanum ; grc-gre, Βασιλεία τῶν Ῥωμαίων, Basileía tôn Rhōmaíōn) was the post-Republican period of ancient Rome. As a polity, it included large territorial holdings around the Mediterr ...
(
Daqin
Daqin (; alternative transliterations include Tachin, Tai-Ch'in) is the ancient Chinese name for the Roman Empire or, depending on context, the Near East, especially Syria. It literally means "great Qin"; Qin () being the name of the founding dyn ...
). Land communications with the West apparently continued relatively uninterrupted to Cao Wei after the fall of the
Eastern Han dynasty
The Han dynasty (, ; ) was an imperial dynasty of China (202 BC – 9 AD, 25–220 AD), established by Liu Bang (Emperor Gao) and ruled by the House of Liu. The dynasty was preceded by the short-lived Qin dynasty (221–207 BC) and a warr ...
.
Yu Huan apparently never left China, but he collected a large amount of information on the countries to the west of China including
Parthia
Parthia ( peo, 𐎱𐎼𐎰𐎺 ''Parθava''; xpr, 𐭐𐭓𐭕𐭅 ''Parθaw''; pal, 𐭯𐭫𐭮𐭥𐭡𐭥 ''Pahlaw'') is a historical region located in northeastern Greater Iran. It was conquered and subjugated by the empire of the Med ...
, India, and the Roman Empire, and the various routes to them. Some of this information had reached China well before Yu Huan's time, and can also be found in the sections dealing with the '
Western Regions
The Western Regions or Xiyu (Hsi-yü; ) was a historical name specified in the Chinese chronicles between the 3rd century BC to the 8th century AD that referred to the regions west of Yumen Pass, most often Central Asia or sometimes more spe ...
' of the ''
Records of the Grand Historian
''Records of the Grand Historian'', also known by its Chinese name ''Shiji'', is a monumental history of China that is the first of China's 24 dynastic histories. The ''Records'' was written in the early 1st century by the ancient Chinese hist ...
'', the ''
Book of Han
The ''Book of Han'' or ''History of the Former Han'' (Qián Hàn Shū,《前汉书》) is a history of China finished in 111AD, covering the Western, or Former Han dynasty from the first emperor in 206 BCE to the fall of Wang Mang in 23 CE. I ...
'', and the ''
Book of the Later Han
The ''Book of the Later Han'', also known as the ''History of the Later Han'' and by its Chinese name ''Hou Hanshu'' (), is one of the Twenty-Four Histories and covers the history of the Han dynasty from 6 to 189 CE, a period known as the Later ...
''. In spite of this repetition of earlier (and sometimes fanciful) information, the ''Weilüe'' contains new, unique, and generally trustworthy material, mostly from the late second and early third centuries. It is this new information that makes the ''Weilüe'' a valuable historical source. Most of the new information appears to have come from the Eastern Han dynasty, before China was largely cut off from the West by civil wars and unrest along its borders during the late second century.
The ''Weilüe'' describes the routes to the Roman Empire and it is quite possible that some, or all, of the new information on the Roman Empire and Parthia came from foreign sailors. One such record which may have been available to Yu Huan is detailed in the ''
Book of Liang
The ''Book of Liang'' (''Liáng Shū''), was compiled under Yao Silian and completed in 635. Yao heavily relied on an original manuscript by his father Yao Cha, which has not independently survived, although Yao Cha's comments are quoted in seve ...
'' of a merchant from the Roman Empire who in 226 arrived in
Jiaozhi
Jiaozhi (standard Chinese, pinyin: ''Jiāozhǐ''), or Giao Chỉ (Vietnamese), was a historical region ruled by various Chinese dynasties, corresponding to present-day northern Vietnam. The kingdom of Nanyue (204–111 BC) set up the Jiaozhi Co ...
, near modern
Hanoi
Hanoi or Ha Noi ( or ; vi, Hà Nội ) is the capital and second-largest city of Vietnam. It covers an area of . It consists of 12 urban districts, one district-leveled town and 17 rural districts. Located within the Red River Delta, Hanoi is ...
Sun Quan
Sun Quan (, Chinese: 孫權) (183 – 21 May 252), courtesy name Zhongmou (), posthumously known as Emperor Da of Wu, was the founder of the Eastern Wu dynasty, one of the Three Kingdoms of China. He inherited control of the warlord regime es ...
, who asked him for a report on his native country and its people.
Yu Huan also includes a brief description of "Zesan", a vassal state of the Roman Empire. John E.Hill identified "Zesan" with
Azania
Azania ( grc, Ἀζανία) is a name that has been applied to various parts of southeastern tropical Africa. In the Roman period and perhaps earlier, the toponym referred to a portion of the Southeast Africa coast extending from northern Keny ...
in East African coast, but this is unlikely, since later source like ''
New Book of Tang
The ''New Book of Tang'', generally translated as the "New History of the Tang" or "New Tang History", is a work of official history covering the Tang dynasty in ten volumes and 225 chapters. The work was compiled by a team of scholars of the So ...
'' told that "Zesan" located to the northeast of Roman Empire, therefore it could be Trebizond.
''Weilüe'' mentioned a kingdom named "Panyue" or "Hanyuewang", located to the southeast of
India
India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...
Tamilakam
Tamiḻakam (Tamil: தமிழகம்; Malayalam: തമിഴകം), refers to the geographical region inhabited by the ancient Tamil people, covering the southernmost region of the Indian subcontinent. Tamilakam covered today's Tamil Nad ...
and gave a translation:
''The kingdom of Panyue (Pandya) is also called Hanyuewang. It is several thousand ''li'' to the southeast of Tianzhu (Northern India), and is in contact with Yi Circuit n_modern_southern_Yunnan.html" ;"title="Yunnan.html" ;"title="n modern southern Yunnan">n modern southern Yunnan">Yunnan.html" ;"title="n modern southern Yunnan">n modern southern Yunnan The inhabitants are small; they are the same height as the Chinese. Traders from Shu (Western Sichuan) travel this far. The Southern Route, after attaining its most westernmost point, turns southeast until it reaches its end.''.Hill (2004), Section 8 Draft Translation of the ''Weilüe'' by John Hill
He believed the phrase ''"與益部相近"'' meant ''"in contact with Yi Circuit"''. However it could be taken literally as ''"close to Yi Circuit"'', and the likely candidate for "Panyue" was
Pundravardhana
Pundravardhana or Pundra Kingdom ( sa, Puṇḍravardhana), was an ancient kingdom during the Iron Age period in India with a territory that included parts of present-day Rajshahi and Rangpur Divisions of Bangladesh as well as the West Din ...
in
Bengal
Bengal ( ; bn, বাংলা/বঙ্গ, translit=Bānglā/Bôngô, ) is a geopolitical, cultural and historical region in South Asia, specifically in the eastern part of the Indian subcontinent at the apex of the Bay of Bengal, predom ...
.
Translations
The section on Da Qin (Roman territory) from the ''Weilüe'' was translated into English by
Friedrich Hirth
Friedrich Hirth, Ph.D. (16 April 1845 in Gräfentonna, Saxe-Gotha – 10 January 1927 in Munich) was a German-American sinologist.
Biography
He was educated at the universities of Leipzig, Berlin, and Greifswald (Ph.D., 1869). He was in the ...
in his pioneering 1885 volume, ''China and the Roman Orient''. Hirth included translations of a wide range of other Chinese texts relating to Daqin and the Chinese text of each is included, making it an essential reference even today. In 1905,
Édouard Chavannes
Émmanuel-Édouard Chavannes (5 October 1865 – 29 January 1918) was a French sinologist and expert on Chinese history and religion, and is best known for his translations of major segments of Sima Qian's ''Records of the Grand Historian' ...
translated the remainder of the ''Weilüe'' into French under the title of "Les pays d’occident d’après le Wei lio". Chavannes’ translation is accompanied by copious notes in which he clarified numerous obscurities, and convincingly identified many of the countries and towns mentioned in the ''Weilüe'', especially along the eastern sections of the overland trade routes.
Footnotes
References
* Chavannes, Édouard. 1905. “Les pays d’Occident d’après le Wei lio.” ''T’oung pao 6'' (1905), pp. 519–571.
*Hill, John E. 2004. ''The Peoples of the West from the Weilüe'' 魏略 ''by Yu Huan'' 魚豢'': A Third Century Chinese Account Composed between 239 and 265 CE.'' Draft annotated English translation.
* ''
New Book of Tang
The ''New Book of Tang'', generally translated as the "New History of the Tang" or "New Tang History", is a work of official history covering the Tang dynasty in ten volumes and 225 chapters. The work was compiled by a team of scholars of the So ...
'', vol. 221下
* Hirth, Friedrich. 1875. ''China and the Roman Orient''. Shanghai and Hong Kong. Unchanged reprint. Chicago, Ares Publishers, 1975.
*Yu, Taishan. 2004. ''A History of the Relationships between the Western and Eastern Han, Wei, Jin, Northern and Southern Dynasties and the Western Regions''. Sino-Platonic Papers No. 131 March 2004. Dept. of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania.