Talk:Gan Ying

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Gan Ying was part of Ban Chao's 70,000 men strong expedition in Central Asia, reaching as far as Parthia, but Gan Ying, supposedly along with a small band of people, were sent along onwards to Rome.

Roman democracy

I edited this some time ago to remove a claim about Roman democracy.

Whether Rome ever was a democracy (in our sense; they would have denied it) is debatable; Gan Ying collected his information about 100 AD, when it had long since ceased to be one. What the passage from Gan Ying describes is a system by the Romans select "the most worthy man" as king, and he rules unless bad omens indicate that he should be replaced. This certainly does not describe the one year term of the consulate (it also omits the other consul); it is closer to the rhetoric of the Five Good Emperors, which would be especially visible after the appointment of Trajan in 98; it is closest of all to the traditional Confucian representation of the pre-dynastic Emperors of China.

I am willing to be silent on the point; but if there is Roman influence at all, and not simply Chinese projection, surely it should be attributed to Gan Ying's contemporaries, rather than the system which had collapsed a century and a half earlier? Septentrionalis PMAnderson 17:19, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Hi! I am not sure what you mean to imply with your statement, "If you find it necessary to be silent, that would be regrettable" - I have never said anything about remaining silent and, at least on this subject, I certainly don't intend to. The point of discussion here is, I believe, about Gan Ying's account in which he says that: "Their kings are not permanent. They select and appoint the most worthy man. If there are unexpected calamities in the kingdom, such as frequent extraordinary winds or rains, he is unceremoniously rejected and replaced. The one who has been dismissed quietly accepts his demotion, and is not angry."

I have always assumed that this was probably a fantastic tale Gan Ying was told (possibly by sailors) when he was in Parthia. As we know, he never managed to reach Roman territory, so all the information he gathered was, at best, second-hand. I have never thought that his account of some sort of democratic process of choosing leaders in Rome was believable.

You added a statement to the article saying that, "Gan Ying also described the adoptive monarchy of Nerva." This might be so - the timing is right - but there is no other evidence that I know of to support this assertion. That is why I put a "citation needed" tag on the claim and wrote to you to inform you I had done so. I still think Gan Ying was probably just repeating a fabulous tale. Unless there is some real evidence relating his account to Nerva's accession I think you should remove this statement. It wouldn't hurt, of course, to make it plain that Gan Ying's description of the process of choosing Rome's leaders was idealistic in the extreme, and certainly not factual. Sincerely, John Hill (talk) 03:03, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Unlikely to be sailors, unless he reached Colchis; the Parthian coast is mostly harbourless, and it's a long way from the lower Euphrates to any Roman possession. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 03:23, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Reply to Septentrionalis re. port on the Persian Gulf

Sorry, but Gan Ying did reach a port on the Persian Gulf. Please see my note 10.12 on Yuluo 于羅 [Yü-lo]. = Charax Spasinou which I posted as one of the many notes to my draft translation of the 'Chapter on the Western Regions' from the Hou Hanshu which I posted on the Silk Road Seattle website hosted by the University of Washington quite a few years ago and last updated in 2003. The note can be accessed by going to: [1]. It will help to read it properly if you have the encoding in your browser set on Unicode (UTF-8). Charax Spasinou was the main Parthian port giving access to the Persian Gulf and there was regular trade from there to Egypt (then part of the Roman Empire) at that period.

If you wish to read or check through the whole draft translation and notes please check the link to the book listed below the main article (I have just fixed the link - which was broken). I should add that since I wrote those notes I have made many updates, corrections, additions and changes to the whole work - so please don't quote it or treat it as if it contains my final observations on any subject. I am hoping to have the expanded and updated version published as a rather large book sometime this year under the title - Through the Jade Gate to Rome. Sorry for the advertisement here - but I need to make clear that the draft version now available on the net is not my last word on this or many other subjects dealt with in it. Sincerely, John Hill (talk) 08:58, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

No problem. Yule thought it was the Persian Gulf too, and he is obviously citable. (I know that Chinese pronunciation shifted; I didn't know it was that much. Btw, chi was almost certainly a strong aspirate; could the early Chinese distinguish between chi and kappa?) Septentrionalis PMAnderson 14:59, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Reply - ancient Chinese transcriptions of foreign sounds are often approximate and our knowledge of them is sometimes less than perfect. There were, of course, numerous dialects of Chinese and these changed over time, and often one word or name has several transcripted forms in Chinese. However, in relation to this case I gave the following information in the notes I referred to above: "The character yu 于 was sometimes used to transcribe foreign ka sounds, as in Yutian for Khotan and in Yulougu for the Khara Valley – see Ts’en (1981), p. 580. The reconstructed pronunciations of yu are given by K97a as *gi̯wo /ji̯u and EMC wuă." (By the way, "K" stands for: Karlgren, Bernhard, 1940. Grammata Serica. Stockholm: Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities. Reprint: Taipei: Ch’eng-wen Publishing Company. 1966.) The reconstructed EMC pronunciation refers to what Edwin Pulleyblank calls "Early Middle Chinese" and relates to a later period.

So, for our period, we know that yu was used to represent foreign "k" sounds but its reconstructed pronunciation by Karlgren of *gi̯wo /ji̯u would indicate that it could also have been used to represent an aspirate such as Greek 'chi', but I have no evidence of this. However, in this case, the Greek name begins with 'κ', which would have, I believe, been pronounced in ancient Greek much like a modern English 'k'. To more specifically answer your question, yes I do believe the Chinese would have used another character than 'yu' to represent a Greek 'chi', but I can't think of an example off-hand, and don't have time to start searching through reference books. They certainly used a range of other characters to represent Sanskrit 'ch' and 'j' sounds which were quite different than the ones they used for Sanskrit 'k' sounds. See, for example, the long list of Chinese equivalents for Indian names at the back of Thomas Watters' book, On Yuan Chwang's Travels in India. Sincerely, John Hill (talk) 04:12, 9 January 2009 (UTC)