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Serica
Serica (/ˈsɛrɪkə/, Ancient Greek: Σηρική) was one of the easternmost countries of Asia known to the Ancient Greek and Roman geographers. It is generally taken as referring to North China[citation needed] during its Zhou, Qin, and Han dynasties, as it was reached via the overland Silk Road in contrast to the Sinae, who were reached via the maritime routes. A similar distinction was later observed during the Middle Ages between "Cathay" (north) and "Mangi" or "China" (south). The people of Serica were the Seres (Ancient Greek: Σῆρες), whose name was also used for their region. Access to Serica was eased following the Han conquest of the Tarim Basin (modern Xinjiang) but largely blocked when the Parthian Empire fell to the Sassanids. Henry Yule summarized the classical geographers:
If we fuse into one the ancient notices of the Seres and their country, omitting anomalous statements and manifest fables, the result will be something like the following:—"The region of the Seres is a vast and populous country, touching on the east the Ocean and the limits of the habitable world, and extending west to Imaus and the confines of Bactria. The people are civilized, mild, just, and frugal, eschewing collisions with their neighbours, and even shy of close intercourse, but not averse to dispose of their own products, of which raw silk is the staple, but which include also silk-stuffs, fine furs, and iron of remarkable quality." That is manifestly a definition of the Chinese.
Some scholars, however, contend the Seres were not the Chinese themselves but tribes speaking Indo-European languages on the western edges of the Chinese dynasties and empires who traded with the ancient Indians, such as the Yuezhi, Saka, and Tocharians.
The Latin forms Serica and Seres derive from the Greek Sērikḗ (Σηρική) and Sḗres (Σῆρες). This seems to derive from their words for silk (Ancient Greek: σηρικός, sērikós; Latin: sericum), which since Klaproth has often been linked to the Chinese 絲, whose Old Chinese pronunciation has been reconstructed as /*[s]ə/. The Greeks and Romans knew of silk long before they understood its origin from silkworms, making sēr (σὴρ) a backformation. Other forms of the name include Serica Regio. Flavius Josephus, in his book Antiquities of the Jews, book 1, paragraph 147, calls that region "Σηρια", that in Latin letters is "Seria".
Some classicists have argued that it was extremely improbable that a nation would be named after an insect. Christian Lassen claimed to have identified references to the Seres in Hinduism's Vedas, as the "Çaka [Sakas], Tukhâra [Bactria], and Kanka [Kangju]".
Beginning in the 1st century BC with Virgil, Horace, and Strabo, Roman histories offer only vague accounts of China and the silk-producing Seres of the Far East. Florus seems to have confused the Seres with peoples of India, or at least noted that their skin complexions proved that they both lived "beneath another sky" than the Romans. The 1st-century geographer Pomponius Mela asserted that the lands of the Seres formed the center of the coast of an eastern ocean, flanked to the south by India and to the north by the Scythians of the Eurasian Steppe. The historian Ammianus Marcellinus (c. 330 – c. 400) wrote that the land of the Seres was enclosed by great natural walls around a river called Bautis, possibly a description of the Yellow River. From Turkic peoples of Central Asia the later Eastern Romans (i.e. Byzantines) derived a new name for China, Taugast (Turkic: Tabghach), during its Northern Wei (386–535) period. By the time of the Eastern Roman ruler Justinian I (r. 527–565), the Byzantines purchased Chinese silk from Sogdian intermediaries. However, they also smuggled silkworms out of China with the help of Nestorian monks, who claimed that the land of "Serinda" was located north of India and produced the finest silk.
The first surviving European accounts of the Seres are those in Ctesias's 5th-century BC Indica, where he calls them "a people of portentous stature and longevity". The authenticity of the account is, however, disputed.[citation needed]
Strabo's 1st-century Geography mentions the Seres in two asides. In the first passage, he mentions that "some writers" claim the Seres to be longer lived than the Indians of Musicanus, whom Onesicritus claimed lived to the age of 130. In the second, a passage discussing the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, he mentions that Apollodorus of Artemita claimed the Bactrians' borders stretched "even as far as the Seres and the Phryni".
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Serica
Serica (/ˈsɛrɪkə/, Ancient Greek: Σηρική) was one of the easternmost countries of Asia known to the Ancient Greek and Roman geographers. It is generally taken as referring to North China[citation needed] during its Zhou, Qin, and Han dynasties, as it was reached via the overland Silk Road in contrast to the Sinae, who were reached via the maritime routes. A similar distinction was later observed during the Middle Ages between "Cathay" (north) and "Mangi" or "China" (south). The people of Serica were the Seres (Ancient Greek: Σῆρες), whose name was also used for their region. Access to Serica was eased following the Han conquest of the Tarim Basin (modern Xinjiang) but largely blocked when the Parthian Empire fell to the Sassanids. Henry Yule summarized the classical geographers:
If we fuse into one the ancient notices of the Seres and their country, omitting anomalous statements and manifest fables, the result will be something like the following:—"The region of the Seres is a vast and populous country, touching on the east the Ocean and the limits of the habitable world, and extending west to Imaus and the confines of Bactria. The people are civilized, mild, just, and frugal, eschewing collisions with their neighbours, and even shy of close intercourse, but not averse to dispose of their own products, of which raw silk is the staple, but which include also silk-stuffs, fine furs, and iron of remarkable quality." That is manifestly a definition of the Chinese.
Some scholars, however, contend the Seres were not the Chinese themselves but tribes speaking Indo-European languages on the western edges of the Chinese dynasties and empires who traded with the ancient Indians, such as the Yuezhi, Saka, and Tocharians.
The Latin forms Serica and Seres derive from the Greek Sērikḗ (Σηρική) and Sḗres (Σῆρες). This seems to derive from their words for silk (Ancient Greek: σηρικός, sērikós; Latin: sericum), which since Klaproth has often been linked to the Chinese 絲, whose Old Chinese pronunciation has been reconstructed as /*[s]ə/. The Greeks and Romans knew of silk long before they understood its origin from silkworms, making sēr (σὴρ) a backformation. Other forms of the name include Serica Regio. Flavius Josephus, in his book Antiquities of the Jews, book 1, paragraph 147, calls that region "Σηρια", that in Latin letters is "Seria".
Some classicists have argued that it was extremely improbable that a nation would be named after an insect. Christian Lassen claimed to have identified references to the Seres in Hinduism's Vedas, as the "Çaka [Sakas], Tukhâra [Bactria], and Kanka [Kangju]".
Beginning in the 1st century BC with Virgil, Horace, and Strabo, Roman histories offer only vague accounts of China and the silk-producing Seres of the Far East. Florus seems to have confused the Seres with peoples of India, or at least noted that their skin complexions proved that they both lived "beneath another sky" than the Romans. The 1st-century geographer Pomponius Mela asserted that the lands of the Seres formed the center of the coast of an eastern ocean, flanked to the south by India and to the north by the Scythians of the Eurasian Steppe. The historian Ammianus Marcellinus (c. 330 – c. 400) wrote that the land of the Seres was enclosed by great natural walls around a river called Bautis, possibly a description of the Yellow River. From Turkic peoples of Central Asia the later Eastern Romans (i.e. Byzantines) derived a new name for China, Taugast (Turkic: Tabghach), during its Northern Wei (386–535) period. By the time of the Eastern Roman ruler Justinian I (r. 527–565), the Byzantines purchased Chinese silk from Sogdian intermediaries. However, they also smuggled silkworms out of China with the help of Nestorian monks, who claimed that the land of "Serinda" was located north of India and produced the finest silk.
The first surviving European accounts of the Seres are those in Ctesias's 5th-century BC Indica, where he calls them "a people of portentous stature and longevity". The authenticity of the account is, however, disputed.[citation needed]
Strabo's 1st-century Geography mentions the Seres in two asides. In the first passage, he mentions that "some writers" claim the Seres to be longer lived than the Indians of Musicanus, whom Onesicritus claimed lived to the age of 130. In the second, a passage discussing the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, he mentions that Apollodorus of Artemita claimed the Bactrians' borders stretched "even as far as the Seres and the Phryni".