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This episode we continue to follow the monk Xuanzang on his path along the silk road.  From Gaochang, he traveled through the Tarim Basin, up over the Tianshan Mountains, to the heart of the Western Gokturk Qaghanate.  From there, he traveled south, through the region of Transoxania to Bactria and the land of Tukhara.  He pushed on into the Hindu Kush, witnessing the stone Buddha statues of Bamiyan, and eventually made his way to the land of Kapisa, near modern Kabul, Afghanistan.  From there he would prepare to enter the Indian subcontinent: the home of the historical Buddha. For more discussion and some photos of the areas along this journey, check out our podcast blog at https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-121   Rough Transcript Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  My name is Joshua, and this is Episode 121: Journey to the West, Part 2   The cold winds blew through the travelers' doubled up clothing and thick furs.  Cold, wet ground meant that even two sets of boots were not necessarily enough after several days.  The frozen mist would often obscure everything except for the path immediately in front, hiding the peaks and making the sky a uniform white. In many places, the path would be blocked by rock, ice, or snow—the remnants of an avalanche, which could easily take an unsuspecting traveler.  And there was the elevation.  Hiking through the mountains, it was easy enough to reach heights of a mile or higher, and for those not accustomed to that elevation the thin air could take a surprising toll, especially if you were pushing yourself.  And the road was no less kind to the animals that would be hauling said travelers and their gear. And yet, this was the path that Xuanzang had agreed to.  He would continue to push through, despite the various deprivations that he would be subjected to.  No doubt he often wondered if it was worth it.  Then again, returning was just as dangerous a trip, so why not push on?   Last episode we introduced the monk Xuanzang, who traveled the Silk Road to India in the 7th century and returned to China.  He brought back numerous sutras to translate, and ended up founding a new school, known as the Faxian school—or the Hossou school in Japan.   As we mentioned last time, Xuanzang during his lifetime met with students from the archipelago when they visited the continent.  The records of his travels—including his biography and travelogue—are some of the best information we have on what life was like on the silk road around this time. In the last episode, we talked about Xuanzang: how he set out on his travels, his illegal departure from the Tang empire, and his perilous journey across the desert, ending up in Gaochang.  There, King Qu Wentai had tried to get him to stay, but he was determined to head out.  This episode we are going to cover his trip to Agni, Kucha, and Baluka—modern Aksu—and up to the Western Gokturk Qaghanate's capital of Suyab.  From there, we'll follow his footsteps through the Turkic controlled regions of Transoxania and into Tukhara, in modern Afghanistan.  Finally, we'll cover the last parts of his journey before he reached the start of his goal:  India. From Gaochang, Xuanzang continued on, through the towns he names as Wuban and Dujin, and into the country of Agni—known today as the area of Yanqi—which may also have been known as Wuqi.  The route was well-enough known, but it wasn't necessarily safe.  At one point, Xuanzang's caravan met with bandits, whom they were fortunately able to pay off.  The following night they encamped on a river bank with some merchants who also happened to be traveling the road.  The merchants, though, got up at midnight and headed out, hoping to get to the city early so that they could be the first ones to the market.  They only made it a few miles down the road, however, before they encountered more bandits, who slaughtered them and took their goods.  The following day, Xuanzang and his retinue came upon the merchants' remains lying in the road and saw the aftermath of the massacre. This was an unforgiving land, and the road was truly dangerous, even for those who traveled it regularly.  And yet Xuanzang was planning to travel its entire length until he reached India. So with little alternative, they carried on to the royal city of Agni. Agni, or Yanqi, sits on the southwestern edge of the basin, west of Bositeng lake, on the border between the Turfan basin and the larger Tarim Basin.  The name is thought to be a Tocharian—or Turfanian—name for the city, which is also known as Karashr. According to the biography by Huili, Xuanzang and his party didn't stay long in Agni.  Apparently Agni and Gaochang were not exactly on friendly terms, and even though the King of Agni and his ministers reportedly came out to greet Xuanzang and welcome him to their city, they refused to provide any horses.  They spent a single night and moved on. That said, Agni still made an impression on Xuanzang.  He noted how the capital was surrounded by hills on four sides, making it naturally defensible.  As for the people, he praises them as honest and straightforward.  They wore clothing of felt and hemp cloth, and cut their hair short, without hats or any kind of headwear.  Even the climate was pleasant, at least for the short time he was there.  He also notes that they used a script based on India—likely referring to the Brahmic script, which we find in the Tarim basin. However, as for the local lord, the King of Agni, he is a little less charitable.  Xuanzang claimed he was brave but “lacked resourcefulness” and he was a bit of a braggart.  Furthermore, the country had “no guiding principles or discipline and government orders are imperfect and not seriously implemented.”  He also mentioned the state of Buddhism in the country, noting that they were followers of Sarvastivada school, a Theravada sect popular along the Silk Road at the time.  Xuanzang was apparently not too pleased with the fact that they were not strict vegetarians, including the “three kinds of pure meat”.  From Agni, Xuanzang continued southwest, heading for the kingdom of Kucha.  He seems to have bypassed the nearby kingdom of Korla, south of Agni, and headed some 60 or 70 miles, climbing over a ridge and crossing two large rivers, and then proceeding another 200 miles or so to the land of Kucha. Kucha was a kingdom with over one hundred monasteries and five thousand monks following a form of Theravada Buddhism.  Here, Xuanzang was welcomed in by the king, Suvarnadeva, described as having red hair and blue eyes.  While Xuanzang was staying in Kucha, it is suspected that he probably visited the nearby Kizil grotto and the Buddhist caves, there, which include a painting of King Suvarnadeva's father, King Suvarnapuspa, and his three sons. You can still visit Kucha and the Kizil grottos today, although getting there is quite a trek, to be sure.  The ancient Kuchean capital is mostly ruins, but in the Kizil caves, protected from the outside elements, you can find vivid paintings ranging from roughly the 4th to the 8th century, when the site was abandoned.  Hundreds of caves were painted, and many still demonstrate vibrant colors.  The arid conditions protect them from mold and mildew, while the cave itself reduces the natural bleaching effect of sunlight.  The paintings are in numerous styles, and were commissioned by various individuals and groups over the years.  They also give us some inkling of how vibrant the city and similar structures must have been, back when the Kuchean kingdom was in its heyday. The people of Kucha are still something of a mystery.  We know that at least some of them spoke an Indo-European language, related to a language found in Agni, and both of these languages are often called Tocharian, which we discussed last episode.  Xuanzang himself noted that they used Indian writing, possibly referring to the Brahmi script, or perhaps the fact that they seem to have used Sanskrit for official purposes, such as the inscription on the cave painting at Kizil giving the name of King Suvarnapuspa.  The Kucheans also were clothed in ornamental garments of silk and embroidery.  They kept their hair cut, wearing a flowing covering over their heads—and we see some of that in the paintings. Xuanzang also notes that though we may think of this area as a desert, it was a place where rice and grains, as well as fruit like grapes, pomegranates, plums, pears, peaches, and almonds were grown.  Even today, modern Xinjiang grows some absolutely fantastic fruit, including grapes, which are often dried into raisins. Another point of interest for Xuanzang may have been that Kucha is known as the hometown of none other than Kumarajiva.  We first mentioned Kumarajiva back in episode 84.  Kumarajiva was one of the first people we know of who translated many of the sutras from India that were then more widely disseminated throughout the Yellow River and Yangzi river basins.  His father was from India and his mother was a Kuchean princess.  In the middle of the 4th century, when he was still quite young, he traveled to India and back with his mother on a Buddhist pilgrimage.  Later he would start a massive translation project in Chang'an.  His translations are credited with revolutionizing Chinese Buddhism. Xuanzang was initially welcomed by the king, his ministers, and the revered monk, Moksagupta.  They were accompanied by several thousand monks who set up tents outside the eastern gate, with portable Buddha images, which they worshipped, and then Xuanzang was taken to monastery after monastery until sunset.  At one of the monasteries, in the southeast of the city, there were several tens of monks who originally came from Gaochang, and since Xuanzang had come from there, they invited him to stay with them. The next day he met and feasted with the King, politely declining any meat, and then went to the monastery in the northwest to meet with the famous monk: Moksagupta.  Moksagupta himself had made the journey to India, and had spent 20 years there himself.  It seems like this would have been the perfect person for Xuanzang to talk to about his plans, but instead, the two butted heads.  Moksagupta seems to have seen Xuanzang's Mahayana faith as heretical.  He saw no reason for Xuanzang to travel all the way to India when he had all the sutras that anyone needed there in Kucha, along with Moksagupta himself.   Xuanzang's response seems to have been the Tang dynasty Buddhist version of “Okay, Boomer”, and then he went ahead and tore apart Moksagupta's understanding of his own sutras—or so Xuanzang relayed to his biographers.  We don't exactly have Moksagupta's side, and, let's face it, Xuanzang and his biographers are not necessarily reliable narrators.  After all, they followed Mahayana teachings, which they considered the “Greater Vehicle”, and they referred to the Theravada teachings as the “Hinayana” or “Lesser Vehicle”.  Meanwhile, Theravada Buddhists likely saw many of the Mahayana texts as extraneous, even heretical, not believing them to actually be the teachings of the Buddha. It must have been winter time, as the passes through the mountains on the road ahead were still closed, and so Xuanzang stayed in Kucha, spending his time sightseeing and meeting with various people.  He even went back to see Moksagupta, but the older monk shunned him, and would get up and exit the room rather than engaging with him, so they had no more conversations. Eventually, Xuanzang continued on his way west, following along the northern rim of the Tarim basin.  Two days out from Kucha, disaster struck.  Some two thousand or so Turkish bandits suddenly appeared—I doubt Xuanzang was counting, so it may have been more or less.  I imagine that memories of what had happened to the merchants near Agni must have gone through Xuanzang's mind.   Fortunately, for him, they were fighting over loot that they had pillaged from various travelers, and since they couldn't share it equally, they fell to fighting each other and eventually dispersed. He travelled for almost 200 miles after that, stopping only for a night at the Kingdom of Baluka, aka Gumo—the modern city of Aksu.  This was another Theravada Buddhist kingdom.  Xuanzang noted tens of Buddhist temples, and over 1000 Buddhist monks.  The country was not large—about 200 miles east to west and 100 miles north to south.  For reference that means it was probably comparable in size with Kyushu, in terms of overall area, or maybe the size of Denmark—excluding Greenland—or maybe the US state of Maryland.  Xuanzang described the country as similar to Kucha in just about every way, including the written language and law, but the spoken language was different, though we don't get many more details. From Baluka, he crossed northward through the Tianshan mountains, which are classified as an extension of the Pamirs known as the Ice Mountains.  Had he continued southwest, he would have hit Kashgar and crossed over between the Pamir and Tian Shan ranges into the Ferghana valley, but instead he turned north. We don't know exactly why he took this perilous option, but the route that may have been popular at the time as it was one of the most direct routes to the seat of the Western Gokturk Empire, which he was currently traveling through. The Tian Shan mountains were a dangerous journey.  Avalanches could block the road—or worse.  Xuanzang describes the permanent ice fields—indeed, it is the ice fields and glaciers of the Tian Shan that melt in the summer and provide the oasis towns of the Tarim Basin with water, even to this day.  In Xuanzang's day, those glaciers were likely even more prevalent than today, especially as they have been recorded as rapidly disappearing since 1961.  And where you weren't on snow and ice, the ground was probably wet and damp from the melt.  To keep warm, you would wear shoes over your shoes, along with heavy fur coats, all designed to reduce exposure. Xuanzang claims that 3 or 4 of every 10 people didn't survive the crossing—and that horses and oxen fared even worse.  Even if these numbers are an exaggeration, the message is clear:  This was a dangerous journey. After about seven days, Xuanzang came out of the mountains to the “Great Pure Lake”, the “Da Qing Hai”, also known as the Hot Sea or the Salt Sea, which likely refers to Issyk Kul.  The salt content, along with the great volume of water it possesses, means that the lake rarely freezes over, which is likely why it is seen as “hot” since it doesn't freeze when the fresh water nearby does.  This lake is the second largest mountain lake in the world, and the second deepest saltwater lake.  Traveling past the lake, he continued to Suyab, near modern Tokmok, in Kyrgyzstan, just west of the modern capital of Bishkek.  This was an old Sogdian settlement, and had since become the capital of the Western Gokturks.  Sogdians—like Xuanzang's guide, Vandak—were integral to the Gokturk kingdom. Their language was the lingua franca of the Silk Road, and at the time of the Gokturk Khaganate, it was also the official court language, and so when Xuanzang appeared at the court of the Great Khagan of the Western Gokturks, it was likely the language of diplomacy. When we think of Turkic people, many in the English speaking world think of Turkiye, and perhaps of the mighty Ottoman empire.  Some may think of Turkmenistan, Kazhakstan, Kyrgyzstan, or Uzbekistan, among others.  And of course, there are the Uyghur people in Xinjiang.  All of these people claim roots in the ancestral Turkic homeland in the Altai mountains, which sit largely in western Mongolia, north of China's Xinjiang region.  Much like the Xiongnu and the Mongols, they were pastoral nomads, moving their herds across the steppes, often covering great distances.  They would regularly move through different regions, perhaps returning each season, though sometimes not returning for years at a time.  They were often seen as barbarians by settled people living in cities, and yet their goods and horses were highly prized. Nomad and sedentary lifestyles would often collide.  Farmers would turn pastureland into fields, and when the nomadic people returned on their circuits, they would find walls and fences where there was once open land, and the people there would claim to “own” the land, a concept often foreign to people who were always on the move.  Nomadic people, such as the Gokturks, were not necessarily keeping vast libraries of records about themselves and their histories, and so much of what we get comes from external sources, which do not always have incredibly reliable narrators.  To many of the settled agriculturalists, groups like the Turks were marauders who raided their villages and farms.  They were a great bogeyman of the steppes, which required the firm hand of strong defenses to keep out—or so their opponents would want people to think. While they were known for their warfare, which incorporated their mobility, but they were keenly interested in trade, as well.  They understood the value of the trade routes and the various cities and states that they included in their empire.  Thus, the Sogdians and the Gokturks seem a natural fit: the Sogdians were more settled, but not entirely so, as demonstrated by their vast trade networks.  And the Sogdians also were part of the greater central Eurasian steppe culture, so the two cultures understood each other, to a degree.  They are even depicted similarly in art, with slight differences, such as long hair that was often associated with Turks over the Sogdians.  In some areas of the Gokturk empire, Sogdians would run the cities, while the Gokturks provided military aid and protection. Xuanzang's description of the people of Suyab, or the “City of Suye River”, doesn't pick out anyone in particular, and he even says that it was a place where traders of the Hu, or foreign, tribes from different countries mingle their abodes.  He mentions the people here as being called Suli, which is also the name given to the language—this may refer to “Sogdian” in general.  They write with an alphabet that is written vertically rather than horizontally—this may refer to a few scripts that were written this way, possibly based off Syriac or Aramaic alphabets that were adapted to Sogdian and other Iranian languages, but it isn't clear. We are told that the people dressed in felt and hemp clothing, with fur and “cotton” garments.  Their clothes fit tightly, and they kept their hair cut short, exposing the top of their heads—though sometimes they shaved it completely, tying a colored silk band around the forehead. He goes on to describe these people as greedy liars, possibly a reference to the mercantile nature of many of the people at the time. Something to note: The Turks of this time had not yet encountered Islam, which was just now starting to rise up in the Middle East.  The Prophet Muhammad is said to have been born around the end of the 6th century CE and was preaching in the early 7th century, though his teachings would begin to spread outward soon enough.  But that means that the Gokturks were not an Islamic empire.  Rather, their own traditions seem to have focused on the worship of Tengri, an Altaic personification of the universe, often simplified as a “sky god”.  Tengrism can be found amongst the Xiongnu, Mongols, and others, and it was the national religion of the Gokturks themselves, but there were many who also adopted other religions that they encountered, including Zoroastrianism, Christianity, Manichaeism, and Buddhism.  In fact, Xuanzang notes that the Turks he met in Suyab would not sleep or sit on beds made of wood because wood was thought to contain the spirit of fire, which he says they worshipped.  That sounds similar to Zoroastrian beliefs, where fire is associated with Ahura Mazda, who is also worshipped as a sky god.  These may have been beliefs inherited from their Eastern Iranian Sogdian partners. In Xuanzang's biography, we are given more details about his visit to Suyab.  Apparently, as he was headed to the city, he met a hunting party, which we are told was the retinue of Yehu Khan.  Hunting was an important part of life on the steppes, and it continued to be a favorite sport of the Gokturk nobility. Yehu Khan—possibly Yagbhu Khan, though that is up for some debate—is described as being dressed in a green silk robe, with his hair exposed, and wearing  a turban of white silk about ten feet long that wrapped his forehead and hung behind his back.  His “hunting” expedition wasn't just a couple of the guys.  It included about 200 officials, all with plaited hair and dressed in brocade robes—they weren't exactly out there roughing it.  He also had his soldiers, dressed in furs, felt, or fine woolen clothes, and there were so many cavalry that they stretched out of sight.  The Khan seemed pleased to meet Xuanzang, but his hunt was expected to last another couple of days, at least, so he sent an attendant named Dharmaja to take Xuanzang back to wait for the Khan to return. Three days later, Xuanzang was given an audience.  The khan was seated in a large yurt.  Xuanzang noted the seeming incongruity between the khan, sitting there in the tent, decorated with golden flowers, with the officials dressed in magnificent brocade garments sitting in two long rows in front of him and the armed guards behind him, compared to the simple felt walls of the tent. A ”yurt” is a common feature of nomadic life on the steppes.  It wasn't exactly a single person operation to haul them around, but they can be taken down and put up with relative ease.  And while yurts could be relatively simple, there are examples of much more elaborate structures.  There is little reason they couldn't be made larger, perhaps with some extra support.  In later centuries, there are examples of giant yurts that seem like real construction projects.  Use of tents, even in a city, where they had permanent palace buildings, was likely a means of retaining the nomadic steppe traditions, even while enjoying the benefits of city life. Whom exactly Xuanzang met with is a matter of debate.  His records seem to indicate that it was Tong Yabghu Qaghan of the Western Gokturk Khaganate, but other sources say that Tong Yabghu Qaghan died in 628, and the earliest Xuanzang could have been meeting with him was 630, two years later, so if that is the case, he must have met with Tong Yabghu's son, Si Yabghu Qaghan.  It is likely that Xuanzang, who was dictating his accounts years after, mentioned the Qaghan and then, when they looked up who it was, they simply made a mistake.  Remember, Xuanzang would have had everything translated through one or two languages.  He did know what he saw, however, and he recounted what he remembered. Tong Yabghu Qaghan oversaw the height of the Gokturk Qaghanate, and appears to have favored the Buddhist religion, though there were many different religions active in their territories at the time.  They oversaw an extremely cosmopolitan empire covering huge swaths of central Eurasia, including the lucrative silk road.  Xuanzang notes that at the court there were individuals from Gaochang and even a messenger from the Han—which is to say the Tang Empire.  One wonders if Xuanzang—or anyone at that time—realized just how tenuous the Khan'sposition was.  After Tong Yabghu's death, the Qaghanate would decline, and less than a decade later it would fall to the Tang dynasty, who took Suyab and made it their western outpost.  In fact, Suyab is thought to have been the birthplace, over a century later, of a young boy who would find a love of poetry.  That boy's name was Li Bai, or Ri Haku, in Japanese. He would become one of the most famous poets in Chinese history, and his poems were even known and studied in Japan.  And it was largely through Japanese study of Li Bai's poems that his works came to the English speaking world: first through Ernest Fenollosa, who had studied in Japan, and then by the celebrated Ezra Pound, who had used Ernest's notes to help with his own translations of the poems. This was, though, as I said, over a century after Xuanzang's journey.  At the time of our story, the Qaghan was throwing a feast, including Xuanzang and all of the foreign envoys.  Xuanzang comments on the food and drink—his hosts provided grape juice in lieu of wine, and cooked a special vegetarian feast just for him, while the other guests ate a feast of meat, such as veal, lamb, fish, and the like.  There was also the music of various regions along the Silk Road, which Xuanzang found to be catchy, but of course not as refined as the music he was used to, of course.  After dinner Xuanzang was asked to expound upon the Darma, largely about the basic principle that you should be kind to one another—I doubt he was getting into the deep mysteries of Buddhist philosophy. Xuanzang stuck around the court for three more days, during which time the Qaghan tried to get him to stay, but Xuanzang insisted that he had to make it to India.  And so the Qaghan relented.  He found men in his army who could translate for Xuanzang along his journey, and had letters of introduction written to at least as far as the state of Kapisa, in modern Afghanistan. And so, armed with the Qaghan's blessing and a fresh translator, Xuanzang struck out again.  They headed westward for over one hundred miles, eventually reaching Bingyul, aka the Thousand Springs.  This is the area where the Qaghan and his court would spend his summers, and the deer in the area were protected under his orders, so that they were not afraid of humans—which sounds similar to the situation with the deer in Nara.  Continuing on another fifty miles or so—the distances are approximate as Xuanzang's primary duty was not exactly to map all of this out—Xuanzang arrived at the city of Taras, in modern Kazakhstan, another place where the cultures of the Silk Road mixed and mingled.  Xuanzang didn't have much to say about Taraz, apparently, though it is one of the oldest cities in Transoxania, founded near the beginning of the Common Era.  A few miles south of there, Xuanzang reportedly found a village of re-settled ethnic Han that had been captured by the Gokturks and settled here.  They had adopted the dress and customs of the Turkic people, but continued to speak a version of Chinese. Southwest of that he reached the City of White Water, likely referring to Aksukent.  This is the same “Aksu” as the city in Xinjiang, both of which mean “White Water” in Turkic, but this one is in the south of Kazakhstan.  Xuanzang found the climate and products an improvement over what he had experienced in Taras.  Beyond that, he next arrived at the city of Gongyu, and then south again to Nujkend, and then traveling westward to the country of Chach, aka Tashkent.  Both Nujkend and Chach were large cities in nations of smaller, mostly autonomous city-states, which made up a lot of the political geography of Transoxania. I would note that Xuanzang's notes here are much more sparse than previously.  This may be because these were outside of the Tarim basin and therefore of less interest to individuals in the Tang empire.  Or perhaps he was just making his way more quickly and not stopping at every kingdom along the way. From Tashkent, he continued southeast to the Ferghana valley—the country of Feihan.  Oddly, this country doesn't appear in Xuanzang's biography, even though the Ferghana Valley seems to have been fairly well known back in the Tang Empire—it was known as the home of some of the best horses, which were one of its first major exports.  In fact, the Han dynasty even mounted a military expedition to travel to Ferghana just to obtain horses.  Xuanzang is oddly silent on this; however, he does talk about the fertile nature of the land.  He mentions that their language here is different from the lands he had been traveling through up to this point, and also points out that the people of the Ferghana valley were also visibly different from others in the area. From the Ferghana valley, Xuanzang headed west for about 300 miles or more to the land of Sutrushana—perhaps referring to the area of Ushrusana, with its capital of Bunjikat.  This country was also largely Sogdian, and described as similar to Tashkent.  From there, he traveled west through a great desert, passing skeletons, which were the only marker of the trail other than a view of the far off mountains.  Finally, they reached Samarkand, known as the country of “Kang” in Chinese, which was also the term used to mark Sogdians who claimed descent from the people of Samarkand. Samarkand is another of the ancient cities of Central Asia, and even today is the third largest city in modern Uzbekistan.  Human activity in the region goes back to the paleolithic era, and the city was probably founded between the 8th and 7th centuries BCE.  Samarkand was conquered by Alexander the Great, and during the Achaemenid Empire it was the capital of Sogdiana.  During Xuanzang's visit, Samarkand was described as an impenetrable fortress with a large population. For all of his travel, Samarkand was the first place Xuanzang notes as specifically not a Buddhist land.  In fact, there were two monasteries, suggesting that there had been Buddhists, but if any monks tried to stay there then the locals would chase them out with fire.  Instead, they worshipped fire—likely meaning Ahura Mazda and Zoroastrianism.  This leads to a story that I have to wonder about, given the reliability of our narrators. It is said that Xuanzang was met by the King with arrogance, but after staying the night Xuanzang was able to tell the King about Buddhism and its merits.  The king was intrigued, and asked to observe the Precepts, and treated Xuanzang with hospitality and respect.  So when two of Xuanzang's attendants went to the monasteries to worship, they were chased out with fire.  When the king heard about this, he had the people arrested and ordered their hands to be cut off.  Xuanzang could not bear to witness such suffering, however, and he intervened to have them spared.  So instead the king had them flogged and banished from the city.  Ever since then, all the people believed in Buddhism. Some parts of this strike true.  It was likely that the king would entertain this strange wanderer who had arrived with letters from the great Qaghan—that may have even explained why Xuanzang had been encouraged to make the dangerous journey to Suyab in the first place, so that he could obtain such permission.  And it would not be strange for the king to listen to his teachings.  If Xuanzang's attendants were attacked, that would have been a huge breach of hospitality, and however the King felt about it, he no doubt had to do something about it.  And so all of that sounds somewhat believable.  Does that mean everyone suddenly converted to Buddhism?  I don't know that I'm quite willing to go that far.  It is also likely that there were Buddhists there already, even if the majority religion was Zoroastrianism. From Samarkand, Xuanzang traveled farther southwest, to the country of Kasanna, which seems to have been the edge of what we might call Sogdiana.   According to his biographers, however, there was a little more to all of this.  Rather, he headed west to Kusanika.  Then he traveled to  Khargan, and further on to the country of Bukhara, and then to Vadi.  All of these were “An” in Chinese, which was the name element used for Sogdians from this region.  He then continued west to the country of Horismika, on the other side of the Amu Darya, aka the Oxus River of Transoxanian fame. From there he traveled further southwest, entering into the mountains.  The path here was often such that they had to travel single-file, and there was no food or water other than what you brought with you.  Eventually they came to a set of doors, known as the Iron Gate.  This was a Turkic fortress.  It was no doubt fortuitous that he had come from his meeting with the Qaghan, and likely had permission to pass through.  From there, they entered the country of Tukhara. As we noted in Episode 119, Tukhara was in the region of Bactria.  It was bordered by the Pamir range in the east, and the Persian empire in the west.  There were also the Great Snow Mountains in the south, likely referencing the Hindu Kush. Tukhara had been conquered by the Gokturks just within the past couple of decades, and Xuanzang notes that the country had been split into largely autonomous city-states as the local royalty had died without an heir many years before.  With the Gokturk conquest, it was now administered by Tardu Shad, the son of Tong Yabghu Qaghan.  “Shad” in this case was a local title. Here, Xuanzang's narrative gets a little dicey, especially between his biography and his records.  The records of the Western Regions denotes various countries in this area.  It is unclear if he traveled to all of them or is just recounting them from records he obtained.  He does give us at least an overview of the people and the region.  I would also note that this is one of the regions he visited, again, on his return trip, and so may have been more familiar with the region than those areas he had passed through from Suyab on down. For one thing, he notes that the language of the region was different from that of the “Suli”, which appears to refer to the Sogdians.  This was the old territory of the Kushan empire, and they largely spoke Bactrian.  Like Sogdian, it was another Eastern Iranian language, and they used an alphabet based largely on Greek, and written horizontally rather than vertically.  They also had their own coins. This region had plenty of Buddhist communities, and Xuanzang describes the cities and how many monasteries they had, though, again, it isn't clear if he actually visited all of them or not.  These are countries that Li Rongji translates as “Tirmidh”, “Sahaaniyan”, “Kharuun”, “Shuumaan”, etc. It does seem that Xuanzang made it to the capital city, the modern city Kunduz, Afghanistan. Xuanzang actually had something specific for the local Gokturk ruler, Tardu Shad.  Tardu Shad's wife was the younger sister of King Qu Wentai of Gaochang, whom we met last episode.  Qu Wentai had provided Xuanzang a letter for his younger sister and her husband.  Unfortunately, Xuanzang arrived to learn that the princess of Gaochang had passed away, and Tardu Shad's health was failing.  It does seem that Tardu Shad was aware of Xuanzang, however—a letter had already come from Qu Wentai to let them know that Xuanzang was on his way.  As I mentioned last episode, letters were an important part of how communities stayed tied together.  Of course, given the perils of the road, one assumes that multiple letters likely had to be sent just in case they didn't make it.  The US Postal Service this was not. Tardu Shad, though not feeling well, granted an interview with Xuanzang.  He suggested that Xuanzang should stick around.  Then, once the Shad had recovered from his illness, he would accompany Xuanzang personally on his trip to India.  Unfortunately, that was not to be.  While Xuanzang was staying there, he was witness to deadly drama.  Tardu Shad was recovering, which was attributed to the recitations by an Indian monk who was also there.  This outcome was not exactly what some in the court had wanted.  One of the Shad's own sons, known as the Tagin prince, plotted with the Shad's current wife, the young Khatun, and she poisoned her husband.  With the Shad dead, the throne might have gone to the son of the Gaochang princess, but he was still too young.  As such, the Tagin Prince was able to usurp the throne himself, and he married his stepmother, the young Khatun.  The funeral services for the late Tardu Shad meant that Xuanzang was obliged to stay at Ghor for over a month. During that time, Xuanzang had a seemingly pleasant interaction with an Indian monk.  And when he finally got ready to go, he asked the new Shad for a guide and horses.  He agreed, but also made the suggestion that Xuanzang should then head to Balkh.  This may have meant a bit of backtracking, but the Shad suggested that it would be worth it, as Balkh had a flourishing Buddhist community. Fortunately, there was a group of Buddhist monks from Balkh who happened to be in Kunduz to express their condolences at the passing of Tardu Shad, and they agreed to accompany Xuanzang back to their hometown, lest he end up getting lost and taking the long way there. The city of Balkh is also known as “Baktra”, as in “Bactria”, another name of this region.  A settlement has been there since at least 500 BCE , and it was already an important city when it was captured by Alexander the Great.  It sits at the confluence of several major trade routes, which no doubt were a big part of its success.  Xuanzang's biography notes that it was a massive city, though it was relatively sparsely populated—probably due to the relatively recent conquest by the Gokturks, which had occurred in the last couple of decades.  That said, there were still thousands of monks residing at a hundred monasteries in and around the city.  They are all characterized as monks of Theravada schools.  Southwest of the city was a monastery known as Navasamgharama, aka Nava Vihara, or “New Monastery”.  Despite its name, the monastery may have actually been much older, going back to the Kushan emperor Kaniska, in the 2nd century CE.  Ruins identified as this “New Monastery” are still visible south of Balkh, today. The monastery is described as being beautifully decorated, and it seems that it had a relic—one of the Buddha's teeth.  There are also various utensils that the Buddha is said to have used, as well.  The objects would be displayed on festival days.  North of the monastery there was a stupa more than 200 feet in height.  South of the monastery was a hermitage.  Each monk who studied there and passed away would have a stupa erected for them, as well.  Xuanzang notes that there were at around 700 memorial stupas, such that they had to be crammed together, base to base. It was here that Xuanzang met a young monk named Prajnaakara, who was already somewhat famous in India, and well-studied.  When questioned about certain aspects of Buddhism, Xuanzang was impressed by the monk's answers, and so stayed there a month studying with the young monk. Eventually, Xuanzang was ready to continue on his journey.  He departed Balkh towards the south, accompanying the teacher Prajnakara, and together they entered the Great Snow Mountains, aka the Hindu Kush.  This path was even more dangerous than the trip through the Tian Shan mountains to Suyab.   They eventually left the territory of Tukhara and arrived at Bamiyan.  Bamiyan was a kingdom in the Hindu Kush, themselves an extension of the Himalayan Mountain range.  It Is largely based around valley, home to the modern city of Bamyan, Afghanistan, which sits along the divide between Central Asia and the Indian subcontinent.  Today it is a major center for individuals of the Hazara ethnic group, one of the main ethnic groups in Afghanistan, which is a multi-ethnic state that includes, today, the Pashtun, Hazara, Tajik, and Uzbek people, along with a number of smaller ethnic groups.  Today they largely reside in the mountainous areas of the Hindu Kush. Bamiyan made an impact on our protagonist.   Their language was slightly different from that in Tukhara, but using the same—or similar enough—writing system.  Buddhism was thriving in the capital, and we are told of a rock statue of the standing Buddha, over a hundred feet in height, along with a copper statue of the standing Buddha nearby.    There was also another reclining Buddha a mile or two down the road.  There were multiple monasteries with thousands of monks, and the ruler of that kingdom received Xuanzang well. Xuanzang wasn't the first monk to travel to Bamiyan from the Middle Kingdom—in this he was, perhaps unwittingly, on the trail of the monk Faxian.  Faxian likely did not see these statues, though, as we believe they were built in the 6th and early 7th century—at least the stone Buddha statues.  They were a famous worship site until February 2001, when the Taliban gave an order to destroy all of the statues in Afghanistan.  Despite this, they were inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2003. Fortunately, we have images from before their destruction.  These statues were a blend of Greco-Buddhist and Gandharan art styles—appropriate as it stands between the Hellenistic area of Tukhara and the ancient region of Gandhara—including the modern city of Kandahar and into the Indus Valley region of Pakistan. Continuing east through the mountains, Xuanzang eventually came out at the kingdom of Kapisa.  This may have had its capital around modern-day Bagram, north of modern Kabul, but the country seems to have been quite large.  Kapisa over saw some tens of other countries, and it is thought that at one time its influence extended from Bamyan and Kandahar to the area of modern Jalalabad.  Their language was even more different than that of Tukhara, but they were still using the same writing system.  The king of Kapisa is said to have been of Suli ethnicity—which would seem to indicate that he was Sogdian, or at least descended from people of the Transoxanian region.    Xuanzang notes that the ruler, as rough and fiery as he is described—as a true warlord or similar—he nonetheless made a silver image of the Buddha, eighteen feet in height, every year.  He also gave charity to the poor and needy in an assembly that was called every five years.  There were over one hundred monasteries and some 6000 monks, per Xuanzang's recollection, and notably, they were largely following Mahayana teachings. For the most part the monks that Xuanzang had encountered on this journey were Theravada—Xuanzang refers to them as “Hinayana”, referring to the “Lesser Vehicle” in contrast to Xuanzang's own “Mahayana”, or “Greater Vehicle”.  “Theravada” refers to the “way of the elders” and while Mahayana Buddhism largely accepts the sutras of Theravada Buddhism, there are many Mahayana texts that Theravada Buddhists do not believe are canonical.  We discussed this back in Episode 84. There was apparently a story of another individual from the Yellow River being sent as a hostage to Kapisa when it was part of the Kushan Empire, under Kanishka or similar.  Xuanzang recounts various places that the hostage, described as a prince, lived or visited while in the region.  Xuanzang's arrival likely stirred the imagination of people who likely knew that the Tang were out there, but it was such a seemingly impossible distance for most people.  And yet here was someone who had traveled across all of that distance.  One of the monasteries that claimed to have been founded because of that ancient Han prince invited Xuanzang to stay with them.  Although it was a Theravada monastery, Xuanzang took them up on the offer, both because of the connection to someone who may have been his countryman, but also because of his traveling companion, Prajnakara, who was also a Theravada monk, and may not be comfortable staying at a Mahayana monastery. Xuanzang spends a good deal of ink on the stories of how various monasteries and other sites were founded in Kapisa and the surrounding areas.  He must have spent some time there to accumulate all of this information.  It is also one of the places where he seems to have hit at least twice—once on the way to India, and once during his return journey. The King of Kapisa is said to have been a devotee of Mahayana Buddhism.  He invited Xuanzang and Prajnakara to come to a Mahayana monastery to hold a Dharma gathering.  There they met with several leading figures in the monastery, and they discussed different theories.  This gathering lasted five days, and at the end, the king offered Xuanzang and the other monks five bolts of pure brocade and various other gifts.  Soon thereafter, the monk Prajnakara was invited back to Tukhara, and so he and Xuanzang parted ways. And it was about time for Xuanzang to continue onwards as well.  From Kapisa, he would travel across the “Black Range” and into Lampaka.  This may refer to the area of Laghman or Jalalabad.  Today, this is in modern Afghanistan, but for Xuanzang, this would have been the northwestern edge of India.  He was almost there. And so are we, but we'll save his trip into India for next episode. Until then thank you for listening and for all of your support. If you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.  If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website,  SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.  Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now.  Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.

This episode we are taking a trip down the Silk Road--or perhaps even the Spice Road--as we investigate references in this reign to individuals from "Tukara" who seem to have arrived in Yamato and stayed for a while. For photos and more, see our podcast webpage:  https://sengokudaimyo.com/podcast/episode-119 Rough Transcript   Welcome to Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  This is episode 119: The Question of “Tukara”   Traveling upon the ocean was never exactly safe.  Squalls and storms could arise at any time, and there was always a chance that high winds and high waves could capsize a vessel.  Most people who found themselves at the mercy of the ocean could do little but hold on and hope that they could ride out whatever adverse conditions they met with.  Many ships were lost without any explanation or understanding of what happened to them.  They simply left the port and never came back home. And so when the people saw the boat pulling up on the shores of Himuka, on the island of Tsukushi, they no doubt empathized with the voyagers' plight.  The crew looked bedraggled, and their clothing was unfamiliar.  There were both men and women, and this didn't look like your average fishing party.  If anything was clear it was this:  These folk weren't from around here. The locals brought out water and food.  Meanwhile, runners were sent with a message:  foreigners had arrived from a distant place.  They then waited to see what the government was going to do.     We are still in the second reign of Takara Hime, aka Saimei Tenno.  Last episode we talked about the palaces constructed in Asuka, as well as some of the stone works that have been found from the period, and which appear to be referenced in the Nihon Shoki—at least tangentially.   The episodes before that, we looked at the expeditions the court sent to the far north of Honshu and even past Honshu to Hokkaido. This episode we'll again be looking past the main islands of the archipelago to lands beyond.  Specifically, we are going to focus on particularly intriguing references to people from a place called “Tukara”.  We'll talk about some of the ideas about where that might be, even if they're a bit  far-fetched. That's because Tukara touches on the state of the larger world that Yamato was a part of, given its situation on the far eastern edge of what we know today as the Silk Road.  And is this just an excuse for me to take a detour into some of the more interesting things going on outside the archipelago?  No comment. The first mention of a man from Tukara actually comes at the end of the reign of Karu, aka Koutoku Tennou.  We are told that in the fourth month of 654 two men and two women of “Tukara” and one woman of “Sha'e” were driven by a storm to Hiuga.  Then, three years later, the story apparently picks up again, though possibly referring to a different group of people.  On the 3rd day of the 7th month of 657, so during the second reign of Takara Hime, we now hear about two men and four women of the Land of Tukara—no mention of Sha'e—who drifted to Tsukushi, aka Kyushu.  The Chronicles mention that these wayfarers first drifted to the island of Amami, and we'll talk about that in a bit, but let's get these puzzle pieces on the table, first.  After those six people show up, the court sent for them by post-horse.  They must have arrived by the 15th of that same month, because we are told that a model of Mt. Sumi was erected and they—the people from Tukara—were entertained, although there is another account that says they were from “Tora”. The next mention is the 10th day of the 3rd month of 659, when a Man of Tukara and his wife, again woman of Sha'e, arrived.  Then, on the 16th day of the 7th month of 660, we are told that the man of Tukara, Kenzuhashi Tatsuna, desired to return home and asked for an escort.  He planned to pay his respects at the Great Country, i.e. the Tang court, and so he left his wife behind, taking tens of men with him. All of these entries might refer to people regularly reaching Yamato from the south, from a place called “Tukara”.  Alternately, this is a single event whose story has gotten distributed over several years, as we've seen happen before with the Chronicles.  .  One of the oddities of these entries is that the terms used are not consistent.  “Tukara” is spelled at least two different ways, suggesting that it wasn't a common placename like Silla or Baekje, or even the Mishihase.  That does seem to suggest that the Chronicles were phonetically trying to find kanji, or the Sinitic characters, to match with the name they were hearing.   I would also note that “Tukara” is given the status of a “kuni”—a land, country, or state—while “sha'e”, where some of the women are said to come from, is just that, “Sha'e”. As for the name of at least one person from Tokara, Kenzuhashi Tatsuna, that certainly sounds like someone trying to fit a non-Japanese name into the orthography of the time.  “Tatsuna” seems plausibly Japanese, but “Kenzuhashi” doesn't fit quite as well into the naming structures we've seen to this point. The location of “Tukara” and “Sha'e” are not clear in any way, and as such there has been a lot of speculation about them.  While today there are placenames that fit those characters, whether or not these were the places being referenced at the time is hard to say. I'll actually start with “Sha'e”, which Aston translates as Shravasti, the capital of the ancient Indian kingdom of Kosala, in modern Uttar Pradesh.  It is also where the Buddha, Siddartha Gautama, is said to have lived most of his life after his enlightenment.  In Japanese this is “Sha'e-jou”, and like many Buddhist terms it likely comes through Sanskrit to Middle Chinese to Japanese.  One—or possibly two—women from Shravasti making the journey to Yamato in the company of a man (or men) from Tukara seems quite the feat.  But then, where is “Tukara”? Well, we have at least three possible locations that I've seen bandied about.  I'll address them from the most distant to the closest option.  These three options were Tokharistan, Dvaravati, and the Tokara islands. We'll start with Tokharistan on the far end of the Silk Road.  And to start, let's define what that “Silk Road” means.  We've talked in past episodes about the “Western Regions”, past the Han-controlled territories of the Yellow River.   The ancient Tang capital of Chang'an was built near to the home of the Qin dynasty, and even today you can go and see both the Tang tombs and the tomb of Qin Shihuangdi and his terracotta warriors, all within a short distance of Xi'an, the modern city built on the site of Chang'an.  That city sits on a tributary of the Yellow River, but the main branch turns north around the border of modern Henan and the similarly sounding provinces of Shanxi and Shaanxi.  Following it upstream, the river heads north into modern Mongolia, turns west, and then heads south again, creating what is known as the Ordos loop.  Inside is the Ordos plateau, also known as the Ordos Basin.  Continuing to follow the Yellow river south, on the western edge of the Ordos, you travel through Ningxia and Gansu—home of the Hexi, or Gansu, Corridor.  That route eventually takes to Yumenguan, the Jade Gate, and Dunhuang.  From there roads head north or south along the edge of the Taklamakan desert in the Tarim basin.  The southern route travels along the edge of the Tibetan plateau, while the northern route traversed various oasis cities through Turpan, Kucha, to the city of Kashgar.  Both routes made their way across the Pamirs and the Hindu Kush into South Asia. We've brought up the Tarim Basin and the Silk Road a few times.  This is the path that Buddhism appears to have taken to get to the Yellow River Basin and eventually to the Korean Peninsula and eastward to the Japanese archipelago.  But I want to go a bit more into detail on things here, as there is an interesting side note about “Tukara” that I personally find rather fascinating, and thought this would be a fun time to share. Back in Episode 79 we talked about how the Tarim basin used to be the home to a vast inland sea, which was fed by the meltwater from the Tianshan and Kunlun mountains.  This sea eventually dwindled, though it was still large enough to be known to the Tang as the Puchang Sea.  Today it has largely dried up, and it is mostly just the salt marshes of Lop Nur that remain.  Evidence for this larger sea, however, can be observed in some of the burials found around the Tarim basin.  These burials include the use of boat-shaped structures—a rather curious feature to be found out in the middle of the desert. And it is the desert that was left behind as the waters receded that is key to much of what we know about life in the Tarim basin, as it has proven to be quite excellent at preserving organic material.  This includes bodies, which dried out and naturally turned into mummies, including not only the wool clothing they were wearing, but also features such as hair and even decoration. These “Tarim mummies”, as they have been collectively called, date from as early as 2100 BCE all the way up through the period of time we're currently talking about, and have been found in several desert sites: Xiaohe, the earliest yet discovered; Loulan, near Lop Nur on the east of the Tarim Basin, dating from around 1800 BCE; Cherchen, on the southern edge of the Tarim Basin, dating from roughly 1000 BCE; and too many others to go into in huge detail. The intriguing thing about these burials is that  many of them don't have features typically associated with people of ethnic Han—which is to say traditional Chinese—ancestry, nor do they necessarily have the features associated with the Xiongnu and other steppe nomads.  In addition they have colorful clothing  made from wool and leather, with vivid designs.  Some bodies near Hami, just east of the basin, were reported to have blonde to light brown hair, and their cloth showed radically different patterns from that found at Cherchen and Loulan, with patterns that could reasonably be compared with the plaids now common in places like Scotland and Ireland, and previously found in the Hallstadt salt mine in Central Europe from around 3500 BCE, from which it is thought the Celtic people may have originated. At the same time that people—largely Westerners— were studying these mummies, another discovery in the Tarim basin was also making waves.  This was the discovery of a brand new language.  Actually, it was two languages—or possibly two dialects of a language—in many manuscripts, preserved in Kucha and Turpan.  Once again, the dry desert conditions proved invaluable to maintain these manuscripts, which date from between the late 4th or early 5th century to the 8th century.  They are written with a Brahmic script, similar to that used for Sanskrit, which appears in the Tarim Basin l by about the 2nd century, and we were able to translate them because many of the texts were copies of Buddhist scripture, which greatly helped scholars in deciphering the languages.  These two languages were fascinating because they represented an as-yet undiscovered branch of the Indo-European language family.  Furthermore, when compared to other Indo-European languages, they did not show nearly as much similarity with their neighbors as with languages on the far western end of the Indo-European language family.  That is to say they were thought to be closer to Celtic and Italic languages than something like Indo-Iranian.  And now for a quick diversion within the diversion:  “Centum” and “Satem” are general divisions of the Indo-European language families that was once thought to indicate a geographic divide in the languages.  At its most basic, as Indo-European words changed over time, a labiovelar sound, something like “kw”,  tended to evolve in one of two ways.  In the Celtic and Italic languages, the “kw” went to a hard “k” sound, as represented in the classical pronunciation of the Latin word for 100:  Centum.  That same word, in the Avestan language—of the Indo-Iranian tree—is pronounced as “Satem”, with an “S” sound.  So, you can look at Indo-European languages and divide them generally into “centum” languages, which preserve the hard “k”, or “Satem” languages that preserve the S. With me so far? Getting back to these two newly-found languages in the Tarim Basin, the weird thing is that they were “Centum” languages. Most Centum languages are from pretty far away, though: they are generally found in western Europe or around the Mediterranean, as opposed to the Satem languages, such as Indo-Aryan, Iranian, Armernian, or even Baltic Slavic languages, which are much closer to the Tarim Basin.  So if the theory were true that the “Centum” family of Indo-European languages developed in the West and “Satem” languages developed in the East, then that would seem to indicate that a group of a “Centum” speaking people must have migrated eastward, through the various Satem speaking people, and settled in the Tarim Basin many thousands of years ago. And what evidence do we have of people who look very different from the modern population, living in the Tarim Basin area long before, and wearing clothing similar to what we associated with the progenitors of the Celts?  For many, it seemed to be somewhat obvious, if still incredible, that the speakers of this language were likely the descendants of the mummies who, in the terminology of the time, had been identified as being of Caucasoid ancestry.  A theory developed that these people were an offshoot of a group called the Yamnaya culture, which may have arisen around modern Ukraine as an admixture between the European Hunter Gatherers and the Caucasian Hunter Gatherers, around 3300-2600 BCE.  This was challenged in 2021 when a genetic study was performed on some of the mummies in the Tarim basin, as well as several from the Dzungarian basin, to the northeast.  That study suggested that the people of the Dzungarian basin had genetic ties to the people of the Afanasievo people, from Southern Siberia.  The Afanasievo people are connected to the Yamnayan culture. It should be noted that there has long been a fascination in Western anthropology and related sciences with racial identification—and often not in a healthy way.  As you may recall, the Ainu were identified as “Caucasoid” by some people largely because of things like the men's beards and lighter colored hair, which differ greatly from a large part of the Japanese population.  However, that claim has been repeatedly refuted and debunked. And similarly, the truth is, none of these Tarim mummy burials were in a period of written anything, so we can't conclusively associated them with these fascinating Indo-European languages.  There are thousands of years between the various burials and the manuscripts. These people  left no notes stashed in pockets that give us their life story.   And Language is not Genetics is not Culture.  Any group may adopt a given language for a variety of reasons.  .  Still, given what we know, it is possible that the ancient people of the Tarim basin spoke some form of “Proto-Kuchean”, but it is just as likely that this language was brought in by people from Dzungaria at some point. So why does all this matter to us?  Well, remember how we were talking about someone from Tukara?  The Kuchean language, at least, is referred to in an ancient Turkic source as belonging to “Twgry”, which led several scholars to draw a link between this and the kingdom and people called Tukara and the Tokharoi.  This leads us on another bit of a chase through history. Now if you recall, back in Episode 79, we talked about Zhang Qian.  In 128 BCE, he attempted to cross the Silk Road through the territory of the Xiongnu on a mission for the Han court.  Some fifty years earlier, the Xiongnu had defeated the Yuezhi.  They held territory in the oasis towns along the north of the Taklamakan dessert, from about the Turpan basin west to the Pamirs. The Xiongnu were causing problems for the Han, who thought that if they could contact the remaining Yuezhi they could make common cause with them and harass the Xiongnu from both sides.  Zhang Qian's story is quite remarkable: he started out with an escort of some 99 men and a translator.  Unfortunately, he was captured and enslaved by the Xiongnu during his journey, and he is even said to have had a wife and fathered a child.  He remained a captive for thirteen years, but nonetheless, he was able to escape with his family and he made it to the Great Yuezhi on the far side of the Pamirs, but apparently the Yuezhi weren't interested in a treaty against the Xiongnu.  The Pamirs were apparently enough of a barrier and they were thriving in their new land.  And so Zhang Qian crossed back again through Xiongnu territory, this time taking the southern route around the Tarim basin.  He was still captured by the Xiongnu, who spared his life.  He escaped, again, two years later, returning to the Han court.  Of the original 100 explorers, only two returned: Zhang Qian and his translator.  While he hadn't obtained an alliance, he was able to detail the cultures of the area of the Yuezhi. Many feel that the Kushan Empire, which is generally said to have existed from about 30 to 375 CE,was formed from the Kushana people who were part of the Yuezhi who fled the Xiongnu. In other words, they were originally from further north, around the Tarim Basin, and had been chased out and settled down in regions that included Bactria (as in the Bactrian camel).  Zhang Qian describes reaching the Dayuan Kingdom in the Ferghana valley, then traveling south to an area that was the home of the Great Yuezhi or Da Yuezhi.  And after the Kushan empire fell, we know there was a state in the upper regions of the Oxus river, centered on the city of Balkh, in the former territory of the Kushan empire. known as “Tokara”.  Geographically, this matches up how Zhang Qian described the home of the Da Yuezhi.  Furthermore, some scholars reconstruct the reading of the Sinic characters used for “Yuezhi” as originally having an optional reading of something like “Togwar”, but that is certainly not the most common reconstructed reading of those characters.  Greek sources describe this area as the home of the Tokharoi, or the Tokaran People.  The term “Tukhara” is also found in Sanskrit, and this kingdom  was also said to have sent ambassadors to the Southern Liang and Tang dynasties. We aren't exactly certain of where these Tokharan people came from, but as we've just described, there's a prevailing theory that they were the remnants of the Yuezhi and Kushana people originally from the Tarim Basin.  We know that in the 6th century they came under the rule of the Gokturk Khaganate, which once spanned from the Liao river basin to the Black Sea.  In the 7th and 8th centuries they came under the rule of the Tang Empire, where they were known by very similar characters as those used to write “Tukara” in the Nihon Shoki.  On top of this, we see Tokharans traveling the Silk Road, all the way to the Tang court.  Furthermore, Tokharans that settled in Chang'an took the surname “Zhi” from the ethnonym “Yuezhi”, seemingly laying claim to and giving validation to the identity used back in the Han dynasty.   So, we have a Turkic record describing the Kuchean people (as in, from Kucha in the Tarim Basin) as “Twgry”, and we have a kingdom in Bactria called Tokara and populated (according to the Greeks) by people called Tokharoi.  You can see how this one term has been a fascinating rabbit hole in the study of the Silk Roads and their history.  And some scholars understandably suggested that perhaps the Indo-European languags found in Kucha and Turpan  were actually related to this “Tokhara” – and therefore  should be called “Tocharian”, specifically Tocharian A (Kuchean) or Tocharian B (Turfanian). The problem is that if the Tokharans were speaking “Tocharian” then you wouldn't expect to just see it at Kucha and Turpan, which are about the middle of the road between Tokhara and the Tang dynasty, and which had long been under Gokturk rule.  You would also expect to see it in the areas of Bactria associated with Tokhara.  However, that isn't what we see.  Instead, we see that Bactria was the home of local Bactrian language—an Eastern Iranian language, which, though it is part of the Indo European language family, it is not closely related to Tocharian as far as we can tell. It is possible that the people of Kucha referred to themselves as something similar to “Twgry”, or “Tochari”, but we should also remember that comes from a Turkic source, and it could have been an exonym not related to what they called themselves.  I should also note that language is not people.  It is also possible that a particular ethnonym was maintained separately by two groups that may have been connected politically but which came to speak different languages for whatever reason.   There could be a connection between the names, or it could even be that the same or similar exonym was used for different groups. So, that was a lot and a bit of a ramble, but a lot of things that I find interesting—even if they aren't as connected as they may appear.  We have the Tarim mummies, which are, today, held at a museum in modern Urumqi.  Whether they had any connection with Europe or not, they remain a fascinating study for the wealth of material items found in and around the Tarim basin and similar locations.  And then there is the saga of the Tocharian languages—or perhaps more appropriately the Kuchean-Turfanian languages: Indo-European languages that seem to be well outside of where we would expect to find them. Finally, just past the Pamirs, we get to the land of Tokhara or Tokharistan.  Even without anything else, we know that they had contact with the court.  Perhaps our castaways were from this land?  The name is certainly similar to what we see in the Nihon Shoki, using some of the same characters. All in all, art and other information suggest that the area of the Tarim basin and the Silk Road in general were quite cosmopolitan, with many different people from different regions of the world.  Bactria retained Hellenic influences ever since the conquests of Alexander of Macedonia, aka Alexander the Great, and Sogdian and Persian traders regularly brought their caravans through the region to trade.  And once the Tang dynasty controlled all of the routes, that just made travel that much easier, and many people traveled back and forth. So from that perspective, it is possible that one or more people from Tukhara may have made the crossing from their home all the way to the Tang court, but if they did so, the question still remains: why would they be in a boat? Utilizing overland routes, they would have hit Chang'an or Louyang, the dual capitals of the Tang empire, well before they hit the ocean.  However, the Nihon Shoki says that these voyagers first came ashore at Amami and then later says that they were trying to get to the Tang court. Now there was another “Silk Road” that isn't as often mentioned: the sea route, following the coast of south Asia, around through the Malacca strait and north along the Asian coast.  This route is sometimes viewed more in terms of the “spice” road If these voyagers set out to get to the Tang court by boat, they would have to have traveled south to the Indian Ocean—possibly traveling through Shravasti or Sha'e, depending on the route they chose to take—and then around the Malacca strait—unless they made it on foot all the way to Southeast Asia.  And then they would have taken a boat up the coast. Why do that instead of taking the overland route?  They could likely have traveled directly to the Tang court over the overland silk road.  Even the from Southeast Asia could have traveled up through Yunnan and made their way to the Tang court that way.  In fact, Zhang Qian had wondered something similar when he made it to the site of the new home of the Yuezhi, in Bactria.  Even then, in the 2nd century, he saw products in the marketplace that he identified as coming from around Szechuan.  That would mean south of the Han dynasty, and he couldn't figure out how those trade routes might exist and they weren't already known to the court.  Merchants would have had to traverse the dangerous mountains if they wanted to avoid being caught by the Xiongnu, who controlled the entire region. After returning to the Han court, Zhang Qian actually went out on another expedition to the south, trying to find the southern trade routes, but apparently was not able to do so.  That said, we do see, in later centuries, the trade routes open up between the area of the Sichuan basin and South Asia.  We also see the migrations of people further south, and there may have even been some Roman merchants who traveled up this route to find their way to the Han court, though those accounts are not without their own controversy. In either case, whether by land or sea, these trade routes were not always open.  In some cases, seasonal weather, such as monsoons, might dictate movement back and forth, while political realities were also a factor.  Still, it is worth remembering that even though most people were largely concerned with affairs in their own backyard, the world was still more connected than people give it credit for.  Tang dynasty pottery made its way to the east coast of Africa, and ostriches were brought all the way to Chang'an. As for the travelers from Tukhara and why they would take this long and very round-about method of travel, it is possible that they were just explorers, seeking new routes, or even on some kind of pilgrimage.  Either way, they would have been way off course. But if they did pass through Southeast Asia, that would match up with another theory about what “Tukara” meant: that it actually refers to the Dvaravati kingdom in what is now modern Thailand.  The Dvaravati Kingdom was a Mon political entity that rose up around the 6th century.  It even sent embassies to the Sui and Tang courts.  This is even before the temple complexes in Siem Reap, such as Preah Ko and the more famous Angkor Wat.  And it was during this time that the ethnic Tai people are thought to have started migrating south from Yunnan, possibly due to pressures from the expanding Sui and Tang empires.  Today, most of what remains of the Dvaravati kingdom are the ruins of ancient stone temples, showing a heavy Indic influence, and even early Buddhist practices as well.  “Dvaravati” may not actually be the name of the kingdom but it comes from an inscription on a coin found from about that time.  The Chinese refer to it as  “To-lo-po-ti” in contemporary records.  It may not even have been a kingdom, but  more of a confederation of city-states—it is hard to piece everything together.  That it was well connected, though, is clear from the archaeological record.  In Dvaravati sites, we see coins from as far as Rome, and we even have a lamp found in modern Pong Tuk that appears to match similar examples from the Byzantine Empire in the 6th century.  Note that this doesn't mean it arrived in the 6th century—similarly with the coins—but the Dvaravati state lasted until the 12th century. If that was the case, perhaps there were some women from a place called “Shravasti” or similar, especially given the Indic influence in the region. Now, given the location of the Dvaravati, it wouldn't be so farfetched to think that someone might sail up from the Gulf of Thailand and end up off-course, though it does mean sailing up the entire Ryukyuan chain or really running off course and finding yourself adrift on the East China sea.  And if they were headed to the Tang court, perhaps they did have translators or knew Chinese, since Yamato was unlikely to know the Mon language of Dvaravati and people from Dvaravati probably wouldn't know the Japonic language.  Unless, perhaps, they were communicating through Buddhist priests via Sanskrit. We've now heard two possibilities for Tukara, both pretty far afield: the region of Tokara in Bactria, and the Dvaravati kingdom in Southeast Asia.  That said, the third and simplest explanation—and the one favored by Aston in his translation of the Nihon Shoki—is that Tukara is actually referring to a place in the Ryukyu island chain.  Specifically, there is a “Tokara” archipelago, which spans between Yakushima and Amami-Oshima.  This is part of the Nansei islands, and the closest part of the Ryukyuan island chain to the main Japanese archipelago.  This is the most likely theory, and could account for the entry talking about Amami.  It is easy to see how sailors could end up adrift, too far north, and come to shore in Hyuga, aka Himuka, on the east side of Kyushu.  It certainly would make more sense for them to be from this area of the Ryukyuan archipelago than from anywhere else.  From Yakushima to Amami-Oshima is the closest part of the island chain to Kyushu, and as we see in the entry from the Shoku Nihongi, those three places seem to have been connected as being near to Japan.  So what was going on down there, anyway? Well, first off, let's remember that the Ryukyuan archipelago is not just the island of Okinawa, but a series of islands that go from Kyushu all the way to the island of Taiwan.  Geographically speaking, they are all part of the same volcanic ridge extending southward.  The size of the islands and their distance from each other does vary, however, creating some natural barriers in the form of large stretches of open water, which have shaped how various groups developed on the islands. Humans came to the islands around the same time they were reaching the Japanese mainland.  In fact, some of our only early skeletal remains for early humans in Japan actually come from either the Ryukyuan peninsula in the south or around Hokkaido to the north, and that has to do with the acidity of the soil in much of mainland Japan. Based on genetic studies, we know that at least two groups appear to have inhabited the islands from early times.  One group appears to be related to the Jomon people of Japan, while the other appears to be more related to the indigenous people of Taiwan, who, themselves, appear to have been the ancestors of many Austronesian people.  Just as some groups followed islands to the south of Taiwan, some appear to have headed north.  However, they only made it so far.  As far as I know there is no evidence they made it past Miyakoshima, the northernmost island in the Sakishima islands.  Miyako island is separated from the next large island, Okinawa, by a large strait, known as the Miyako Strait, though sometimes called the Kerama gap in English.  It is a 250km wide stretch of open ocean, which is quite the distance for anyone to travel, even for Austronesian people of Taiwan, who had likely not developed the extraordinary navigational technologies that the people who would become the Pacific Islanders would discover. People on the Ryukyu island chain appear to have been in contact with the people of the Japanese archipelago since at least the Jomon period, and some of the material artifacts demonstrate a cultural connection.  That was likely impacted by the Akahoya eruption, about 3500 years ago, and then re-established at a later date.  We certainly see sea shells and corals trade to the people of the Japanese islands from fairly early on. Unlike the people on the Japanese archipelago, the people of the Ryukyuan archipelago did not really adopt the Yayoi and later Kofun culture.  They weren't building large, mounded tombs, and they retained the character of a hunter-gatherer society, rather than transitioning to a largely agricultural way of life.  The pottery does change in parts of Okinawa, which makes sense given the connections between the regions.  Unfortunately, there is a lot we don't know about life in the islands around this time.  We don't exactly have written records, other than things like the entries in the Nihon Shoki, and those are hardly the most detailed of accounts.  In the reign of Kashikiya Hime, aka Suiko Tennou, we see people from Yakushima, which is, along with Tanegashima, one of the largest islands at the northern end of the Ryukyu chain, just before you hit Kagoshima and the Osumi peninsula on the southern tip of Kyushu.  The islands past that would be the Tokara islands, until you hit the large island of Amami. So you can see how it would make sense that the people from “Tokara” would make sense to be from the area between Yakushima and Amami, and in many ways this explanation seems too good to be true.  There are a only a few things that make this a bit peculiar. First, this doesn't really explain the woman from “Sha'e” in any compelling way that I can see.  Second, the name, Kenzuhashi Tatsuna doesn't seem to fit with what we generally know about early Japonic names, and the modern Ryukyuan language certainly is a Japonic language, but there are still plenty of possible explanations.  There is also the connection of Tokara with “Tokan”, which is mentioned in an entry in 699 in the Shoku Nihongi, the Chronicle that follows on, quite literally to the Nihon Shoki.  Why would they call it “Tokan” instead of “Tokara” so soon after?  Also, why would these voyagers go back to their country by way of the Tang court?  Unless, of course, that is where they were headed in the first place.  In which case, did the Man from Tukara intentionally leave his wife in Yamato, or was she something of a hostage while they continued on their mission?   And so those are the theories.  The man from “Tukara” could be from Tokhara, or Tokharistan, at the far end of the Silk Road.  Or it could have been referring to the Dvaravati Kingdom, in modern Thailand.  Still, in the end, Occam's razor suggests that the simplest answer is that these were actually individuals from the Tokara islands in the Ryukyuan archipelago.  It is possible that they were from Amami, not that they drifted there.  More likely, a group from Amami drifted ashore in Kyushu as they were trying to find a route to the Tang court, as they claimed.  Instead they found themselves taking a detour to the court of Yamato, instead. And we could have stuck with that story, but I thought that maybe, just maybe, this would be a good time to reflect once again on how connected everything was.  Because even if they weren't from Dvaravati, that Kingdom was still trading with Rome and with the Tang.  And the Tang controlled the majority of the overland silk road through the Tarim basin.  We even know that someone from Tukhara made it to Chang'an, because they were mentioned on a stele that talked about an Asian sect of Christianity, the “Shining Religion”, that was praised and allowed to set up shop in the Tang capital, along with Persian Manicheans and Zoroastrians.  Regardless of where these specific people may have been from, the world was clearly growing only more connected, and prospering, as well. Next episode we'll continue to look at how things were faring between the archipelago and the continent. Until then thank you for listening and for all of your support. If you like what we are doing, please tell your friends and feel free to rate us wherever you listen to podcasts.  If you feel the need to do more, and want to help us keep this going, we have information about how you can donate on Patreon or through our KoFi site, ko-fi.com/sengokudaimyo, or find the links over at our main website,  SengokuDaimyo.com/Podcast, where we will have some more discussion on topics from this episode. Also, feel free to reach out to our Sengoku Daimyo Facebook page.  You can also email us at the.sengoku.daimyo@gmail.com.  Thank you, also, to Ellen for their work editing the podcast. And that's all for now.  Thank you again, and I'll see you next episode on Sengoku Daimyo's Chronicles of Japan.  

A story about a Bactrian camel. Buy my children's book about trying different kinds of food and describing them by sight, smell and taste. Ages 3-6 https://www.amazon.com/dp/1098364317 https://www.instagram.com/animalstoriesforkids Updated show related content: patreon.com/AnimalStoriesforKids Creator's page: samuelsuk.com © 2024 Samuel Suk. All rights reserved. ℗ 2024 Samuel Suk. All rights reserved. For license and usage contact: animalstoriesforkids@gmail.com --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/animalstoriesforkids/support

Clearchus of Soli was an ancient philosopher who lived in the 4th century BCE and was primarily known for his contributions to ethics and moral philosophy. Clearchus was a student of Aristotle who is often associated with his Peripatetic school. He wrote extensively on Eastern Cultures and is thought to have traveled eastward-bound, to the Bactrian city of Ai-Khanoum (Alexandria on the Oxus?) in modern Afghanistan, in order to help Hellenize the city in a post-Alexandrian era. Join me as I welcome Professor Gertjan Verhasselt to discuss this fascinating and relatively unknown Cypriot philosopher, Clearchus of Soli!

China today positions itself as a model of state-led environmentalism. On the country's arid rangelands, grassland conservation policies have targeted pastoralists and their animals, blamed for causing desertification. State environmentalism - in the form of grazing bans, enclosure, and resettlement - has transformed the lives of many ethnic minority herders in China's western borderlands. However, this book shows how such policies have been contested and negotiated on the ground, in the context of the state's intensifying nation-building project. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Alasha, in the far west of China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Thomas White describes how ethnic Mongols have foregrounded the local breed of Bactrian camel, mobilizing ideas of heritage and resource conservation to defend pastoralism. In exploring how the greening of the Chinese state affects the entangled lives of humans and animals at the margins of the nation-state, this study is both a political biography of the Bactrian camel and an innovative work of political ecology addressing critical questions of rural livelihoods, conservation, and state power. Thomas White is lecturer in China and Sustainable Development at the Lau China Institute, King's College London. His research interests include China's borderlands, political ecology, infrastructure, and Sino-Mongolian relations. China's Camel Country: Livestock and Nation-Building at a Pastoral Frontier (U Washington Press, 2024) is his first monograph. Yadong Li is a PhD student in anthropology at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of the anthropology of state, the anthropology of time, hope studies, and post-structuralist philosophy. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

China today positions itself as a model of state-led environmentalism. On the country's arid rangelands, grassland conservation policies have targeted pastoralists and their animals, blamed for causing desertification. State environmentalism - in the form of grazing bans, enclosure, and resettlement - has transformed the lives of many ethnic minority herders in China's western borderlands. However, this book shows how such policies have been contested and negotiated on the ground, in the context of the state's intensifying nation-building project. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Alasha, in the far west of China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Thomas White describes how ethnic Mongols have foregrounded the local breed of Bactrian camel, mobilizing ideas of heritage and resource conservation to defend pastoralism. In exploring how the greening of the Chinese state affects the entangled lives of humans and animals at the margins of the nation-state, this study is both a political biography of the Bactrian camel and an innovative work of political ecology addressing critical questions of rural livelihoods, conservation, and state power. Thomas White is lecturer in China and Sustainable Development at the Lau China Institute, King's College London. His research interests include China's borderlands, political ecology, infrastructure, and Sino-Mongolian relations. China's Camel Country: Livestock and Nation-Building at a Pastoral Frontier (U Washington Press, 2024) is his first monograph. Yadong Li is a PhD student in anthropology at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of the anthropology of state, the anthropology of time, hope studies, and post-structuralist philosophy. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/east-asian-studies

China today positions itself as a model of state-led environmentalism. On the country's arid rangelands, grassland conservation policies have targeted pastoralists and their animals, blamed for causing desertification. State environmentalism - in the form of grazing bans, enclosure, and resettlement - has transformed the lives of many ethnic minority herders in China's western borderlands. However, this book shows how such policies have been contested and negotiated on the ground, in the context of the state's intensifying nation-building project. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Alasha, in the far west of China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Thomas White describes how ethnic Mongols have foregrounded the local breed of Bactrian camel, mobilizing ideas of heritage and resource conservation to defend pastoralism. In exploring how the greening of the Chinese state affects the entangled lives of humans and animals at the margins of the nation-state, this study is both a political biography of the Bactrian camel and an innovative work of political ecology addressing critical questions of rural livelihoods, conservation, and state power. Thomas White is lecturer in China and Sustainable Development at the Lau China Institute, King's College London. His research interests include China's borderlands, political ecology, infrastructure, and Sino-Mongolian relations. China's Camel Country: Livestock and Nation-Building at a Pastoral Frontier (U Washington Press, 2024) is his first monograph. Yadong Li is a PhD student in anthropology at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of the anthropology of state, the anthropology of time, hope studies, and post-structuralist philosophy. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/environmental-studies

China today positions itself as a model of state-led environmentalism. On the country's arid rangelands, grassland conservation policies have targeted pastoralists and their animals, blamed for causing desertification. State environmentalism - in the form of grazing bans, enclosure, and resettlement - has transformed the lives of many ethnic minority herders in China's western borderlands. However, this book shows how such policies have been contested and negotiated on the ground, in the context of the state's intensifying nation-building project. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Alasha, in the far west of China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Thomas White describes how ethnic Mongols have foregrounded the local breed of Bactrian camel, mobilizing ideas of heritage and resource conservation to defend pastoralism. In exploring how the greening of the Chinese state affects the entangled lives of humans and animals at the margins of the nation-state, this study is both a political biography of the Bactrian camel and an innovative work of political ecology addressing critical questions of rural livelihoods, conservation, and state power. Thomas White is lecturer in China and Sustainable Development at the Lau China Institute, King's College London. His research interests include China's borderlands, political ecology, infrastructure, and Sino-Mongolian relations. China's Camel Country: Livestock and Nation-Building at a Pastoral Frontier (U Washington Press, 2024) is his first monograph. Yadong Li is a PhD student in anthropology at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of the anthropology of state, the anthropology of time, hope studies, and post-structuralist philosophy. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology

China today positions itself as a model of state-led environmentalism. On the country's arid rangelands, grassland conservation policies have targeted pastoralists and their animals, blamed for causing desertification. State environmentalism - in the form of grazing bans, enclosure, and resettlement - has transformed the lives of many ethnic minority herders in China's western borderlands. However, this book shows how such policies have been contested and negotiated on the ground, in the context of the state's intensifying nation-building project. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Alasha, in the far west of China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Thomas White describes how ethnic Mongols have foregrounded the local breed of Bactrian camel, mobilizing ideas of heritage and resource conservation to defend pastoralism. In exploring how the greening of the Chinese state affects the entangled lives of humans and animals at the margins of the nation-state, this study is both a political biography of the Bactrian camel and an innovative work of political ecology addressing critical questions of rural livelihoods, conservation, and state power. Thomas White is lecturer in China and Sustainable Development at the Lau China Institute, King's College London. His research interests include China's borderlands, political ecology, infrastructure, and Sino-Mongolian relations. China's Camel Country: Livestock and Nation-Building at a Pastoral Frontier (U Washington Press, 2024) is his first monograph. Yadong Li is a PhD student in anthropology at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of the anthropology of state, the anthropology of time, hope studies, and post-structuralist philosophy. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/food

China today positions itself as a model of state-led environmentalism. On the country's arid rangelands, grassland conservation policies have targeted pastoralists and their animals, blamed for causing desertification. State environmentalism - in the form of grazing bans, enclosure, and resettlement - has transformed the lives of many ethnic minority herders in China's western borderlands. However, this book shows how such policies have been contested and negotiated on the ground, in the context of the state's intensifying nation-building project. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Alasha, in the far west of China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Thomas White describes how ethnic Mongols have foregrounded the local breed of Bactrian camel, mobilizing ideas of heritage and resource conservation to defend pastoralism. In exploring how the greening of the Chinese state affects the entangled lives of humans and animals at the margins of the nation-state, this study is both a political biography of the Bactrian camel and an innovative work of political ecology addressing critical questions of rural livelihoods, conservation, and state power. Thomas White is lecturer in China and Sustainable Development at the Lau China Institute, King's College London. His research interests include China's borderlands, political ecology, infrastructure, and Sino-Mongolian relations. China's Camel Country: Livestock and Nation-Building at a Pastoral Frontier (U Washington Press, 2024) is his first monograph. Yadong Li is a PhD student in anthropology at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of the anthropology of state, the anthropology of time, hope studies, and post-structuralist philosophy. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/chinese-studies

China today positions itself as a model of state-led environmentalism. On the country's arid rangelands, grassland conservation policies have targeted pastoralists and their animals, blamed for causing desertification. State environmentalism - in the form of grazing bans, enclosure, and resettlement - has transformed the lives of many ethnic minority herders in China's western borderlands. However, this book shows how such policies have been contested and negotiated on the ground, in the context of the state's intensifying nation-building project. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Alasha, in the far west of China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Thomas White describes how ethnic Mongols have foregrounded the local breed of Bactrian camel, mobilizing ideas of heritage and resource conservation to defend pastoralism. In exploring how the greening of the Chinese state affects the entangled lives of humans and animals at the margins of the nation-state, this study is both a political biography of the Bactrian camel and an innovative work of political ecology addressing critical questions of rural livelihoods, conservation, and state power. Thomas White is lecturer in China and Sustainable Development at the Lau China Institute, King's College London. His research interests include China's borderlands, political ecology, infrastructure, and Sino-Mongolian relations. China's Camel Country: Livestock and Nation-Building at a Pastoral Frontier (U Washington Press, 2024) is his first monograph. Yadong Li is a PhD student in anthropology at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of the anthropology of state, the anthropology of time, hope studies, and post-structuralist philosophy. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/sociology

China today positions itself as a model of state-led environmentalism. On the country's arid rangelands, grassland conservation policies have targeted pastoralists and their animals, blamed for causing desertification. State environmentalism - in the form of grazing bans, enclosure, and resettlement - has transformed the lives of many ethnic minority herders in China's western borderlands. However, this book shows how such policies have been contested and negotiated on the ground, in the context of the state's intensifying nation-building project. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Alasha, in the far west of China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Thomas White describes how ethnic Mongols have foregrounded the local breed of Bactrian camel, mobilizing ideas of heritage and resource conservation to defend pastoralism. In exploring how the greening of the Chinese state affects the entangled lives of humans and animals at the margins of the nation-state, this study is both a political biography of the Bactrian camel and an innovative work of political ecology addressing critical questions of rural livelihoods, conservation, and state power. Thomas White is lecturer in China and Sustainable Development at the Lau China Institute, King's College London. His research interests include China's borderlands, political ecology, infrastructure, and Sino-Mongolian relations. China's Camel Country: Livestock and Nation-Building at a Pastoral Frontier (U Washington Press, 2024) is his first monograph. Yadong Li is a PhD student in anthropology at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of the anthropology of state, the anthropology of time, hope studies, and post-structuralist philosophy. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/economics

China today positions itself as a model of state-led environmentalism. On the country's arid rangelands, grassland conservation policies have targeted pastoralists and their animals, blamed for causing desertification. State environmentalism - in the form of grazing bans, enclosure, and resettlement - has transformed the lives of many ethnic minority herders in China's western borderlands. However, this book shows how such policies have been contested and negotiated on the ground, in the context of the state's intensifying nation-building project. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Alasha, in the far west of China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Thomas White describes how ethnic Mongols have foregrounded the local breed of Bactrian camel, mobilizing ideas of heritage and resource conservation to defend pastoralism. In exploring how the greening of the Chinese state affects the entangled lives of humans and animals at the margins of the nation-state, this study is both a political biography of the Bactrian camel and an innovative work of political ecology addressing critical questions of rural livelihoods, conservation, and state power. Thomas White is lecturer in China and Sustainable Development at the Lau China Institute, King's College London. His research interests include China's borderlands, political ecology, infrastructure, and Sino-Mongolian relations. China's Camel Country: Livestock and Nation-Building at a Pastoral Frontier (U Washington Press, 2024) is his first monograph. Yadong Li is a PhD student in anthropology at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of the anthropology of state, the anthropology of time, hope studies, and post-structuralist philosophy. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

China today positions itself as a model of state-led environmentalism. On the country's arid rangelands, grassland conservation policies have targeted pastoralists and their animals, blamed for causing desertification. State environmentalism - in the form of grazing bans, enclosure, and resettlement - has transformed the lives of many ethnic minority herders in China's western borderlands. However, this book shows how such policies have been contested and negotiated on the ground, in the context of the state's intensifying nation-building project. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Alasha, in the far west of China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, Thomas White describes how ethnic Mongols have foregrounded the local breed of Bactrian camel, mobilizing ideas of heritage and resource conservation to defend pastoralism. In exploring how the greening of the Chinese state affects the entangled lives of humans and animals at the margins of the nation-state, this study is both a political biography of the Bactrian camel and an innovative work of political ecology addressing critical questions of rural livelihoods, conservation, and state power. Thomas White is lecturer in China and Sustainable Development at the Lau China Institute, King's College London. His research interests include China's borderlands, political ecology, infrastructure, and Sino-Mongolian relations. China's Camel Country: Livestock and Nation-Building at a Pastoral Frontier (U Washington Press, 2024) is his first monograph. Yadong Li is a PhD student in anthropology at Tulane University. His research interests lie at the intersection of the anthropology of state, the anthropology of time, hope studies, and post-structuralist philosophy. More details about his scholarship and research interests can be found here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/animal-studies

Iranian Languages and Dialects, Part II: Old Persian This episode delves into the rich history of Old Persian and Middle Iranian epigraphy, exploring the evolution and significance of inscriptions and manuscripts from the pre-Islamic period. We begin by defining inscriptions and manuscripts, noting the materials they were crafted on and their various purposes, from public proclamations to administrative documents. We then examine the classification of inscriptions by size, language, and style, with notable examples such as the monumental inscription of Darius I at Bīsotūn. The discussion highlights the primary Iranian languages used in inscriptions: Old Persian, Middle Persian, Parthian, Chorasmian, Sogdian, and Bactrian. These inscriptions, often trilingual, reflect the multinational nature of the Achaemenid, Parthian, Sasanian, and Kushan empires, necessitating attention to non-Iranian languages like Babylonian, Elamite, Aramaic, Greek, Sanskrit, and Middle Indian. The episode also addresses the underdeveloped state of Iranian epigraphy, with significant contributions from the Corpus Inscriptionum Iranicarum and other key archaeological reports. We then explore the pivotal discoveries and methodologies that advanced the field, including the identification and decipherment of Old Persian by early scholars. The episode concludes with an overview of the Old Persian royal inscriptions found across various sites, their linguistic significance, and the insights they provide into Achaemenid administration and culture. For a better understanding, please review my previous episode on Iranian Languages and Dialects, Part I which serves as a preamble to this discussion.

Iranian Languages and Dialects, Part III: Middle Persian Before you listen to this episode, I encourage you to check my previous episodes on Iranian languages and Dialects, particularly the one on Old Persian, which serve as prerequisites for this part. Middle Iranian refers to various now-extinct Iranian languages spoken from about the 4th century B.C.E. to after the Islamic conquest. These languages include Middle Persian (Pahlavi), Parthian, Bactrian, Chorasmian, Sogdian, and Khotanese. Middle Persian, known from inscriptions and Manichean texts from the 3rd century C.E., evolved from Old Persian. It was written in scripts derived from Aramaic and Syriac alphabets. The main Middle Persian religious texts are the Dēnkard and the Bundahišn. The Dēnkard discusses theological issues, wisdom texts, and the life of Zarathustra. The Bundahišn focuses on Zoroastrian cosmology. Other notable texts include the Dādestān ī Mēnōy ī Xrad, Dādestān ī Dēnīg, Nāmagīhā ī Manuščihr, and the Ardā Wirāz-nāmag. In the upcoming episodes, we will explore Iranian languages further, starting with Persian, also known as Parsi | Farsi.

Thanks to Will and Måns for their suggestions this week! Let's learn about some mystery bovids, or cows and cow relations! Further reading: A Book of Creatures: Songòmby Kouprey: The Ultimate Mystery Mammal A musk ox (top) and a wild yak (bottom): A young kouprey bull from the 1930s: Sculpture of two grown kouprey bulls [photo by Christian Pirkl - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=73848355]: A banteng bull (with a cow behind him) [photo taken from this site]: A qilin/kilin/kirin looking backwards: The "purple" calf: The Milka purple cow: Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I'm your host, Kate Shaw. This week we're going to learn about some mystery bovids, or cow relations, suggested by Will and Måns, whose name I am probably mispronouncing. We'll start with a mystery about the musk ox, which is not otherwise a mysterious animal. Måns emailed about reading a children's book about animals that had a picture of a musk ox in the part about the Gobi Desert. The problem is, the musk ox is native to the Arctic and was once found throughout Greenland, northern Canada, Alaska, and Siberia. So the question is, was the book wrong or are there really musk oxen in the Gobi Desert? We'll start by learning about the musk ox and the Gobi Desert. The musk ox can stand up to 5 feet tall at the shoulder, or 1.5 meters. It has thick, dense, shaggy fur all over, a tiny tail only about four inches long, or 10 cm, and horns that curve down close to the sides of its head and then curve up again at the ends. The musk ox is well adapted to the cold, which isn't a surprise since it evolved during the ice ages. Its ancestors lived alongside mammoths, woolly rhinos, and other Pleistocene megafauna. Like many cold-adapted animals, its fur consists of a thick undercoat that keeps it warm, and a much longer layer of fur that protects the softer undercoat. The undercoat is so soft and so good at keeping the animal warm in bitterly cold temperatures that people will sometimes keep musk oxen in order to gather the undercoat in spring when it starts to shed, to use for making clothing and blankets. But it's definitely not a domesticated animal. It can be aggressive and extremely dangerous. A warm coat isn't the musk ox's only cold adaptation. The hemoglobin in its blood is able to function well even when it's cold, which isn't the case for most mammals. It lives in small herds that gather close together in really cold weather to share body heat, and if a predator threatens the herd, the adults will form a ring around the calves, their heads facing outward. Since a musk ox is huge, heavy, and can run surprisingly fast, plus it has horns, if a wolf or other predator is butted by a musk ox it might end up fatally injured. The main predator of the musk ox is the human, who hunted it almost to extinction by the early 20th century. It was completely extirpated in Alaska but was reintroduced there and in parts of Canada in the late 20th century. Similarly, it was reintroduced to parts of Siberia and even parts of northern Europe, although not all the European introductions were successful. So what about the Gobi Desert? It's nowhere near the Arctic. Not all deserts are hot. A desert just has limited rainfall, and the Gobi is a cold desert. Parts of the Gobi are grasslands and parts are sandy or rocky, and it covers a huge expanse of land in central Asia, mainly divided between northern China and southern Mongolia. Some parts of it do get limited rainfall in the summer and limited snowfall and frost in the winter, but for the most part it's dry and therefore has limited vegetation for animals to eat. Animals do live in the Gobi, though. The wild Bactrian camel, which has two humps, is found nowhere else in the world and is critically endangered. The Mongolian wild ass lives in parts of the Gobi, as do several species of antelope and gazelle,

Join us this month as we explore the captivating world of an animal that thrives in some of Earth's most challenging environments. Despite their unconventional appearance, these creatures boast remarkable adaptations for survival in extreme conditions. Alex is joined by special guest, Anna Jemmett, an ecologist at the Wild Camel Protection Foundation with years of dedicated research on these incredible beings to teach us everything we didn't know. So, pack a few extra water bottles as we set out on a desert expedition to unravel the secrets and resilience of the extraordinary camel.*Producer's note: Anna would like to apologize for the neocolonial language she uses in this episode. It was done so in ignorance. Now that this error has been brought to her attention, she will refrain from using this language moving forward. The appropriate descriptions are "Camelini" to describe the tribe containing the Dromedary, Bactrian and wild camel and "Lamini" to describe the tribe containing llamas, alpacas, cicunas and guanacos.For sources and more information, please visit our website.Support the show

Lexman interviews Albert Bourla, a professor of psychiatry and the Director of the 2nd Annual Bactrian lecture. They discuss the disorder Bactrian and how it affects mammals.

Welcome to the Instant Trivia podcast episode 590, where we ask the best trivia on the Internet. Round 1. Category: All God's Creatures 1: An owl cannot move these from side to side, so it must move its head. its eyes. 2: Grevy's, the largest species of this striped mammal, is named for former French president Francois Grevy. a zebra. 3: Called a "bamboo chicken" by locals in Belize, a male one of these lizards can reach over 6 feet. an iguana. 4: This 2-humped camel is probably named for the ancient country in central Asia where it originated. the Bactrian camel. 5: This "butterfly" dog was often represented in the paintings of Peter Paul Rubens and his followers. papillon. Round 2. Category: Basketball 1: In 2000 this ex-Chicago Bull became president of the Wizards. (Michael) Jordan. 2: When these "clowns" once played in Greece the heat was so great the tar on the court melted. Harlem Globetrotters. 3: Before 1937, this game-opener was repeated after every score. center jump (jump ball). 4: In 1961-62 this Philadelphia Warrior became the only man in history to score over 4,000 points in a season. Wilt Chamberlain. 5: Though he didn't play organized hoops until 9th grade, this Spurs center is a 3-time NBA Finals MVP. Tim Duncan. Round 3. Category: Airport Codes 1: SVO, also known as Sheremetyevo. Moscow. 2: When Bill the Cat says, "ACK!" , he may mean the airport on this Massachusetts island. Nantucket. 3: A capital place: IAD. Dulles (Washington, D.C.). 4: A friendly ghost town?:CPR. Casper, Wyoming. 5: RMG, REO and FCO all serve cities or towns with this name, in Georgia, Oregon and Italy. Rome. Round 4. Category: Communication 1: In the early 1900s Congress allowed these with divided backs, half for the address and half for "Wish you were here". postcards. 2: In Sunday Dick Tracy comics it was always pointed out on Dick's wrist by an arrow. a wrist radio (2-way radio). 3: Fittingly, the Niagara Falls, N.Y. Public Library has a collection of these items that cost 23 cents to send. postcards. 4: 56' wide and 29' high, a digital billboard called the Broadway Spectacular is in the heart of this New York City area. Times Square. 5: To demonstrate this in 1877, Watson had to sing "Auld Lang Syne" and "Yankee Doodle". a telephone. Round 5. Category: Horrors! 1: Despite its title, this 1980 film had enough box office luck to produce 7 sequels by 1989. Friday the 13th. 2: John Larroquette narrated this 1974 film in which lumbering tools are put to new use. The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. 3: Seen here is the not-so-horrific star of this "tasty" horror-comedy show. Buffy the Vampire Slayer. 4: This 1960 Hitchcock classic was partly based on real-life murderer Ed Gein, who skinned his victims. Psycho. 5: You won't find this hook-handed slasher of a 1992 film taking a sunrise and sprinkling it with dew. The Candyman. Thanks for listening! Come back tomorrow for more exciting trivia! Special thanks to https://blog.feedspot.com/trivia_podcasts/

With the discovery of the city of Ai Khanoum in northeastern Afghanistan, the idea of a strong Greek presence in the makeup of Hellenistic Bactria was reinforced. At the same time, they also demonstrate a reliance on local Bactrian traditions and the formation of brand new identities. Dr. Rachel Mairs, a historian of Hellenistic Central Asia and author of "The Hellenistic Far East", joins the show to discuss the nature of identity, reassessing how we perceive "Greekness" or any other type of cultural classification in the face of a complex archaeological and epigraphical record. Episode Notes: (https://hellenisticagepodcast.wordpress.com/2022/07/07/interview-ai-khanoum-and-identity-in-hellenistic-bactria-with-dr-rachel-mairs/) Dr. Rachel Mairs The Hellenistic Central Asia Research Network (HCARN) (https://hellenisticfareast.wordpress.com/) Social Media: Twitter (https://twitter.com/HellenisticPod) Facebook (www.facebook.com/hellenisticagepodcast/) Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/hellenistic_age_podcast/) Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/hellenisticagepodcast) Show Merchandise: Etsy (https://www.etsy.com/shop/HellenisticAgePod) Redbubble (https://www.redbubble.com/people/HellenisticPod/shop?asc=u) Donations: Ko-Fi (https://ko-fi.com/hellenisticagepodcast) Amazon Book Wish List (https://tinyurl.com/vfw6ask)

The conquests of Alexander the Great resulted in tens of thousands of Greek colonists settling in Central Asia. While excavations of places like the city ruins of Ai Khanoum hint at a flourishing Hellenic culture, local Bactrian and Sogdian traditions continued to hold a powerful influence. In this episode, we take a deeper look at Greco-Bactria by analyzing the archaeological and epigraphical record, looking at key examples relating to questions of identity and organization, and ultimately conclude with the collapse of Greek power in the face of nomadic invasions and civil war during the middle of the second century B.C. Episode Notes: (https://hellenisticagepodcast.wordpress.com/2022/07/01/075-greco-bactria-alexandria-eschate-to-ai-khanoum/) Episode 075 Transcript: (https://hellenisticagepodcast.files.wordpress.com/2022/06/075-greco-bactria-alexandria-eschate-to-ai-khanoum.pdf) The Hellenistic Far East Map 2 - The Greco-Bactrian Kingdom (https://hellenisticagepodcast.files.wordpress.com/2022/06/map-2-the-greco-bactrian-kingdom.pdf) Social Media: Twitter (https://twitter.com/HellenisticPod) Facebook (www.facebook.com/hellenisticagepodcast/) Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/hellenistic_age_podcast/) Twitch (https://www.twitch.tv/hellenisticagepodcast) Show Merchandise: Etsy (https://www.etsy.com/shop/HellenisticAgePod) Redbubble (https://www.redbubble.com/people/HellenisticPod/shop?asc=u) Donations: Ko-Fi (https://ko-fi.com/hellenisticagepodcast) Amazon Book Wish List (https://tinyurl.com/vfw6ask)

Happy April 23rd everyone, and more importantly, happy Arbor Day. There is a second part.

Come learn about the bodacious Bactrian Camel!You too can appreciate these beautiful beasts in all their glory!Feel free to visit my website at https://sites.google.com/view/alexs-animal-ark or like and follow the Alex's Animal Ark Facebook page Also if there is an animal you would like to hear me cover, please email your name and the animal you want to hear about to awesomeanimals21@gmail.com and I will add it to the listMusic: Rendezvous by Shane Ivers - https://www.silvermansound.com

Photo:  Nawaz letter with seal, 300s or 400s. Letter written on parchment in the Fourth or Fifth century in the northern Hindu Kush region (in modern Afghanistan). Ten lines of Bactrian language in Greek cursive script in which Nawaz instructs Ram-yol, the recipient, to give good treatment to a third individual named Siz-bur. The letter is a palimpsest, written over an earlier, illegible document, with lines of the earlier writing visible in the margins on the left and bottom edges (no margins on right and top edges); writing is also visible on the verso. A strip almost cut away along the bottom edge is threaded through a clay seal of a divine face surrounded by a sunburst. Medieval. Ten Weeks after the Tragedy: #ClassicLongWarJournal: @BillRoggio and @ThomasJoscelyn #UNBOUND the complete, forty-minute interview, October 25, 2021. @LongWarJournal.

Photo:  Tajikistan. Painted clay and alabaster head of a Zoroastrian priest wearing a distinctive Bactrian-style headdress, Takhti-Sangin, Tajikistan, Greco-Bactrian kingdom, 3rd-2nd century BC #AfterAfghanistan:  Tajikistan under siege by the Taliban.  @BillRoggio @ThomasJoscelyn @LongWarJournal https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/china-russia-iran-and-pakistan-move-to-create-united-front-on-afghanistan/ar-AAQ1nWw

Did you know that a camel can survive for 7 days without water!? Some camels such as Bactrian camels have 2 humps and can survive for almost 7 months without water. Many people believe it is because the camels store water in their humps, but is this really true? And don't forget to subscribe to Mythbusters podcast on your favorite streaming app to ensure you are promptly notified whenever a new episode is rolled out. https://kidacity.club/ https://chimesradio.com http://onelink.to/8uzr4g https://www.instagram.com/vrchimesradio/ See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Ever wondered what it would be like to work with endangered species? Listen to this chat with Bridget Johnson, a research and conservation manager at Knowsley Safari in Merseyside all about her role and what it's like to work with all kinds of different animals. We talk a lot about the work Knowsley does with the Bactrian camel and how they offer lots of learnings to teams out in Mongolia trying to help ensure there remains a wild population of the species and why they are critically endangered. We also talk about how she got into the role, the highs and lows and advice for those keen to do something similar.www.knowsleysafariexperience.co.uk 

We’re back for another year, starting in the Gaming Hut, where beloved Patreon backer Nicola Wilson wants to know how to incorporate the relatively high cost of clothes and food in the Middle Ages into an investigative game. In the Tradecraft Hut we examine the mid-2000s Pentagon-sponsored first-person shooter Iraqi Hero, and the use Dracula […]

The relatively brief reign of Antiochus II Theos is noted for his conflict with Ptolemy II Philadelphus and his controversial marriage with Berenice Phernophoros (“the dowry-bringer”). But the true focus of this episode is the convoluted yet critically important events that took place in the eastern satrapies of Parthia and Bactria. The rebellions of governors-turned-kings like Andragoras and Diodotus was followed by an invasion of steppe peoples known as the Parni, led by their king Arsaces, which led to the creation of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom and the Parthian Empire. Title Theme: Seikilos Epitapth with the Lyre of Apollo, played by Lina Palera (https://soundcloud.com/user-994392473) Show Links Episode Notes: (https://hellenisticagepodcast.wordpress.com/2020/12/27/056-the-seleucid-empire-a-royal-wedding-a-bactrian-revolt-a-parthian-invasion/) Episode 056 Transcript: (https://hellenisticagepodcast.files.wordpress.com/2020/12/056-the-seleucid-empire-episode-transcript.pdf) Social Media: Twitter (https://twitter.com/HellenisticPod) Facebook (www.facebook.com/hellenisticagepodcast/) Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/hellenistic_age_podcast/) Show Merchandise: Etsy (https://www.etsy.com/shop/HellenisticAgePod) Redbubble (https://www.redbubble.com/people/HellenisticPod/shop?asc=u) Donations: Ko-Fi (https://ko-fi.com/hellenisticagepodcast) Amazon Book Wish List (https://tinyurl.com/vfw6ask)

Situated in northern Afghanistan, the ancient city of Balkh was one of the great cultural crossroads of world history. Following its transformation from a sacred Buddhist center into one of the holy cities of Islam, this podcast delves into the little-known interactions of Muslim, Buddhist and Jewish peoples along the pilgrimage and trade routes of Central Asia. We’ll hear what the recent discovery of medieval manuscripts in arcane languages like Bactrian and Judeo-Arabic tells us about everyday life in this pluralistic society, as well as the gradual process of conversion as Balkh’s Buddhist stupas gave way to a new sacred geography. Nile Green talks to Arezou Azad, the author of Sacred Landscape in Medieval Afghanistan: Revisiting the Faḍāʾil-i Balkh (Oxford University Press, 2013).

It’s Day Three of the first annual Big Sky Astrology PODATHON! In today’s breaking planetary news: the Sun cashes in as it trines Jupiter, Mars in Aries stations retrograde (through Nov. 13) – and what’s behind door number three? This week, April & Jen bring you five daily mini-episodes in a Podathon extravaganza! How better to celebrate our childhood memories of the Jerry Lewis Labor Day telethon? JOIN US for up-close-and-personal looks at each day’s aspects! THRILL to our special Podathon theme! And best of all, HEAR ABOUT all the treats and opportunities coming your way as a donor to the podcast! Everyone who pledges $5 or more during our fundraising week will receive invitations to four special episodes we’ll be producing at the equinoxes and solstices. And everyone who pledges $25 or more will be entered in our drawing to win great prizes that can be enjoyed by listeners around the world, including readings with April and reports from her store! DEADLINE: To be entered in the drawing, we must receive your donation of $25 or more no later than SEPTEMBER 13, 2020, at 11:59 pm PACIFIC time. The Drawing will be held on SEPTEMBER 14, with winners paw-picked by Toby, the wonder tabby! Donate at bigskyastropod.com! (A portion of our proceeds will be donated to the Muscular Dystrophy Association.) Join us for daily PODATHON episodes through Friday, Sep. 11! Sign up for April's mailing list for updates, a free monthly lunar workbook, AND an email tutorial on the Lunar Phases! Read more about this week’s astrology at the Big Sky Astrology website! Follow Big Sky Astrology on IG, Twitter, and FB @BigSkyAstrology Read a full transcript of this episode. To join the podcast conversation, leave a comment at our website! Episode links for Wednesday 9/9: Guess what day it is? And… one hump or two? Today’s Moon in Gemini always favors two of anything, but in fact a dromedary has one hump and a Bactrian camel has two! You’ll find our previous scintillating discussion of this distinction, and a camel-related Sabian symbol, in Episode 38, Taurus Last Quarter Moon – but wait, there’s S’more! . 4:25 - Kids watched lots of game shows in the 1970s because there were maybe three TV channels, no cable or VCRs, and Let’s Make a Deal filled the gap between cartoons! One of the more intriguing questions for the gameshow viewer: What is behind that curtain where Carol Merrill is standing? . 5:55 – Been missing the Moonwatch theme? . 6:24 – Today’s Moon in Gemini is (unofficially named by April and Jen) the camel Moon! . 7:27 – Feeling particularly lucky? Got an insatiable urge to shop for back-to-school supplies? Feeling the wind at your back? Could be the Sun’s trine to Jupiter today! Be yourself, and make your own luck. . 10:26 – The Mars retrograde we’re about to tell you about is true. Retrograde Mars revisits recent squares to Saturn (Sep. 29), Pluto (Oct. 9), and Jupiter (Oct. 18). These big planets are training our Mars selves to be patient, sheath our claws, and be better kittens. . 14:40 – On a hopeful note, Jen reminds us that Mars retrogrades only every two years, vs. practically half the year for Saturn-Pluto. . Thanks for joining us for our first annual Podathon week! If you’d like to support the podcast, we have several suggestions. The easiest and totally free ways are to SUBSCRIBE to the show wherever you listen to podcasts, leave a 5-star rating or a review, and spread the word by telling a friend! If you have a little cash to spare and would like to avail yourself of the lovely incentives mentioned above, you can make a one-time or recurring donation right here! . Donate here!

Jenn Martin sits down with me to discuss Bactrian camels with me. I have great respect for any animal that lives in some of the harshest conditions in the world, where temperatures range from -40C to 40C, but the camel scoffs at those types of conditions as they are built to withstand temperatures, blowing sand, and low water conditions. Jenn talks about the various adaptations that camels have devised for the wild landscapes that make them so hardy.  She also discusses what it’s like to take care of the herd of camels at the Zoo, as well as behavioural husbandry exercises the Wildlife Care team uses to improve their care.

I read from bacteriorhodopsin to bad. The word of the episode is "Bactrian camel". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bactrian_camel dictionarypod@gmail.com https://www.facebook.com/thedictionarypod/ https://twitter.com/dictionarypod https://www.instagram.com/dictionarypod/ https://www.patreon.com/spejampar 917-727-5757

In honor of my new favorite band, The Hu, let's learn about some animals from their country, Mongolia! (You can also watch the "Wolf Totem" video with English lyrics.) The Hu. Oh my heart: If you need the podcast's feed URL, it's https://strangeanimalspodcast.blubrry.net/feed/podcast/ A handsome prize-winning domesticated yak and rider (photo taken from this site): The saiga, an antelope with a serious snoot: A Bactrian camel (photo by *squints* Brent Huffman, looks like): The taimen, a fish that would swallow you whole if it could: Further watching: A clip from the TV show Beast Man showing how moist the soil is in parts of the Gobi Show transcript: Welcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I’m your host, Kate Shaw. Recently, podcaster Moxie recommended a band she liked on her excellent podcast Your Brain on Facts. The band is called The Hu, spelled H-U, and she mentioned they were from Mongolia. I checked the band out and FELL IN LOVE WITH THEM OH MY GOSH, so not only have I been recommending them to everyone, I also want to learn more about their country. So let’s learn about some interesting animals from Mongolia. But first, a quick note. About six months ago I had to migrate the site to an actual podcasting host, since I’d run out of memory on my own site. Well, there doesn’t seem to be any point to keep the old site open anymore since all the podcasting apps I checked appear to have the new feed and everything is on the new website. So in another week or two, the old site will close. If you suddenly stop receiving new episodes, please email me at strangeanimalspodcast@gmail.com and let me know what app you use for podcast listening, so I can get it updated. In the meantime, if your app gives you the option of entering a podcast feed manually, I’ve made a new page on the website, strangeanimalspodcast.blubrry.net, where you can copy and paste the feed URL. It’s also in the show notes. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or if something isn’t working. Now, back to Mongolia and its animals. Mongolia is located in Asia, north of China and south of Russia, with the Gobi Desert to the south and various mountain ranges to the north and west. You actually probably know some Mongolian history without realizing it. You’ve heard of the Great Wall of China, right? Well, it was built to keep out the Mongols, who would ride their horses into China and raid villages. Genghis Khan was the most famous Mongol in history, a fearsome warrior who conquered most of Eurasia in the early 13th century. While you’re thinking about that, here’s a short clip of my favorite Hu song, called “Wolf Totem.” There’s a link in the show notes if you want to watch the official video. Oh my gosh I love that song. Anyway, Mongolia has short summers but long, bitterly cold winters. Many people are still nomadic, a traditional culture that’s horse-based. A lot of Mongolia is grassland referred to as the steppes, which isn’t very good for farming, but which is great for horses. Domesticated animals include horses, goats, and a bovid called the yak. Let’s start with that one. The yak is closely related to both domestic cattle and to bison, and is a common domesticated animal in much of Asia. The wild yak is native to the Himalaya Mountains in Eurasia. It’s a different species from the domesticated yak and is larger, with a big bull wild yak standing up to 7.2 feet at the shoulder, or 2.2 meters. A big bull domesticated yak is closer to 4 ½ feet high at the shoulder, or almost 1.4 meters. The wild yak is usually black or brown, but domesticated yaks may be other colors and have white markings. Occasionally a wild yak is born that has golden fur. Both male and female yaks have horns, although the males usually have larger horns with a broader spread than the females. The male also has a larger shoulder hump than the female, much like bison, and males are also larger and heavier.

“In this battle, Antiochus' horse was wounded and killed, and the king himself was struck through the mouth and lost some of his teeth.  On the whole, he acquired on that occasion the greatest reputation for valor.  Because of this battle, Euthydemus was caught off […] The post Episode S2 – The Bactrian Kingdom first appeared on THE ANCIENT WORLD.

“In this battle, Antiochus’ horse was wounded and killed, and the king himself was struck through the mouth and lost some of his teeth.  On the whole, he acquired on that occasion the greatest reputation for valor.  Because of this battle, Euthydemus was caught off […] The post Episode S2 – The Bactrian Kingdom first appeared on THE ANCIENT WORLD.

Here's the thing we've noticed in the last 6 years of running our ‘camel business'…. We've noticed that animal lovers that love adventure and love to travel really are in search of something EPIC that only a handful of people will ever get to experience. The normal ‘holidays' just aren't cutting it for these type of people, they need more soul stirring adventures with real action and authentic cultural connections. Does this sound like you NAME? If this is you, this alone makes you truly unique, which calls for a 100% unique adventure holiday (that'll have your family and friends calling you crazy - sound familiar!?) DRUM ROLL….. Are you ready for the adventure of a lifetime? IMAGINE a journey to the Altai Mountains, in Mongolia, home of the famous Eagle Hunters to bond, train and trek with the magnificent Bactrian camel where we teach you EVERYTHING you need to know! 
 PICTURE yourself staying in traditional Mongolian Gers (yurt), learning ancient culture from your hosts and going trekking with camels! 
 You'll FEEL yourself come alive on this active Journey with a compassionate twist of gifting a herd of camels to a nomadic family in need (charity work never goes un-noticed)! 
 If this is sounding all too good, don't miss this opportunity of authentic culture, visiting the [famous] Golden Eagle Festival, training & bonding with camels & doing a camel trek in Mongolia! This is YOUR ultimate wilderness adventure, with camels, in the Mongolian Altai Mountains! So fellow adventurer, are you ready...? It's time to declare your unique adventure that has your name all over it! Head on over to camelconnection.com/Mongolia to find out more or simply reply to this email and we'll personally respond. Don't delay as this opportunity disappears soon! For more info visit www.camelconnection.com/mongolia Could this ultimate wilderness adventure, with camels, in the Mongolian Altai Mountains be your perfect adventure (includes charity work)…? Check it out. This camel adventure opportunity is only for a limited time and it's likely that we won't do this again as we focus on other things. Rather watch or read - do that here: www.camelconnection.com/mongolia

Here’s the thing we’ve noticed in the last 6 years of running our ‘camel business’…. We’ve noticed that animal lovers that love adventure and love to travel really are in search of something EPIC that only a handful of people will ever get to experience. The normal ‘holidays’ just aren’t cutting it for these type of people, they need more soul stirring adventures with real action and authentic cultural connections. Does this sound like you NAME? If this is you, this alone makes you truly unique, which calls for a 100% unique adventure holiday (that’ll have your family and friends calling you crazy - sound familiar!?) DRUM ROLL….. Are you ready for the adventure of a lifetime? IMAGINE a journey to the Altai Mountains, in Mongolia, home of the famous Eagle Hunters to bond, train and trek with the magnificent Bactrian camel where we teach you EVERYTHING you need to know! 
 PICTURE yourself staying in traditional Mongolian Gers (yurt), learning ancient culture from your hosts and going trekking with camels!  
 You’ll FEEL yourself come alive on this active Journey with a compassionate twist of gifting a herd of camels to a nomadic family in need (charity work never goes un-noticed)! 
 If this is sounding all too good, don’t miss this opportunity of authentic culture, visiting the [famous] Golden Eagle Festival, training & bonding with camels & doing a camel trek in Mongolia!  This is YOUR ultimate wilderness adventure, with camels, in the Mongolian Altai Mountains! So fellow adventurer, are you ready...? It’s time to declare your unique adventure that has your name all over it! Head on over to camelconnection.com/Mongolia to find out more or simply reply to this email and we’ll personally respond. Don’t delay as this opportunity disappears soon! For more info visit www.camelconnection.com/mongolia Could this ultimate wilderness adventure, with camels, in the Mongolian Altai Mountains be your perfect adventure (includes charity work)…? Check it out. This camel adventure opportunity is only for a limited time and it’s likely that we won’t do this again as we focus on other things. Rather watch or read - do that here: www.camelconnection.com/mongolia

One thing we know for certain is that life is a continuous cycle of learning, especially when working with animals. Every camel course, event and trek we do, without fail, we learn something new about the animals that we are so blessed to learn from and work with. We have our 'foundation training' we teach and work within at every event we hold, but one thing can NEVER be learnt in full and that is the millions of different camel personalities that exists and how to adjust training & handling to suit a particular individual (camel). That's why so many of you keep coming back for more courses and events with us - the learning is endless (and addictive)! Camels are like humans in that sense, and often it surprises people, that every camel has a completely different personality. In this podcast episode we're sharing all the noticeable, and not so noticeable, learnings from working with, training & handling the Bactrian camels in Mongolia. Tune in now to hear how we came across the opportunity (as Australian's who've never seen a bactrian camel before) to work with & train bactrian camels in Mongolia. And the amazing (and sometimes hard lessons) we had to learn like the first noticeable difference in the training & handling of the bactrian camels and the adjustments and adaptations we had to make. Tune in below on your favourite platform. Join the conversation over at https://camelconnection.com/mongolian-camel-lessons-we-learnt To apply for/check out our MONGOLIA CAMEL JOURNEY visit: https://camelconnection.com/mongolia

One thing we know for certain is that life is a continuous cycle of learning, especially when working with animals.  Every camel course, event and trek we do, without fail, we learn something new about the animals that we are so blessed to learn from and work with. We have our 'foundation training' we teach and work within at every event we hold, but one thing can NEVER be learnt in full and that is the millions of different camel personalities that exists and how to adjust training & handling to suit a particular individual (camel). That's why so many of you keep coming back for more courses and events with us - the learning is endless (and addictive)!  Camels are like humans in that sense, and often it surprises people, that every camel has a completely different personality.  In this podcast episode we're sharing all the noticeable, and not so noticeable, learnings from working with, training & handling the Bactrian camels in Mongolia. Tune in now to hear how we came across the opportunity (as Australian's who've never seen a bactrian camel before) to work with & train bactrian camels in Mongolia.  And the amazing (and sometimes hard lessons) we had to learn like the first noticeable difference in the training & handling of the bactrian camels and the adjustments and adaptations we had to make.  Tune in below on your favourite platform.  Join the conversation over at https://camelconnection.com/mongolian-camel-lessons-we-learnt To apply for/check out our MONGOLIA CAMEL JOURNEY visit: https://camelconnection.com/mongolia

One of the most common questions we get asked is "what's the difference between dromedary and bactrian camel behaviours?" Which is like asking a parent "who is your favourite child?" Beside the obvious - that dromedary camels have one hump and bactrian camels have 2 humps, the answer to this question is complex and diverse just as any camel's personality. Being from Australia, we've had limited experience with bactrian camels compared to dromedary camels (as there are no bactrian camels in Australia), although we've had the pleasure of working with bactrian camels in Mongolia and the USA. When we we're first invited to help train bactrian camels in Mongolia (our first contact with them ever), naturally we doubted ourselves first (yes, we're just as human as the next person). We took time to decide. We thought on the idea of using our Camel Connection Trust Based Camel Training® on bactrian camels, after all we'd only ever used our method on dromedary camels. With some Google searching on bactrian camels and getting lost in a sea of information we decided to close the lids on the laptops and let our intuition guide us. In reply to those that we're asking us to help them train their camels in Mongolia we replied "We will help! Our Camel Connection Trust Based Camel Training® will work on ANY camel...." And we were right! From then on we became addicted to work more with the bactrian camels and, of course, we have ample opportunities here in Australia to work with the dromedary camels. Tune in now to hear the behavioural differences that we've encountered of the bactrian and dromedary camels. To join this conversation visit: www.camelconnection.com/dromedary-vs-bactrian-camel-behaviours ------------------- To find our more about our Mongolian Camel Journey visit www.camelconnection.com/mongolia

One of the most common questions we get asked is "what's the difference between dromedary and bactrian camel behaviours?" Which is like asking a parent "who is your favourite child?" Beside the obvious - that dromedary camels have one hump and bactrian camels have 2 humps, the answer to this question is complex and diverse just as any camel's personality.  Being from Australia, we've had limited experience with bactrian camels compared to dromedary camels (as there are no bactrian camels in Australia), although we've had the pleasure of working with bactrian camels in Mongolia and the USA. When we we're first invited to help train bactrian camels in Mongolia (our first contact with them ever), naturally we doubted ourselves first (yes, we're just as human as the next person). We took time to decide. We thought on the idea of using our Camel Connection Trust Based Camel Training® on bactrian camels, after all we'd only ever used our method on dromedary camels. With some Google searching on bactrian camels and getting lost in a sea of information we decided to close the lids on the laptops and let our intuition guide us.  In reply to those that we're asking us to help them train their camels in Mongolia we replied "We will help! Our Camel Connection Trust Based Camel Training® will work on ANY camel...." And we were right! From then on we became addicted to work more with the bactrian camels and, of course, we have ample opportunities here in Australia to work with the dromedary camels.  Tune in now to hear the behavioural differences that we've encountered of the bactrian and dromedary camels. To join this conversation visit: www.camelconnection.com/dromedary-vs-bactrian-camel-behaviours ------------------- To find our more about our Mongolian Camel Journey visit www.camelconnection.com/mongolia

  PetSmart has a policy that allows you to bring your pets into their stores.  However, employees and customers at a PetSmart in Muskegon, Michigan were gobsmacked when someone brought in their 1400  pound camel.  The camel, named Jeffrey was on a bit of a field trip from the Lewis Farms and Petting Zoo with his owner Mr. Lewis.  Mr. Lewis explained he was just trying to get Jeffery used to riding in his trailer. Camels are very social animals and Jeffery was no exception and soon the customers and workers at PetSmart were all gathered around to greet him.  A camel with one hump is called a dromedary and a two-humped camel is called a Bactrian!    The word camel in Arabic literally means beauty.  Really?  Have you ever seen a camel up close?  A dragoman is a name for an Arabic interpreter who will tell you there are over 160 words in Arabic for a camel.      

Adapted to the extremes of Earth's harshest climates.  Click HERE for show notes.  Please consider visiting our Patreon page here.  Thank you for following us and subscribing. 

Every year in Saudi Arabia, a beauty contest is held for camels.  With over 50 million dollars in prize money, competition is stiff.  Over 30,000 camels participate each year being judged for batty eyelashes, pouty lips and perfectly placed humps.  The camels also compete in an obedience contest. Recently several camels were disqualified from the beauty pageant because their thimblerigging or dishonest handlers attempted to enhance their appearance with botox! Camels are very social animals and seem to talk to each other with moans and bellows. Camel sounds were used to voice the character Chewbacca in the Star Wars movies! There are two types of camels.  The Bactrian camel has two humps but can you guess where camel milk comes from?  A  dromedary!

In this episode we look at the Bactrian Camel. We also hear our weekly mystery animal sounds and learn a bit about those mystery animals. We listen to a poem about the animal world and a special presentation about animal discoveries during the Lewis and Clark Expedition, 1806-1806. Our main website is at http://www.frederickfichman.com (http://www.frederickfichman.com/) . Please help support all things "Visit the Zoo" including ebooks on Amazon.com, print books on Amazon.com, audiobooks on Audible.com, and DVDs on Amazon-CreateSpace-Allied Vaughn-Midwest Tape, and this Podcast by becoming a patron at http://www.patreon.com/visitthezoo (http://www.patreon.com/visitthezoo) . Help us to continue these podcasts and grow the "Visit the Zoo Podcast." Support this podcast

TITLE: Bactrian DESCRIPTION: Chorus of drones. ARTIST: Franklyn Monk ALBUM: Dronecast TRACK: 40 GENRE: Drone, Soundscape, Ambient YEAR: 2017 PUBLISHER: Quasigentsia TAGS: soundscape, sound design, experimental, ambient, drone, franklyn monk, dronecast, 40, reaper, audio, podcast, monk, video URL: Persistent MIRRORS: Archive Audio | Archive Video | YouTube LICENSE: Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International

In this paper Dr. Arezou Azad focused on the region of Balkh in the north of modern-day Afghanistan, ancient Bactria Noting that identities are not static, but constantly shifting, she examined the interplay between processes of self-definition and memory. Thus the land of Balkh is approached as a lieu de memoire, a site of memory that provides a useful prism through which to view the construction of historical identities. Emphasising the importance of Balkh’s geographical-topographical context as a broad and once-walled oasis, Arezou noted the land was a distinct and distinctly imagined space, a wealthy city of the medieval Silk Road. Forming part of historical Khorasan, Balkh is primarily remembered today as the homeland of the great Persian poets of the Middle Ages and the birthplace of Sufism, for example producing the mystic and poet known today as ‘Rumi.’ In these understandings ‘Balkhiness’ is Islamic and Persian, but not ‘Iranian’ – although in the current context of Tajik-Uzbek political rivalry this is changing. In pre-Islamic times, however, Balkh was only loosely governed by the Sasanian polity, a particular region with its own identified language, Bactrian, and religion, Buddhism. Yet this is only known through Chinese sources, since medieval Arabic and Persian texts merely evoke vague ‘Indic,’ Buddha-praising (botparast) or ‘Zoroastrian’ pre-Islamic cults. Certainly, the iteration of Buddhism practiced in the region was particular and unique, but the totality of the loss of memory remains striking. Ultimately Arezou argued that in this multi-lingual frontier land the development of ‘New’ Persian – a language almost identical to modern Farsi – was constitutive of the reimagining of an Abrahamic and Zoroastrian past, crystallised in a Perso-Islamic historiographical tradition. Represented by such processes as the formalisation of the epic tradition that would become Ferdowsi’s Shahnameh, it is this development which results in the ‘forgetting’ of Balkh’s Buddhist past.

A new understanding of animals was central to how Japanese people redefined their place in the natural world in the nineteenth century. In The Nature of the Beasts: Empire and Exhibition at the Tokyo Imperial Zoo (University of California Press, 2013), Ian Jared Miller explores this transformation and its reverberations in a fascinating study of the emergence of an “ecological modernity” at the Ueno Zoo in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Miller considers how imperialist expansion reshaped what the “natural world” was and how it was represented in the context of the zoo. He also looks carefully at the transformations of the zoological garden in wartime, when the core mission of the Ueno Zoo shifted from public education and imperial entertainment to mobilization for total war, including a “Great Zoo Massacre” in which the zoo’s most famous and valuable animals were systematically slaughtered in the summer of 1943. The zoo was reimagined in the postwar period, including the establishment of a new children’s zoo and a repopulation with gift animals from China, the US, and beyond. In addition to its compelling arguments and affecting narratives of Japan’s modern animal ecologies in the context of empire and beyond, The Nature of the Beasts also offers a paper bestiary of dancing bears, Bactrian camels proudly displayed as war trophies, horses that served as “animal soldiers” in wartime, a chimpanzee named Suzie who met the emperor, pandas who functioned as “living stuffed animals” and biotechnologies, and two beloved elephants that were deliberately starved to death as part of a series of wartime animal sacrifices. It is a wonderful book and it was a pleasure to talk with Ian about it. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new understanding of animals was central to how Japanese people redefined their place in the natural world in the nineteenth century. In The Nature of the Beasts: Empire and Exhibition at the Tokyo Imperial Zoo (University of California Press, 2013), Ian Jared Miller explores this transformation and its reverberations in a fascinating study of the emergence of an “ecological modernity” at the Ueno Zoo in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Miller considers how imperialist expansion reshaped what the “natural world” was and how it was represented in the context of the zoo. He also looks carefully at the transformations of the zoological garden in wartime, when the core mission of the Ueno Zoo shifted from public education and imperial entertainment to mobilization for total war, including a “Great Zoo Massacre” in which the zoo’s most famous and valuable animals were systematically slaughtered in the summer of 1943. The zoo was reimagined in the postwar period, including the establishment of a new children’s zoo and a repopulation with gift animals from China, the US, and beyond. In addition to its compelling arguments and affecting narratives of Japan’s modern animal ecologies in the context of empire and beyond, The Nature of the Beasts also offers a paper bestiary of dancing bears, Bactrian camels proudly displayed as war trophies, horses that served as “animal soldiers” in wartime, a chimpanzee named Suzie who met the emperor, pandas who functioned as “living stuffed animals” and biotechnologies, and two beloved elephants that were deliberately starved to death as part of a series of wartime animal sacrifices. It is a wonderful book and it was a pleasure to talk with Ian about it. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A new understanding of animals was central to how Japanese people redefined their place in the natural world in the nineteenth century. In The Nature of the Beasts: Empire and Exhibition at the Tokyo Imperial Zoo (University of California Press, 2013), Ian Jared Miller explores this transformation and its reverberations in a fascinating study of the emergence of an “ecological modernity” at the Ueno Zoo in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Miller considers how imperialist expansion reshaped what the “natural world” was and how it was represented in the context of the zoo. He also looks carefully at the transformations of the zoological garden in wartime, when the core mission of the Ueno Zoo shifted from public education and imperial entertainment to mobilization for total war, including a “Great Zoo Massacre” in which the zoo’s most famous and valuable animals were systematically slaughtered in the summer of 1943. The zoo was reimagined in the postwar period, including the establishment of a new children’s zoo and a repopulation with gift animals from China, the US, and beyond. In addition to its compelling arguments and affecting narratives of Japan’s modern animal ecologies in the context of empire and beyond, The Nature of the Beasts also offers a paper bestiary of dancing bears, Bactrian camels proudly displayed as war trophies, horses that served as “animal soldiers” in wartime, a chimpanzee named Suzie who met the emperor, pandas who functioned as “living stuffed animals” and biotechnologies, and two beloved elephants that were deliberately starved to death as part of a series of wartime animal sacrifices. It is a wonderful book and it was a pleasure to talk with Ian about it. Enjoy! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Listen here or subscribe on iTunes. I finally recorded and published my first trial podcast episode! I am loving Garage Band and its magic, and I thank Apple for making the software learning curve so much less steep by developing awesome user interface... I mentioned Paula of Knitting Pipeline Hopefully I can fill a niche of non-US non-British knitting podcast, I will talk about knitting and spinning stuff, about life in Indonesia, and random stuff that comes in my life. On The Needles Nespelem cardigan by Norah Gaughan, Berocco Pura Pima as suggested, US 5-3.75 mm Hiya Hiya Sharps interchangeable needles. Finished back and two fronts. Working on the collar, and still have one collar and two sleeves, AND seaming to go. A lot of ribbing and stockinette on the cardigan. Meant to be worn open. Love the yarn, but feeling the FO of a friend, very heavy. Damson by Ysolda Teague from Whimsical Little Knits 2. Three Irish Girls Kinsale Merino Tencel, colorway Serenity blue, a shipment of Sharon's Pick of The Knitter club, which is currently unavailable for new subscriptions. US 5 -3.75 mm Knit Picks nickel. Construction: garter tab, simple garter body, a stockinette edge and loops on the very edge. Working on the stockinette edge, seemingly endless. Thing about triangular shawl: easy breezy beginnings and a long slog in the end. Caravan Scarf by Anne Hanson, from Barenaked Knitspot club. First February shipment, Snow Leopard Trust handspun camel from Mongolia. 2 skeins of brown undyed Bactrian camel fiber (two-humped camel). First time ever knitting with handspun. Love the variety of texture in the yarn. Some (actually, a lot!) of vm (vegetable matters) in the yarn, but easily taken out. CO using US 4 -3.5mm, realized I was wrong about gauge. Went up to 6 halfway through the ribbing and switched to 7s for the body. going to be for dad. Hard to knit for guys especially those who live in a tropical climate like Indonesia. Off The Needles