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Manuscripts reveal the details of everyday life on the Silk Road
crets of the Silk Road The discovery of a cave full of manuscripts on the edge of the Gobi Desert reveals the details of everyday life on the Silk Road. On a summer night in 1900, a Daoist monk named Wang Yuanlu was sweeping sand from the entrance to the caves known as the Grottoes of Unparalleled Height near the town of Dunhuang in northwest China.
In both the Greek geography of Marinus of Tyre (c.70-130), transmitted by Ptolemy, and in Chinese treatises on Central Asia by Sima Qian (c.145-86 BC) and Ban Gu (32-92), von Richthofen detected a tenuous route through which, it seemed, luxury goods like silk might have travelled from workshops in China to the markets of the Roman Empire. Camels and horses were hired by envoys to carry food, water and luxury goods; when travellers were struggling to communicate with those they encountered on the road, they often relied on bilingual phrasebooks – examples found in Dunhuang include texts written in Sino-Tibetan, Sino-Khotanese, Sanskrit-Khotanese and Turco Khotanese – to conduct simple conversations. Foreigners in four directions all come and kneel down;Offering camels and sending horses without interruption.The khaghan of Ganzhou personally dispatched envoys;And expressed the wish to be the son of the Aye[‘father’, meaning the king of Dunhuang].The road to the Han at this day has no obstacles;The journeys back and forth cause no concern.
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