Xijun bore the Wusun a daughter but died soon afterward, at which point the Han court sent Princess Jieyou to succeed her.

In 64 BC another Han princess was sent to Kunmi Wengguimi, but he died before her arrival. Han emperor Xuan then permitted the princess to return, since Jieyou had married the new Kunmi, Nimi, the son of Cenzou. Jieyou bore Nimi the son Chimi. Prince Wujiutu later killed Nimi, his half-brother. Fearing the wrath of the Han, Wujiutu adopted the title of Lesser Kunmi, while Yuanguimi was given the title Greater Kunmi. The Han accepted this system and bestowed both of them with the imperial seal. After both Yuanguimi and Chimi were dead, Jieyou asked Emperor Xuan for permission to return to China. She died in 49 BC. Over the next decades the institution of the Greater and Lesser Kunmi continued, with the Lesser Kunmi being married to a Xiongnu princess and the Greater Kunmi married to a Han princess.

In 2 AD, Wang Mang issued a list of four regulations to the allied Xiongnu that the taking of any hostages from Chinese vassals, i.e. Wusun, Wuhuan and the statelets of the Western Regions, would not be tolerated.

In 74 AD the Wusun are recorded as having sent tribute to the Han military commanders in Cheshi. They are last mentioned in Chinese historical sources in 436 AD, when a Chinese envoy was sent to their country and the Wusun reciprocated.

Physical appearance

thumb|A Chinese depiction of the Wusun, from [[Gujin Tushu Jicheng, 18th century.]]

The Book of Han and Shiji do not make any special note of the physical appearance of the Wusun. The first description of the Wusun's physical appearance is found in a Western Han dynasty book of divination, the Forest of Changes by Jiaoshi Yilin, which describes the women of the Wusun as "with deep eyesockets, dark, ugly: their preferences are different, past their prime [still] without spouse." A later 7th century commentary to the Book of Han by Yan Shigu says:

Initially, when only a few number of skulls from Wusun territory were known, the Wusun were recognized as a Caucasoid people with slight Mongoloid admixture.

Language

The Wusun are generally believed to be an Indo-European people and speak a language belonging to the Indo-Iranian branch. They are thought to be Iranian-speaking by the archaeologist Elena Kuzmina, linguist János Harmatta, Joseph Kitagawa, David Durand-Guédy, Turkologist Peter B. Golden and Central Asian scholar Denis Sinor. Yan Shigu (581–645) described the Wusun's descendants with the exonym Húrén "foreigners, barbarians", Colin Masica and David Keightley also suggest that the Wusun were Tocharian-speaking. Sinor found it difficult to include the Wusun within the Tocharian category of Indo-European until further research was done. Central Asian scholar Christopher I. Beckwith suggests that the Wusun were Indo-Aryan-speaking. Beckwith specifically suggests an Indo-Aryan etymology of the title Kunmi. Other words listed by these scholars include the title bag, beg 'lord'. This theory has been criticized by modern Turkologists, including Peter B. Golden and Carter V. Findley, who explain that none of the mentioned words are actually Turkic in origin. Meanwhile, Findley considers the title beg as certainly derived from the Sogdian baga 'lord', a cognate of Middle Persian baγ (as used by the rulers of the Sassanid Empire), as well as Sanskrit bhaga and Russian bog. According to Encyclopædia Iranica: "The origin of beg is still disputed, though it is mostly agreed that it is a loan-word. Two principal etymologies have been proposed. The first etymology is from a Middle Iranian form of Old Iranian baga; though the meaning would fit since the Middle Persian forms of the word often mean 'lord,' used of the king or others. The second etymology is from Chinese 伯 (MC pˠæk̚ > bó) 'eldest (brother), (feudal) lord'. Gerhard Doerfer on the other hand seriously considers the possibility that the word is genuinely Turkish. Whatever the truth may be, there is no connection with Turkish berk, Mongolian berke 'strong' or Turkish bögü, Mongolian böge 'wizard, shaman.'"

Economy

According to the Shiji (c. 123) and the Book of Han (c. 96), Liu Xijun, a daughter of the Han prince Liu Jian, was sent to the ruler (kunmi or kunmo) of the Wusun between 110 BC and 105 BC. She describes them as nomads who lived in felt tents, ate raw meat and drank fermented mare's milk. Some early Chinese descriptions of the people were pejorative, describing them as "bad, greedy and unreliable, and much given to robbery", but their state was also described as very strong. However, the Wusun were also noted for their harmony towards their neighbours, even though they were constantly raided by the Xiongnu and Kangju.

The principal activity of the Wusun was cattle-raising, but they also practiced agriculture. Since the climate of Zhetysu and Dzungaria did not allow constant wandering, they probably wandered with each change of season in the search of pasture and water. Numerous archaeological finds have found querns and agricultural implements and bones of domesticated animals, suggesting a semi-nomadic pastoral economy. Another find at Tenlik in eastern Zhetysu () contained the grave of a high-ranking warrior associated with the Wusun, whose clothing had been decorated with around 100 golden items.

Connection to Western histography

Some scholars such as Peter B. Golden have proposed that the Wusun may have been identical with the people described by Herodotus (IV. 16–25) and in Ptolemy's Geography as Issedones (also Issedoni, Issedoi or Essedoni). Their exact location of their country in Central Asia is unknown. The Issedones are "placed by some in Western Siberia and by others in Chinese Turkestan," according to E. D. Phillips.

French historian Iaroslav Lebedynsky suggests that the Wusun may have been the Asii of Geographica.

Genetics

A genetic study published in Nature in May 2018 examined the remains of four Wusun buried between 300 BC and 100 BC. The only Y-DNA of the Wusun culture belongs to the haplogroup R1a1a-Z93. The samples of mtDNA extracted belonged to C4a1, HV6, J1c5a and U5b2c. The authors of the study found that the Wusun and Kangju had less East Asian mixture than the Xiongnu and the Saka. Both the Wusun and Kangju were suggested to be descended from Western Steppe Herders of the Late Bronze Age who admixed with Siberian hunter-gatherers and peoples related to the Bactria–Margiana Archaeological Complex. An admixture analysis suggested that Tian Shan Wusun derived the major ancestry from Western Steppe Herders at a proportion of 47%, the remainder from Khövsgöl LBA herders (21%) and BMAC (32%).

One theory has suggested that the Uissun tribe of Kazakhstan is descended from the Wusun, based on the superficial similarity of the ethnonym 'Uissun' to Wusun. A 2020 study could not find support for this theory, as the Uissun have a very low frequency of Haplogroup R1a (6%), most of it belonging to the Z94 clade rather than the Iranian Z93 clade. Most of the Uissun lineages were typical of Mongols, supporting their historically attested Mongolian origin.

See also

  • Hyksos
  • Iranians in China
  • Kassites
  • Maryannu
  • Mitanni
  • Qiang

References

Notes

Citations

Sources

  • A survey of theories of ethnic affiliations and identification of the Wusun and the Yuezhi.
  • Hill, John E. 2004. The Peoples of the West from the Weilue 魏略 by Yu Huan 魚豢: A Third Century Chinese Account Composed between 239 and 265 CE (sic.). Draft annotated English translation. Weilue: The Peoples of the West
  • 陈连开 (Liankai, Chen) (1999). 中国民族史纲要 (Outlines on China's Ethnicities). Beijing: China Financial and Economic Publishing House. .
  • Stein, Aurel M. 1921. Serindia: Detailed report of explorations in Central Asia and westernmost China, 5 vols. London & Oxford. Clarendon Press. Reprint: Delhi. Motilal Banarsidass. 1980. 国立情報学研究所『東洋文庫所蔵』貴重書デジタルアーカイブ – ディジタル・シルクロード・プロジェクト
  • 王明哲. 王明哲,王炳华著. 王炳华 (Wang Mingzhe et al.) (1983). 乌孙硏究 (Research on Wusun). Ürümqi: Xinjiang People's Press.