Yuezhi
Yuezhi (Chinese 月氏; Wade-Giles: Yüeh-Chih) is the Chinese name for an ancient Central Asian people. They are believed to have been the same as or closely related to the Tocharians, who spoke an Indo-European language called Tocharian. They were settled in the Tarim Basin area, in what is today Gansu and Xinjiang.
The Yuezhi exodus
Following a defeat in 162 BCE by the Xiongnu (Huns), the Yuezhi fled from the Tarim Basin and migrated to the Ili Valley in modern-day Kazakhstan. They displaced the Saka Scythians who lived there previously, before being driven out by the Wusun in 132 BCE.
The Yuezhi then fled to the region of Bactria in modern-day Afghanistan, which had been conquered first by the Greeks under Alexander the Great in 330 BC, and had then been settled by the Greek dynasties of the Seleucids and the Greco-Bactrians for the two centuries ever since. The last Greco-Bactrian king Heliocles I retreated and moved his capital to the Kabul valley. The eastern part of Bactria was occupied by Pashtun people.
As they settled in Bactria, the Yuezhi became Hellenized to some degree, as suggested by their adoption of the Greek alphabet and by some remaining coins, minted in the style of the Greco-Bactrian kings, with the text in Greek.
The Kushan empire
Over the next century, the Yuezhi gradually established control over the area, founding the Kushan Empire, which was to rule the region for several centuries. In Bactria, they converted to Buddhism and their interactions with Greek civilization helped create Gandhara culture and Greco-Buddhism.
In the early 1st millennium CE, Central Asian peoples including the Yuezhi were among the first to translate Buddhist scriptures into Chinese. Major Yuezhi translators included Lokaksema and Dharmaraksha.
Yuezhi monarchs
References
- and their wars with the Yuezhi
- on Yuezhi migrations
- on Yuezhi migrations in Central Asia
- from the University of Washington
- on Yuezhi translators
-
-
