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| “Dayuan” and “Daxia”： Two Ethnic Names for the Greeks Reported by Zhang Qian |
| Xu Xiaoxu |
| (School of History， Renmin University of China， Beijing 100872) |
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Abstract The Greco-Bactrian Kingdom was disintegrating when Zhang Qian arrived in there. The king no longer existed， but the autonomous politics continued in the Greek cities of Bactria and Fergana. Yuezhi occupied the southern Sogdiana， but did not directly rule Bactria， where Greek authorities were only subordinate to them. This political situation led Zhang Qian to regard these three regions as three “states”. It was in such a Hellenistic historical context that Zhang Qian defined Fergana as “Dayuan” and Bactria as “Daxia” by using the ethnic names for the Greeks from different languages that he heard at different points in his travels. “Dayuan” derived from the Oriental exonym for the Greeks， which was in turn how the Ionians， a sub-group of the Greeks， called themselves. “Daxia” was the Greek name to address the Greeks. Zhang Qian's definition created a tradition of knowledge about the “Western Regions” for the Chinese. The interpretation of this tradition should be placed in its historical context reconstructed from a synthesis of multilingual historical and archeological sources.
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Received: 08 December 2023
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2023, Vol. 62 
