Page:The English Historical Review Volume 20.djvu/633

 NO. LXXX.—OCTOBER 1905 China and the Ancient Cabul Valley

HERE is no mention of the considerable state which the the Chinese call Ki-pin until the beginning of the first century before Christ. The Chinese had then for a generation or so already discovered the West: they were not only able to assert themselves up to the same mountain limits that bound the empire now, but they had also some knowledge of Parthia—that is, Persia—of the whole Oxus and Jaxartes region, and of a large state which completely barred their way to the Indus valley and India. This state, in imitation of the native sound, they called Ki-pin or 'Shawl-guests.' In naming new states the Chinese either gave them, and still give them, a well-known Chinese name, often with a differentiating word added—as, for instance, we say New South Wales;—or they imitated as closely as convenient the foreign sound by using one or more Chinese characters, either as pure phonetics or as also descriptive of some striking local peculiarity. Thus Ki-pin was noted for its ki, or 'shawls,' 'rugs,' &c.; and to pin, or 'to guest,' meant 'to come to court with presents or homage.' The earliest political situation known to the Chinese was this: The Hunnish or Scythian tribes (first called 'Turks' in A.D. 550 ) had, in the course of their predatory wars, driven one large tribe of their VOL. XX.—NO. LXXX.