Page:The English Historical Review Volume 20.djvu/638

 wine was, according to Yule, well known as early as 300, we may conclude that it had always been a petty dependency of Ki-pin or some other great power. As the pilgrim Hüan-tsang gives it a circuit of 4,000 li in 638, and ascribes to it an hegemony over ten other states, it seems likely that in his time part of the old state of Ki-pin had locally acquired the new generic name of Kapiça, to distinguish it from the Turkish portion of Ki-pin.

The seventh century opens with the reconquest of North and South China as one whole under two purely native dynasties, reigning from 581 to 618 and from 618 onwards. The former of these was anxious to reopen communications with the East Roman empire and with India; but it failed in both cases, and its emissaries, as is explicitly admitted, never penetrated beyond the Oxus region in either direction. The Sui-Shu published in 656, which records the history of this enterprising Sui dynasty, gives in chapter 83 an account of a country, hitherto all but unheard of, 1,700 li (570 miles) south of Tokhara, called Ts'ao, which has been identified with Tsâukûta, i.e. Ghazni or Zabulistan, southwest of Cabulistan. But this account is a mere copy of what had already been stated of the same country in recapitulation by the Tartar history, which, as we have said, includes an account of Ki-pin, copied from the earlier history of the Han family. This Ts'ao state was 700 li south of Bamyân. It is distinctly identified in 580–606 with the Ki-pin of Han times, but nothing is said of its capital city, except that it was over a mile in extent, and moreover it is plainly stated to be, or to have recently been, under the rule of the Indo-Scythian princes of Samarcand and the Oxus region—that is, of the later Kushans or Ephthalites. In other words, although previously to Sui times the Turks and the Persians between them had annihilated the Indo-Scythian or Ephthalite empire, the Sui history, as is the Chinese wont, continues to repeat partly obsolete stories. The productions of Ts'ao in 600 are described much as those of Ki-pin were in the earliest histories for  100, including the elephants, the shawls or rugs, the humped cattle, metals, drugs, &c.; but in such a way as to suggest a quite new and independent nomenclature from fresh observations, and no mere copying. The remarks upon religion prove that either Christianity or the Persian 'heresies' had partly, if not wholly, displaced Buddhism there.

The next dynastic chronicle is that contained in the Old and New T'ang Shu, which were published respectively about 750 and 1060, and relate the history of the T'ang family, 618–906. This reverts to Ki-pin, and calls its capital by the same name as in the earliest times. At the same time it states that this Ki-pin is