Serica

Serica (, grc, Σηρικά) was one of the easternmost countries of Asia known to the Ancient Greek and Roman geographers. It is generally taken as referring to North China during its Zhou, Qin, and Han dynasties, as it was reached via the overland Silk Road in contrast to the Sinae, who were reached via the maritime routes. A similar distinction was later observed during the Middle Ages between " Cathay" (north) and "Mangi" or "China" (south). The people of Serica were the Seres ( grc, Σῆρες), whose name was also used for their region. Access to Serica was eased following the Han conquest of the Tarim Basin (modern Xinjiang) but largely blocked when the Parthian Empire fell to the Sassanids. Henry Yule summarized the classical geographers:

If we fuse into one the ancient notices of the Seres and their country, omitting anomalous statements and manifest fables, the result will be something like the "The region of the Seres is a vast and populous country, touching on the east the Ocean and the limits of the habitable world, and extending west to Imaus and the confines of Bactria. The people are civilized, mild, just, and frugal, eschewing collisions with their neighbours, and even shy of close intercourse, but not averse to dispose of their own products, of which raw silk is the staple, but which include also silk-stuffs, fine furs, and iron of remarkable quality." That is manifestly a definition of the Chinese.

Some scholars, however, contend the Seres were not the Chinese themselves but tribes speaking Indo-European languages on the western edges of the Chinese dynasties and empires who traded with the ancient Indians, such as the Yuezhi, Saka, and Tocharians.

Name

The Latin forms ' and ' derive from the Greek ''Sērikḗ'' () and ''Sḗres'' (). This seems to derive from their words for silk ( grc-gre, σηρικός, ''sērikós''; la, sericum), which since Klaproth has often been linked to the Chinese , whose Old Chinese pronunciation has been reconstructed as . The Greeks and Romans knew of silk long before they understood its origin from silkworms, making ''sēr'' () a backformation. Other forms of the name include ''Serica Regio''. Flavius Josephus, in his book Antiquities of the Jews, book 1, paragraph 147, call that region "Σηρια", that in Latin letters is "Seria".

Some classicists have argued that it was extremely improbable that a nation would be named after an insect. Lassen claimed to have identified references to the ''Seres'' in Hindu scripture, as the " Çaka akas Tukhâra actria and Kanka angju.

Accounts

Overview

Beginning in the 1st century BC with Virgil, Horace, and Strabo, Roman histories offer only vague accounts of China and the silk-producing ''Seres'' of the Far East. Florus seems to have confused the Seres with peoples of India, or at least noted that their skin complexions proved that they both lived "beneath another sky" than the Romans.Max Ostrovsky (2007), ''Y = Arctg X: the Hyperbola of the World Order'', Lanham, Boulder, New York, Toronto, Plymouth: University Press of America, , p. 44. The 1st-century geographer Pomponius Mela asserted that the lands of the Seres formed the center of the coast of an eastern ocean, flanked to the south by India and to the north by the Scythians of the Eurasian Steppe. The historian Ammianus Marcellinus (c. 330 – c. 400) wrote that the land of the Seres was enclosed by great natural walls around a river called Bautis, possibly a description of the Yellow River. From Turkic peoples of Central Asia the later Eastern Romans (i.e. Byzantines) derived a new name for China, Taugast (Turkic: ''Tabghach''), during its Northern Wei (386–535) period. By the time of the Eastern Roman ruler Justinian I (r. 527–565), the Byzantines purchased Chinese silk from Sogdian intermediaries. However, they also smuggled silkworms out of China with the help of Nestorian monks, who claimed that the land of " Serindia" was located north of India and produced the finest silk.Luttwak, Edward N. (2009). ''The Grand Strategy of the Byzantine Empire''. Cambridge and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. , p. 168.

Ctesias

The first surviving European accounts of the Seres are those in Ctesias's 5th-century BC '' Indica'', where he calls them "a people of portentous stature and longevity". The authenticity of the account is, however, disputed.

Strabo

Strabo's 1st-century ''Geography'' mentions the Seres in two asides. In the first passage, he mentions that "some writers" claim the Seres to be longer lived than the Indians of Musicanus, whom Onesicritus claimed lived to the age of 130. In the second, a passage discussing the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, he mentions that Apollodorus of Artemita claimed the Bactrians' borders stretched "even as far as the Seres and the Phryni".

Pomponius Mela

Pomponius Mela's ''De situ orbis'' names the Seres as one of three peoples inhabiting the eastern extremity of Asia. He places the Seres between the Indians to the south and the Scythians to the north. In a later passage, he notes: P. Mela
''De Situ Orbis'', Bk. III, Ch. vii

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