The Horse Trade in Silk Road Seen from The Journey to the West

　　Chen Wei

　　The Journey to the West is a well-known famous novel, whose content can be said to be a projection of social life at that time, and there are many descriptions of the Silk Road in the book. In the eighty-fourth time, four men and women passed through France and heard that the king was only four places short of his wish to slaughter thousands of monks, so they had to dress up as businessmen. This is the strongest plot of The Journey to the West’s trade on the Silk Road, which allows us to understand many aspects of the Ming Dynasty trade, such as the appellation of merchants, the custody of property in business travel, the price and trading methods of bulk goods, and so on, which also involves the important trade on the Silk Road — — Selling horses.

　　Important areas in silk road trade

　　On the Silk Road, in addition to silk, many goods such as tea and porcelain continued to flow between China and other regions in large quantities, which made the connection between different cultures close and stable, and made ancient China an important puzzle in the world system.

　　Horses are similar to the above-mentioned materials, but in the opposite direction. They are a large number of commodities imported into China from abroad in history. We sometimes see such names as "Silk Horse Trade" and "Tea Horse Road". It can be said that horses are integrated with China’s export materials such as silk, tea and porcelain, and exchanged among the parties in the market along the Silk Road.

　　Horses have been used in China since the Bronze Age, and a special institution for raising and managing horses has been set up in the central government. However, at that time, there was still an urgent need to build elite cavalry horses, so Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty obtained the "West Pole Tianma" from Central Asia at all costs. After the Han Dynasty, there was a gradual physical trade between the Central Plains Dynasty and the surrounding nomadic regimes in exchange for good horses. During the Tang and Song Dynasties, the imperial court bought tens of thousands of horses every year.

　　Horse trade is not unique between China and its neighboring ethnic groups. Riding originated in the vast Eurasian grassland, where the interaction between nomadic people and surrounding areas may lead to the flow of horses. Horse trade is not limited to Eurasian grasslands. For example, after the emergence of cavalry and chariots in ancient Egypt in the 15th century BC, Kush, which is located in the south of them, which is today’s Sudan, was used as a good horse producing area. In the 8th century BC, a large number of horses from ancient Egypt were imported into the Near East, forming the chariot forces of Assyria, a military power.

　　Around this time, Sketai people gradually marched from Eurasian grassland to the Black Sea and even the Danube River basin, and their superb riding skills left a deep impression on the ancient Greeks. Later, the ancient Greeks established colonies around the Black Sea, from which they obtained the horses of the Skettians. It can be seen that horse trade has appeared in different parts of the world since nearly 3000 years ago and has become an important part of transnational trade.

　　Development of Xiangma Technology

　　Because horses are always valuable strategic resources, how to develop the knowledge of knowing, raising and protecting horses to make the best use of them has become an important task in agricultural areas. As the old saying goes, "Bole is rare", but from a global perspective, Bole, which is good at horse-riding, is found in all civilizations.

　　In the pre-Qin period, the horse administration was quite perfect. Zhou Li said that the primary task of horse officials was to distinguish good horses that were suitable for running on different roads and those that could only serve and contribute. Not later than the Han dynasty, people have systematically summarized the experience of distinguishing horses and formed a kind of works such as Xiangma Jing. Xiang Ma Jing, a silk book unearthed from Mawangdui Han Tomb, has a full text of more than 5,200 words. The morphology of the head, eyes, limbs and other parts is used to identify different levels of horses such as national horses, national treasures, world horses and Juechen. A part of Xiang Ma Jing preserved in Qi Min Yao Shu by Jia Sixie in the Northern Wei Dynasty further linked the five senses with the five zang-organs, and developed the method of Xiang Ma Wu-organs.

　　If the Spring and Autumn Period, the Warring States Period and the Qin and Han Dynasties were the period of vigorous development of horse breeding in China, ancient Greece and Rome, which were located at the other end of Eurasia at the same time, were also rich. Ma Jin was described in detail in the zoological discourses of Aristotle, Ariane and Pliny Sr, in the agricultural works of Varo and Krumera, and in the veterinary works of Peragnius. Its content includes not only the knowledge of breeding and feeding needed for keeping horses, but also the method of determining the age of horses according to teeth — — The latter is especially important to see through the deception of unscrupulous horse dealers when buying and selling.

　　The earliest book on horse breeding in ancient India, The Complete Book of Sally Hotra, was written in the 3rd century BC. The book records the anatomy, physiology, diseases and surgery of horses, as well as the knowledge of identifying the age of horses. Judging from the chapter structure, the book may have internal relations with ancient Greek works.

　　The knowledge of horse husbandry in classical times, especially the knowledge of anatomy and physiology of horses, was inherited by Arab animal husbandry with the translation movement. Influenced by the teachings of the prophet Muhammad, Arab princes and nobles especially like thoroughbred horses, so the main job of Arab Bole is to identify whether horses have noble origins. They can search the characteristics and lineages of various famous horses, and can also judge their lineages according to their external characteristics.

　　The horse riding in different cultures is obviously the product of the continuous stimulation of ancient zoology by the horse trade. In terms of knowledge content, there is no lack of overlap between different cultures, but in terms of theme and preference, they are different with the implication of horses in local culture. For example, China Xiang Equestrian selects "Maxima" who is good at running in order to enrich cavalry; In ancient Greece, horses were mostly used as draught animals, so it was important to identify the age teeth.

　　So how did Tang Priest choose a horse? According to the biography of Xuanzang in the Tang Dynasty, he bought a strong horse at first, but later, when crossing the desert, he listened to the words of an old man and changed to an old horse that had traveled back and forth dozens of times. This is just the opposite of the experience of changing horses in The Journey to the West.

　　(The author is an associate researcher at the Institute of Natural Science History, Chinese Academy of Sciences)