"The natives only take water from the bottle and wear it." And see the Zhongyuan Ji Ware, Xi Yue: Peach Blossom Stone everything is coincidental. Peach blossom stone, called Han people also. ”
The above passage is just selected from the 13th-century "Changchun Zhenren Journey to the West", where the Changchun Zhenren is the famous Taoist Priest Qiu Chuji (he is not fictional in the novel, but a famous Daoist in real history).
Hill machine
Written by his apprentice Li Zhichang, this book records what his teachers and disciples saw and heard on their way to Central Asia at the invitation of Genghis Khan, and also recounted the life of some qiu Zhiji, which is an important text for the study of the history of Central Asia, Mongolia and Chinese Taoism in the 13th century.
Genghis Khan talked to Yau
The paragraph just said about the city of Alima (an ancient city in Central Asia, in the area of Huocheng County, present-day Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture in Xinjiang, China), and there is a word in it that everyone may feel a little strange:
Peach blossom stone. This is not a kind of stone, according to the book, this peach blossom stone refers to the Han people.
That's interesting, why is there such a strange name?
In March 1980, a large number of Qarakhanid coins were found in Artush County, Xinjiang, including more than a dozen inscriptions on the back
"Sulayman Kader Peach Stone Khan"
Words. It is speculated that this should have been minted in 1023 (the first year of the Reign of Emperor Renzong of the Northern Song Dynasty) during the reign of Sulayman Ben Yusufu, who ascended to the throne of the Great Khan, but it refers to the word "peach blossom stone" and the Qarakhanid dynasty coin minted with this term, which was first found in China.
However, this term appears frequently in the literature, and the term also appears in the Eastern Roman Empire, the Arab world, turkic and Uighur literature, such as the Byzantine (Eastern Roman) Empire historian Theophylact Simocatta, written in the early 7th century of history, there is a paragraph mentioning the unity of Taugast (Greek: Ταυγγτ, pronounced "peach blossom stone"), The sinologist Boodberg believes that this refers to the northern Zhou dynasty in 577; the Que special service stele of the Turkic khaganate after the 8th century refers to tabγa ( peach blossom stone ) as a Han chinese.
The "Journey to the West of the True People of Changchun" just mentioned is the first time that this term appears in Chinese classics.
How did this interesting word come about? Some historians believe that this is the surname of the Northern Wei imperial family "Tuoba",
Although the Tuoba family is a Humble person, after all, the dynasty that was also established is still dominated by Han civilization.
So what does "Tuoba" mean? This is, of course, a transliteration of the Chinese language, according to the research of Li Gaiti and the Taiwanese scholar Lin Anqing,
Tuoba is essentially composed of two Altaic words, namely tog (拓) and beg (跋, i.e., Bey), tog has the meaning of dust and earth, beg is the clan and tribal leader, both of which are official names of later Turks.
The official history book of the Northern Wei Dynasty, the Book of Wei, is being compiled
"The northern custom is that the soil is the trust, and the back is the trek, so it is thought to be the clan"
Prove it too.
But also
Some people have different opinions, thinking that this is actually a transliteration of "Tang Family" or "Han Family".
Those who hold the former view have this evidence: the "Tang" in Uighur is the transliteration of Tayto, while the History by the Byzantine historian Mocatta was written from 610 to 638, and the Chronicle of Emperor Morris, in which the word "peach blossom stone" appears in the book, was written in 628, when the Tang Dynasty was established, equivalent to the Zhenguan period.
Although the events before the Tang Dynasty are recorded in this book, the Taugast in the text may be synonymous with the false pretext that appears only later. That is, no matter what the name of ancient China is, whether it is the Qin Dynasty or the ancient Han Dynasty, it is referred to as "peach blossom stone"; and those who hold the latter version believe that the word "peach blossom stone" was formed during the Xiongnu period, and the Turks inherited this name, "?" It is a Turkic honorific, so Tabγa corresponds to "Great Han", but because this statement is not rigorous and somewhat imaginative, it is very controversial.