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The oasis town of 'Hotan' (Uyghur: خوتەن/; , formerly: ; also spelled ''Khotan'')^[1] It was previously known in Chinese as 于窴 pinyin: Yutian .
Hotan is the capital of Hotan Prefecture, Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, China. With a population of 114,000 (2006), Hotan lies in the Tarim Basin, just north of the Kunlun Mountains, which are crossed by the Sanju, Hindu-tagh, and Ilchi passes.
The town, located southeast of Yarkand and populated almost exclusively by Uyghurs, is a minor agricultural center. An important station on the southern branch of the historic Silk Road, Hotan has always depended on two strong rivers - the Karakash River and the Yurungkash River - to provide the water needed to survive on the southwestern edge of the vast Taklamakan Desert. The Yurungkash still provides water and irrigation for the town and oasis.

Contents

History

Footnotes

References

External links

History

The oasis of Hotan is strategically located at the junction of the southern (and most ancient) branch of the famous “Silk Route” joining China and the West with one of the main routes from India and Tibet to Central Asia and distant China. It provided a convenient meeting place where not only goods, but technologies, philosophies, and religions were transmitted from one culture to another. The desert atmosphere of the Hotan oasis has preserved perishable items such as wood, fabric, and - perhaps most dramatically - the Tarim mummies, dating from before the Christian era.

There is a relative abundance of information on Hotan readily available for study. The main historical sources are to be found in the Chinese histories (particularly detailed during the Han and early Tang dynasties), the accounts of several Chinese pilgrim monks, a few Buddhist histories of Hotan that have survived in Tibetan, and a large number of documents in Khotanese and other languages discovered, for the most part, early this century at various sites in the Tarim Basin and from the hidden library at the “Caves of the Thousand Buddhas” near Dunhuang.
As the above-mentioned sources indicate, Hotan was the main source of the nephrite jade used in ancient China. For several hundred years, until they were defeated by the Xiongnu in 176 BCE, the trade of Hotanese jade into China was controlled by the nomadic Yuezhi. The Chinese still refer to the Yurungkash as the White Jade River, alluding to the white jade recovered from its alluvial deposits. Most of the jade is now gone, but an occasional piece may still be found.
The ancient Kingdom of Khotan was one of the earliest Buddhist states in the world and a cultural bridge across which Buddhist culture and learning were transmitted from India to China.[1] The Chinese-Khotanese relations were so close that the oasis emerged as one of the earliest centres of silk manufacture outside China. There are good reasons to believe that the silk-producing industry flourished in Hotan as early as the fifth century.^[2] According to one story, a Chinese princess given in marriage to a Khotan prince brought to the oasis the secret of silk-manufacture, "hiding silkworms in her hair as part of her dowry".^[3] It was from Khotan that the eggs of silkworms were smuggled to Persia, reaching Justinian's Constantinople in 551 AD.^[4]
Khotan carpets, made from local wool and other textiles, were praised by Marco Polo (who passed through the town in 1274) and are still prized all over Asia.[2] The Venetian adventurer wrote about the Khotanese that they "have vineyards and gardens and estates. They live by commerce and manufactures, and are no soldiers." Khotan converted to Islam at some point around the turn of the 13th century. The town suffered severely during the Dungan revolt against the Qing Dynasty in 1864-1875, and again a few years later when Yaqub Beg of Kashgar made himself master of East Turkestan.

Footnotes

1. The official spelling is "Hotan" according to ''Zhōngguó dìmínglù'' 中国地名录 (Beijing, ''Zhōngguó dìtú chūbǎnshè'' 中国地图出版社 1997); ISBN 7-5031-1718-4; p. 312.
2. Whitfield, Susan. ''The Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War and Faith''. Serindia Publications Inc., 2004. ISBN 1932476121. Page 47.
3. Sarah Underhill Wisseman, Wendell S. Williams. ''Ancient Technologies and Archaeological Materials ''. Routledge, 1994. ISBN 288124632X. Page 131.
4. "From Khotan, silk culture is believed to have passed by way of Kashmir to India
and then westwards into central Asia and Persia". Quoted from Chambers's Encyclopaedia, Oxford University Press, 1950, article "Silk".

References

★ Hill, John E. 1988. “Notes on the Dating of Khotanese History.” ''Indo-Iranian Journal'' 31 (1988), pp. 179-190.

★ Hill, John E. 2003. "Annotated Translation of the Chapter on the Western Regions according to the ''Hou Hanshu''." 2nd Draft Edition. [3]

★ Hill, John E. 2004. ''The Peoples of the West from the Weilüe'' 魏略 ''by Yu Huan'' 魚豢'': A Third Century Chinese Account Composed between 239 and 265 CE.'' Draft annotated English translation. [4]

★ Hulsewé, A. F. P. and Loewe, M. A. N. 1979. ''China in Central Asia: The Early Stage 125 BC – AD 23: an annotated translation of chapters 61 and 96 of the History of the Former Han Dynasty''. E. J. Brill, Leiden.

★ Legge, James 1886. ''A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms: Being an account by the Chinese Monk Fa-Hien of his travels in India and Ceylon (A.D. 399-414) in search of the Buddhist Books of Discipline''. Oxford, Clarendon Press. Reprint: New York, Paragon Book Reprint Corp. 1965.

★ Mallory, J. P. and Mair, Victor H. 2000. ''The Tarim Mummies: Ancient China and the Mystery of the Earliest Peoples from the West''. Thames & Hudson. London. 2000.

★ Montell, Gösta, ''Sven Hedin’s Archaeological Collections from Khotan: Terra-cottas from Yotkan and Dandan-Uiliq'', The Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 7 (1936), pp. 145-221.

★ Montell, Gösta, ''Sven Hedin’s Archaeological Collections from Khotan II'' (appendix by Helmer Smith (pp. 101-102)), The Bulletin of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities 10 (1938), pp. 83-113.

★ Puri, B. N. ''Buddhism in Central Asia'', Motilal Banarsidass Publishers Private Limited, Delhi, 1987. (2000 reprint).

★ Stein, Aurel M. 1907. ''Ancient Khotan: Detailed report of archaeological explorations in Chinese Turkestan'', 2 vols. Clarendon Press. Oxford. [5]

★ Stein, Aurel M. 1921. ''Serindia: Detailed report of explorations in Central Asia and westernmost China'', 5 vols. London & Oxford. Clarendon Press. Reprint: Delhi. Motilal Banarsidass. 1980. [6]

★ Watters, Thomas 1904-1905. ''On Yuan Chwang’s Travels in India''. London. Royal Asiatic Society. Reprint: Delhi. Mushiram Manoharlal. 1973.

★ Yu, Taishan. 2004. ''A History of the Relationships between the Western and Eastern Han, Wei, Jin, Northern and Southern Dynasties and the Western Regions''. Sino-Platonic Papers No. 131 March, 2004. Dept. of East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Pennsylvania.

External links

★

★ Silk Road Seattle (The Silk Road Seattle website contains many useful resources including a number of full-text historical works)

★ [7] (A site devoted to the Buddhism of Khotan with a copy of Sir Aurel Stein's map of the Tarim Basin and Khotan region)

★ Satellite image of region which can be enlarged

★ Enlargeable Map of Khotan

★ China: Taklamakan - Desert With No Ocean Underground