Free Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia From the Bronze Age to the Present by Christopher I. Beckwith Page A

Iranian family of languages, they belong to a different branch of the family. Much of the confusion is due to the name
Iranian,
which, however, has nothing specifically to do with modern Iran (formerly Persia); it is a scholarly term for the language family and the peoples who spoke the languages. Like the Persians, the Arabs quickly overran Western and Southern Central Asia, but they too never controlled it firmly, and they lost what control they did have rather early. The Chinese similarly had trouble establishing firm control over the Eastern subregion of Central Asia.
    66. Hsüan Tsang spent his month at the Nawbahâr of Balkh studying the
Mah
ā
vibhāṣaśāstra,
an important Sarvastivadin text
(TSFC
2: 33) that is “an encyclopedia of Buddhist philosophy; in it opinions of several ancient and contemporary philosophies of different schools are carefully registered and discussed” (Ch’en 1992: 95 n. 9). Fortunately, he brought a copy back to China and translated it; subsequently it was lost in all other languages. Some good work has recently been done on the text and others related to it (Takeda and Cox forthcoming; Willemen et al. 1998).
    67. The civil war broke out after the murder of the third caliph of the new Arab Empire, ‘Uthmân (r. 644–656). Although the Prophet Muḥammad’s cousin ‘Alî (r. 656–661) succeeded, continuing discontent over the policies of ‘Uthmân and the desire for revenge by Mu’âwiya, the governor of Syria, who was ‘Uthmân’s cousin, led the realm into civil war. ‘Alî’s eldest son, al-Ḥasan, succeeded, but quickly abdicated in favor of Mu’âwiya. The uprisings in Khurasan actually broke out shortly after the first Arab conquests there, and despite several expeditions to put them down, the Arabs had little success there until after the civil war (Shaban 1970: 26–27).
    68. The title Spurgyal has usually been understood to mean ‘king of Spu’ (Beckwith 1993). Yet it is probably a mistranslation, and in truth we do not know what it means, though it does seem to be
possible
that Spu was the early dynastic name of Tibet, and the title does occur in imperial period texts. Recently some Tibetans and Tibetologists have begun using the title ‘Spurgyal’ to mean ‘Tibetan Empire’. This seems to be ahistorical, and is actually contradicted by bilingual (Old Tibetan and Chinese) sources, which refer to the country as
Bod chen
‘Great Tibet’, precisely parallel to (and undoubtedly modeled on) Chinese usage, for example,
Ta T’ang
‘Great T’ang’. The problem calls for scholarly attention.
    69. It continues to be stated, based on postimperial Tibetan accounts, that the princess, Wen-ch’eng kung-chu (written
Mun ca
η
ko
η
co
in the
Old Tibetan Annals),
was to be married to Emperor Khri Srong Rtsan (Khri Srong Brtsan, alias Srong Btsan Sgampo) himself. This is disproved by the account at the beginning of the
Old Tibetan Annals
as well as by the history of the other marriage treaty concluded with China in the eighth century. There are two possibilities. The princess was married to Gung Srong Gung Brtsan, the crown prince, who became emperor and reigned for six years, but then died. Khri Srong Rtsan then assumed the throne again and, following the Central Eurasian custom of levirate, took the Chinese princess as one of his consorts before he himself passed away in 649–650. This view is supported by the fragmentary beginning of the
Old Tibetan Annals,
which explicitly says that Khri Srong Rtsan “cohabited with her for three years” before he died. However, the same text refers twice to the emperor as the
btsanpo gcen
‘the emperor, the elder brother’, alongside his
gcung
‘[imperial] younger brother’, Btsan Srong. Although it is possible that Gung Srong Gung Brtsan was mentioned in the now lost portion, on the basis of what remains it seems more likely that he was not. That would leave the younger brother Btsan Srong as the probable groom. The
Old