never done more than rub shoulders and negotiate intermarriages with the Hindu Kush states, were displaced by direct Chinese rule. The king of Ki-pin was made (Chinese) military governor of Siu-sien and the other ten provinces belonging to it. Siu-sien (perhaps S'rînagur) was the ancient capital; but it by no means follows that the king was there in 658. This Chinese arrangement continued for over a century; but from the date of western Turkish collapse the kings or military governors of Ki-pin always seem to have borne Turkish names; in fact, the Turks, having split up, appear to have sent off branch adventurers in all directions. In 739 the teghin (old Turkish for 'grand duke') of Zabulistan, south-west of Ki-pin, was created by the emperor of China king of Ki-pin: this teghin bore exactly the same name as the ruler of Gandhara. The celebrated pilgrim Hüan-tsang, a century before this, tells us that Kapiça had annexed Gandhâra. The king of Kapiça's dominions extended to the Indus, and the king himself saw the pilgrim safely into Tsâukûta, which, it is stated, was then ruled by a prince of Turkish stock. It took Hüan-tsang fifteen days to travel south-east, and then east, from the capital of Bamyân to the first frontier of Kapiça. The son of this king of 739 bore the surname of Fu-lin (meaning, according to my view, 'Frank'), whence I assume that intermarriages with Asiatic subjects of the East Roman empire had taken place; for it was the Turkish practice to use tribal and national designations as personal cognomens (e.g. that of Ouigour). In 745 the son—or possibly the brother—of this last named prince was patented king of Ki-pin and Udyâna.[1] The T'ang history uses the word Ts'ao-kü-ch'a (Tsâukûta) as the older name of the Chinese military governorship at Hoh-sih-na (Ghazna or Ghazni), created in 658. After 710 this small state became subordinate to Ki-pin. It was also called Holatachï[2] or Otalachï, and its princes were evidently of Turkish stock.
There is henceforward no further mention in Chinese history of Ki-pin as an actual state. But the T'ang history for the first time gives some account of Ku-shih-mih or K'a-shih-mi-lo (both manifest attempts at Kas'mîra or Cashmere). North of it was Puh-lüh, or Polt (Baltistan): it was encircled by mountains forming a ring of 4,000 li (1,338 miles), and thus was almost impenetrable to hostile attack. Tradition said it was once a lake, the 'Dragon Pool' of
- ↑ There is an official statement that in 765 the king of Ki-pin was made also king of Baltistan, and that he was in 779 defeated by the Tibetans; but this apparently important addition is a misplaced sentence, which has crept by error into one version only: the king in question (Surendrâditya) was really patented king of Balti in 720, and was defeated by Tibet in 734. He was scarcely likely to have been repatented to Balti in 765 in addition to his supposed title as king of Ki-pin.
- ↑ M. Chavannes identifies this with 'Arokhadj,' or Arachosia, which, if correct, clinches the conclusion that Ts'ao, Tsâukâta, Alexandreia, Ghazni, &c., were parts of Cophene or Ki-pin.
