Sogdian Ancient Letters
composition: probable
witness: Letters 1-5 and associated fragments recovered by Aurel Stein in 1907 from a watchtower west of Dunhuang
A lost mailbag of merchant and family letters, written in Sogdian and carried west from northern China, gives diaspora traders and their households a directness of voice that royal inscriptions and administrative archives rarely allow.
- the earliest substantial surviving body of Sogdian-language texts
- a merchant mailbag abandoned in transit near Dunhuang, dated conventionally to AD 312-313
- personal as well as commercial content, including a woman's (Miwnay's) account of abandonment
- direct evidence of a Sogdian diaspora trading network linking Samarkand and northern China
A group of letters, principally five substantial documents plus fragments, written on paper in Sogdian, the Iranian language of the Silk Road trading world centered on Samarkand, and recovered in 1907 by Aurel Stein from a watchtower west of Dunhuang in northern China, where they had apparently been abandoned in transit around AD 312-313 (the International Dunhuang Project's object records for these letters cite AD 313-314). The letters were addressed to recipients in Samarkand and the oasis of Loulan by merchants and family members living in Chinese garrison towns, and they range from routine commercial accounting, listing goods such as silk, wheat, and musk, to a woman named Miwnay's account of being abandoned by her husband in Dunhuang and a long letter describing famine and warfare disrupting trade across northern China. They are among the earliest substantial Sogdian texts known and an unusually direct, personal record of diaspora merchant life.
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