In January 2013 we published our third special issue ‘Perfumery and Ritualin Asia’. As I wrote in the Introduction to that group of articles, theJournal's broad remit, both in terms of historical period and geographicalboundaries, affords us the privilege of exploring those elements of humanactivity that historically ‘bind’ or ‘separate’ different Asian cultures. Bythe beginning of 2013 we had already published two other special issues, oneon a linguistic topic and the other on a politico/religious topic and so wefelt it was appropriate to devote space to the exploration of ‘material’culture, an equally powerful force in shaping a huge range of humaninteractions.

The idea for this project was Helen Wang's. At the International Symposiumof Ancient Coins and the Culture of the Silk Road, organised by the ShanghaiMuseum, in December 2006, she asked Rong Xinjiang and Valerie Hansen if theywould be interested in working together on the theme of textiles as money onthe Silk Road. Too often, money is assumed to mean metal coins, and theabstract concept of the Silk Road is used to evoke a somewhat etherealeast-meets-west context. While the idea of silk as money is not new to thosewho know Chinese history, it seemed that few people had really explored themechanics of how textiles were used in this way.

Most economists and historians today conceive of money in narrow terms –probably because they have grown up in the modern world and are used to oursystem of coins, paper notes, cheques and credit cards. Although economichistorians are generally aware that some earlier societies (in Africa,Scandinavia and elsewhere) used other items as money, they do not usuallypay much attention to these examples. Few realise that the government ofChina, governing an empire of some 60 million people during the Tang dynasty(618–907), implemented a complex financial system that recognised grain,coins and textiles as money. The government received taxes in coin and inkind, produced to specific standards (specific widths and lengths oftextiles) that would then be redistributed, being used for official salariesand military expenses among other expenditures. Although some of thesurviving evidence comes from the Silk Road sites of Turfan, Dunhuang andKhotan in northwest China (where the dry climate has preserved manydocuments and some actual examples of tax textiles), this multicurrencysystem was in use throughout the entire empire during the seventh to tenthcenturies. At the time, Tang China was possibly the largest economy in theworld, rivalled only by the Abbasid Empire (751–1258).

The abstract concept of “the Silk Road” linking east and west shapes manypopular narrative histories, encouraging readers to think dreamily ofdazzling silks carried as luxury trade items on the backs of camels oversun-scorched sand dunes, and conveniently skirting more complex issues suchas political, military, religious and cultural barriers. The actualmechanics of how any trading and other financial or economic transactionstook place are seldom addressed, and references to money are few and farbetween.

How did people in Tang dynasty China view textiles and how did they conceiveof their value? Those involved in production could calculate the value interms of the costs of raw materials, labour and the loom used to weave aparticular textile. They might add to this the costs of workshop supervisionand maintenance, distribution and marketing, and they might expect to seesome benefit – a profit – in the process. However, most people would be endusers, and would reckon the value of textiles by eye, if not also by hand,and what they considered to be the market value. Some might have expertknowledge, but many would not. The non-expert evaluation by eye and handwould likely include aspects such as colour, pattern, level of workmanshipand intricacy but would probably also reflect some awareness of status andfashion.

The excavation of tombs in the Astana graveyard, Turfan, has provided awealth of evidence for studying everyday life on the Silk Road. Manuscriptsand textiles constitute two major groups of the excavated finds. Among themanuscripts are over 60 burial inventories (yiwushu),listing items that would accompany the deceased to the afterlife. Some ofthe items on the inventories were real and can be identified with objectsfound in the tombs; some were represented symbolically: for example inminiature form; and others, probably included for formulaic purposes, wereimagined. Although there have been several studies on the burial inventoriesand textiles from Turfan, the two are usually considered separately, withlittle attention to their correlation, mainly because burial inventoriestend to be studied by specialists working on documents, and textiles areusually studied by textile specialists. In 2005 we were fortunate to be ableto examine all the textiles from a mid-sixth century tomb at Astana(72TAM170), and to study the three burial inventories found in that tomb.Comparing the physical textile remains against the burial inventories fromthe same tomb offered us a rare opportunity to test the accuracy of theburial inventories, and also to identify the physical textile remains withthe textile terminology of that time. This article is arranged in four partswhich present a brief description of the tomb, details of the burialinventories, a comparison of the textile remains against the burialinventories and a closer look at the silk textiles found in the tomb.

When the Tang dynasty took power in 618, it inherited the multicurrencysystem of earlier dynasties. The zuyongdiao tax system, ineffect from the start of the dynasty, required each taxpayer to submit taxesin grain, labour and cloth. At the same time, the government also mintedcoins, which constituted some 10 per cent of the total money supply. Apersistent shortage of copper limited the number of minted coins thegovernment could issue. Accordingly, officials tried to ensure thatsufficient coins and textiles circulated so that both forms of moneyremained in use. They displayed no consistent preference for one form ofmoney over the other but devised policies to encourage the use of whicheverform was then in short supply.

From the inception of its military campaign into Central Asia via the Gansucorridor, the Tang dynasty had to ensure the shipment of extensive militarysupplies to support the activities of its occupying armies north and southof the Tianshan Mountains. Since the government paid soldiers’ salaries andbought supplies using silk, the timely delivery of silk from central Chinawas critical. Most of the silk was collected in the central provinces underthe zuyongdiao 租庸調 tax system, whether as stipulatedpayments of tax textiles or cloth-paid-in-place-of-annual-corvée tax. Allthis silk had to be shipped to the Western Regions. This article examineswhere this silk was made, how it was shipped to the north-west and how thesystem changed over time.

The Tang dynasty tax system is often referred to as zuyongdiao 租庸調, with each of these three terms having aspecific meaning. Zu was the annual collection of 2 piculs,roughly 120 litres of grain (su 粟) per head. Yong was the annual corvée (labour) duty of 21 days perhead, which could be substituted and paid for in silk or cloth, or thecloth-paid-in-place-of-annual-corvée tax. Diao was the taxin kind, payable in textiles (substitutions of other goods were sometimespermitted). In silk-producing areas the diao tax per headwas 2 decafeet of silk, payable in ling-twill, juan-silk or silk thread (si 絲) and 3ounces of silk floss (simian 絲綿). In areas that did notproduce silk, the diao tax was 2 decafeet, 5 feet of hempcloth and 3 pounds of hemp yarn.

Textiles, grain, coins; people living in the Silk Road oasis of Turfan, 160km south-east of Urumqi in today's Xinjiang, used all three items as moneybetween 273 and 769. The city of Gaochang (some 40 km east of today'sTurfan) was one of the most important cities on the northern route aroundthe Taklamakan Desert, and many of its inhabitants were buried in theadjacent Astana and Karakhoja graveyards. The region's dry climate haspreserved an extensive group of paper documents dating to before, and after,the Tang conquest of the city in 640. The residents of Turfan buried theirdead with shoes, belts, hats and clothing made from recycled paper withwriting on it. These records offer an unparalleled glimpse of how peopleliving along the Silk Road used textiles as currency.

The kingdom of Khotan lay 2,628 kilometres to the north-west of the Tangcapital at Chang'an. Strategically located in the south-west of theTaklamakan Desert, Khotan was a meeting point of different ethnic groups,languages, cultures and traditions, and was renowned as a centre ofBuddhism. With its unique combination of influences, Khotanese society wasquite different from that of Turfan to the north of the Taklamakan. Inaddition to the indigenous practices and traditions that developed inKhotan, this kingdom was always under the influence of major externalpolitical powers: Khotan was a vassal kingdom of the Hephtalites or Turkicpeoples during the sixth century, came under increasing Chinese influence inthe seventh and eighth centuries, was under Tibetan occupation from the 790sto 840s, and thereafter under the Chinese again. The secular documentaryevidence from Khotan, written in Khotanese and Chinese, from the seventh andeighth centuries reflects everyday life there, and reveals the impact ofChinese administrative changes on traditional practices.

The extensive documentary evidence collected and analysed in the previousstudies in this issue suggest a preliminary conclusion that can besummarised as follows: from the collapse of the Han dynasty to the gloriousdays of the Tang dynasty, the peoples living in the Western Regions alongthe Silk Road used multiple co-existing forms of money – grain, cloth andcoins – with one of these three items becoming predominant according tochanges in political and/or economic circumstances. However, thismulticurrency system did not outlive the political, economic and fiscalupheavals that shook the Tang empire from the mid-eighth century onwards. Asfar as the materials from Turfan and Dunhuang are concerned, the latestevidence for this monetary system is provided by a manuscript found atDunhuang (P 3348 V°), already quoted in Arakawa Masaharu's article, whichpermits us to see how such a complex monetary system worked in real lifeonce the silk shipped by the Tang government arrived in the Western Regions.In particular, a subsidiary account (P 3348 V°2 B) inscribed in thisaccounting report reveals how a local official called Li Jingyu 李景玉, who wasvice-commissioner in the army stationed in that region, received his salaryfor the first semester of the year 745 ce.

This glossary presents 80 items of textile terminology that are found in theChinese documents from Dunhuang and Turfan, or in historical texts. Some ofthese terms can be identified with actual textiles found at sites innorth-western China. Readers should be aware that there are variations intextile terminology in this international field of research: for example, wehave used “plain weave” where other textile specialists might prefer“tabby”; and “damask” where others might prefer “twill”.