Sogdian Merchants Broker Faith on the Silk Road

Sogdians Translate Sutras, Scriptures, and Teachings of Many Faiths

Oct 23, 2009

Sogdian caravans spread kernels of the world's religions from China to Syria. They dominated the Silk Road as masters of trade, diplomacy, and translators of scripture.

Sogdian merchants were commercial emissaries to the courts of Byzantium, Persia, India, China, and the khanates of the Turkish tribes on the steppe. In pre-Islamic Central Asia religious diversity flourished alongside channels of trade. The Sogdians used their skills in language and translated thousands of scriptures from many branches of faith, then solicited them in distant lands and empires.

Sogdian Spiritual Customs

Sogdian spiritual customs were not orthodox like those of their Persian Zoroastrian heritage. The Sogdian Diaspora seeded colonies all along the Silk Road. They adapted to new customs with perspicacity, and infused new religions with their own theological beliefs. International trade developed from the relationships Sogdian merchants created by bridging religious and linguistic gaps. Their flexibility and pragmatism fostered a tolerant approach to dealing with foreign beliefs and religions.

The Sogdian Political Landscape

The Sogdian city-states usually served as vassals to one empire or another ever since Alexander the Great laid waste to their cities in 327 BCE. They were the suzerains of the Kushans, of Sassanid Persia, of Turkish Khans, and solicited to become vassals of China; but ultimately fell under the influence of the Abbasid Caliphate and underwent a universal conversion to Islam.

Sogdian spiritual culture inherited traditions from the four directions. Their culture and language evolved out of pre-Achaemenid Persia, but Sogdians enjoyed a comfortable independence from any Persian King or Chinese Emperor. Their homeland of Sogdiana lied just beyond the absolute grasp of either empire; equally situated on the remote frontiers of Persia’s eastern borders and China’s westernmost influence. The trade routes converged from every direction on Sogdiana, and met in the fabled city of Samarkand, in modern Uzbekistan. The largest of the Sogdian city-states hosted peripatetic merchants, monks, warriors, scholars, and prophets. For centuries Samarkand served as a vital center of commerce at the heart of the known world.

Typical Sogdian families held faith in tutelary deities, and believed in river, sky, and mountain spirits. They interpreted portents in nature through shamanistic practices shared by steppe tribes. They expressed their Zoroastrian faith by constructing prominent fire temples in every Sogdian city-state. When new beliefs influenced neighboring kingdoms many Sogdians would openly change faith. In the ninth-century CE when the Uighur’s adopted Manichaeism as their official religion, a majority of Sogdians converted too.

The Translation of Religious Scriptures

The Sogdian’s lasting contribution to the cross-pollination of religion was their translation of sacred scriptures and teachings. In 1906 explorer Aurel Stein uncovered tens of thousands of religious documents spanning and amalgamating Buddhism, Manichaeism, Nestorian Christianity, Zoroastrianism, and Taoism. They were sealed in a cave complex on the eastern shore of the Taklamakan desert. Hundreds of scrolls were either in Sogdian, or translated from Sogdian into a myriad of prominent languages.

Sogdian merchants mastered numerous tongues, which they pragmatically picked up over centuries of exposure from trading. Their establishment of colonies in distant lands cultivated the widespread use of the Sogdian tongue; which became the standard language of business on the Silk Road. They rendered translations in Aramaic, Middle-Persian, Parthian, Sogdian, Chinese, in various Turkic dialects, and in Syriac; the official language of the Nestorians. The Sogdians brokered multiple faiths throughout the ancient and medieval worlds. They transmitted scriptures that form the foundations of modern belief systems. Either as sound business practice, or out of personal conviction the merchants of Sogdiana played the role of purveyors of multiple religions, at a time when many of the faiths were yet in their nascent forms.

Richard C. Foltz – Religions of the Silk Road: Overland Trade and Cultural Exchange from Antiquity to the Fifteenth Century, St. Martin's Press, 1999

Richard N. Frye - The Heritage of Central Asia: From Antiquity to the Turkish Expansion, Markus Wiener Publishers, 1996

The copyright of the article Sogdian Merchants Broker Faith on the Silk Road in Ancient History is owned by Sean Abreu. Permission to republish Sogdian Merchants Broker Faith on the Silk Road in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.