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Armenia in Chinese Sources
Abstract
This paper discusses several toponyms in Chinese sources, which may possibly be identified with Armenia. First, Aman country, which can be found in the "History of the Later Han" (compiled 3rd-5th centuries) and in the "Account of the Wei Dynasty" (compiled between 239 and 265), is discussed, and it is suggested that there are reasons for an identification, though doubts remain. Armenia was well known by the Mongols and the "Korean Worldmap", which originates in Chinese geographical scholarship during the Mongol period and depicts possibly even Greater and Lesser Armenia. Another source of that period that mentions Armenia is "Muslim Prescriptions" (Huihui yaofang), which names Armenian materia medica known in China. Finally, two other Chinese geographical texts of the 16th and early 18th century that deal with Armenia and the Caucasus region are discussed. This paper shows that Armenia was described in Chinese texts since at least the Mongol period, and that China had a profound knowledge of the geographical situation in Western Asia.
... Friedrich Hirth (1885: 39, 154; see also Kauz/Liu Yingsheng 2008: 64) identifies Anxi, here, with Hecatompylos, Aman with Ecbatana (modern Hamadan), Sibin whith Ctesiphon (32 km southeast of modern Baghdad, in east-central Iraq), and Yuluo with Hira. 5 He presumed that Aman is the city of Ecbatana for its similarity in writing and because it was "the first centre of population on the road west of Hekatompylos". 6 Ralph Kauz and Liu Yingsheng (2008) believe that a number of reasons support an equation of Aman with Armenia. They reason that since a foreign ending [-r] was rather transcribed with a [-n] during the Han period (for example, Anxi for Arsace), the Chinese character 阿蠻 should be pronounced as Anman, which corresponds with Armenia (ibid.: 63). ...
In the reports of Chinese travellers submitted to the Emperors, they mentioned the places they had visited or heard of. Although some scholars have tried to identify these Chinese names as specific places in the Iranian Plateau and its bordering plains, their locations are still somewhat vague and debatable. This article discusses the place-names mentioned in Chinese sources and attempts to verify that they could have denoted the localities along the ancient Great Khorasan Road and other routes, which were once the main sections of the Silk Road. Among them, the route that Chinese traveller Gan Ying might have passed before he reached the western frontier of the Arsacid Empire will also be discussed in this study.
This article seeks to fill a gap in the literature by sketching a narrative of Republic of China–Iran relations between 1920 and 1949. It analyzes the factors behind Sino-Iranian cooperation and competition in the tea and silk trades and at the League of Nations. Unofficial commercial interests, including Iranian merchants in Shanghai, played a larger role than previously thought in driving the establishment of the Sino-Persian Treaty of 1920. After ratifying the treaty in 1922, the Republic of China established an Iranian consulate in Shanghai in 1934. Diplomacy between the two nations, and the public ceremonies performed by foreign diplomats in Shanghai, were part of a pattern of performative nationalist diplomacy undertaken by both the Chinese and Iranian states.
The importance of a sophisticated understanding of historical linguistics in interpreting the accounts of the far west in Chinese sources from the Han period is stressed and, in particular, transcriptions of the place-names Hyrkania, Seleukia, and Alexandria are discussed.
Bombesin is an endogenous gut peptide that is prominent in the stomach. In addition to its effects on modulating acid and gut peptide secretion, recent evidence indicates that bombesin is a potent gastroprotective agent. This review article examines the ability of bombesin to prevent gastric injury. Its protective actions appear to be mediated primarily via the release of endogenous gastrin, as gastroprotection is negated by blockade of gastrin receptors. Bombesin-induced gastroprotection and gastrin release are modified by somatostatin. Immunoneutralization of endogenous somatostatin increases the ability of bombesin to prevent gastric injury by increasing gastrin release. In mechanistic studies, ablation of capsaicin-sensitive afferent neurons abolishes bombesin-induced gastroprotection while cyclo-oxygenase inhibition partially reverses this effect. Nitric oxide synthase inhibition also negates bombesin-induced gastroprotection as well as the ability of bombesin to increase gastric mucosal blood flow. Taken together, the available evidence indicates that bombesin causes release of endogenous gastrin that activates sensory neurons located in the gastric mucosa. Activation of sensory neurons causes increased production of nitric oxide through activation of constitutive nitric oxide synthase, which leads to a resultant increase in gastric mucosal blood flow and renders the stomach less susceptible to damage from luminal irritants.