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You do know how dangerous “tell me more” is to an enthusiastic researcher, right? 🤓
To set the stage – Central Asia in the 7th and 8th centuries was almost constantly at war, but it was also constantly trading. The Persian Sasiniad dynasties had just been supplanted by the new Muslim theocracies in Iran to the west, the merchant cities of the Sogdian trading empire were caught between remnants of the Sasiniads and waves of Turk cavalry from what we now know as Mongolia, north of the Tarim Basin. To the east, China was entering a golden age as the Tang had made alliances with the great Turkic empires and Chang’An was a glowing cosmopolitan city. Tibet, to the south, was an empire to rival China and was not yet the Buddhist theocracy we think of today.
In between these powers was a series of independent kingdoms, with origins unknown. The “Tarim Mummies” are of individuals with red hair and tartan plaids, with a language that seems more related to Czech than to China or Iranian. Buddhist missionaries had found their way into the Tarim as early as 1000 BC, and the Brahmic script was adopted for their local records and Buddhist monastaries. Alexander the Great had advanced to just shy of Kashgar, the western entry point to the Tarim, when his advance halted. When Empress Wu conquered the Tarim and annexed it as part of China in 694, this area was called the “Four Garrisons of Anxi (the west). They were the latest in a long line of “conquerors”, because the cross continent trade from Rome to Chang’An made these kingdoms incredibly wealthy, but living in an oasis on the edge of the worst desert in the world was no place to raise a standing army that could defeat all of China. All of those conquerors meant that you had independent kingdoms peopled by speakers of a Proto-European language and Caucasian genetic group with a strong Buddhist influence absorbing the cultural ideals, refugees, and merchants of China, Persia, Tibet, and Turk nomads in equal measure.
As far as the fantasy element, it’s already there. The horses traded in Kucha are linked to King Solomon’s horses, said to be sired by a dragon living in a lake. The Tang law code includes the penalties for committing crimes by sorcery; the Buddhist law code included the use of oracles to determine past-life truths. Djinn, beings of a subtle fire, are mentioned in the Koran. Daoist ascetics and Indian rishi both communed with other planes of existence. This is the land that Buddhist monk Xuanzang traveled to obtain rare Buddhist manuscripts, later immortalized in the epic tale “Journey to the West”.
These kingdoms were overrun in 850, and the languages of the Tarim disappeared in 900 AD. So this whole area is like a rich, multicultural, desert version of Atlantis that was uncovered in the late 1800s to early 1900s. I love it because I can use the ancient setting or the age of exploration for historical fantasy series – and in fact do have plans for multiple series to link up in the telling the story of the rehabilitation of a lost god. Most of my work is to stop researching and start writing – I just needed to put together the “real” magic system behind all of the historic fables.
Hopefully that whets the appetite, and isn’t boring. 😃