page_title: Dayuan
section_title: Saka rule
hierarchical_section_title: Dayuan / History / Saka rule
caption_attribution_description: English: Pazyrik horseman. Circa 300 BC. Detail from a carpet - 5-4 th century B.C..- in the State Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg. (see e.g. this image)
context_page_description: Dayuan is the Chinese exonym for a country that existed in Ferghana valley in Central Asia, described in the Chinese historical works of Records of the Grand Historian and the Book of Han. It is mentioned in the accounts of the famous Chinese explorer Zhang Qian in 130 BCE and the numerous embassies that followed him into Central Asia. The country of Dayuan is generally accepted as relating to the Ferghana Valley, controlled by the Greek polis Alexandria Eschate.
  These Chinese accounts describe the "Dayuan" as urbanized dwellers with Caucasian features, living in walled cities and having "customs identical to those of the Daxia" or Greco-Bactrians, a Hellenistic kingdom that was ruling Bactria at that time in today's northern Afghanistan. The Dayuan are also described as manufacturers and great lovers of wine.
context_section_description: Saka rule started in 160 BC.
  When the Chinese envoy Zhang Qian described Dayuan around 128 BCE, he mentioned, besides the flourishing urban civilization, warriors "shooting arrows on horseback", a probable description of Saka nomad warriors. Dayuan had probably by then become a kingdom of nomadic people exacting tribute from the local urbanized Hellenistic population.
  Also in 106–101 BCE, during their conflict with China, the country of Dayuan is said to have been an ally with the neighbouring tribes of Kangju (probably Sodgia). The Chinese also record the name of the king of Dayuan as "Mu-Kua", a Saka name rendered in Greek as Mauakes or Maues. Another Scythian ruler by the name of Maues was later a ruler of the Indo-Scythian kingdom in northern India, during the 1st century BCE.
caption: A Saka (Scythian) horseman from the area north of the Tian Shan, Pazyryk, c.300 BCE.
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