Descriptions in Historical Accounts
According to Hanshu, Han envoys described the troops of Loulan as weak and easy to attack. Shanshan was said to have 1570 households, 14,000 individuals with 2912 person able to bear arms, It further describes the region thus:
| “ | The land is sandy and salt, and there are few cultivated fields. The state hopes to obtain cultivated fields and look to neighbouring states for field-crops. It produces jade and there is an abundance of rushes, tamarisk, the balsam poplar, and white grass. In company with their flocks and herds the inhabitants go in search of water and pasture, and there are asses, horses and large number of camels. are capable of making military weapons in the same way as the Ch'o of the Ch'iang tribes. | ” |
According to Shui Jing Zhu, General Suo Mai (索勱, also So Man) of Dunhuang introduce irrigation techniques to the region by damming the Zhubin (possibly the Kongque) river to irrigate the fields, and produced good harvest for the next three years.
The Buddhist pilgrim Faxian who stayed in Shanshan in 399 on the way to India, described the country thus:
| “ | ...a country rugged and hilly, with a thin and barren soil. The clothes of the common people are coarse, and like those worn in our land of Han, some wearing felt and others coarse serge or cloth of hair; — this was the only difference seen among them. The king professed (our) Law, and there might be in the country more than four thousand monks who were all students of the hînayâna. The common people of this and other kingdoms (in that region), as well as the śramans, all practise the rules of India, only that the latter do so more exactly, and the former more loosely. | ” |
| — A Record of the Buddhist Countries, translation by James Legge |
Read more about this topic: Loulan Kingdom
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