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 Hello
I have been to Samarkand. I went there on one of my visits to Russia as a touring British author. For one reason or another, several of my books were translated and sold heavily. Partly because the first one they translated, The Hired Man, was about just that: a hired man, a labourer, a coalminer, a survivor of the First World War, and they put it between the same hard covers as Somerset Maugham’s novel The Moon and Sixpence. Somerset Maugham at that time was still a super-seller in Russia. Therefore, I was dragged along in the slipstream.
Anyway, that was another life, another story, but I got to Samarkand. It was wonderful to see the school/university where the Islamic students were educated. But even more wonderful was a market that a rather twinkly eyed guide took me and my stern, upright party member translator to visit. This was a Tolstoyan mayhem. It was so extraordinary it could have been a film set. People from Russia in the early 19th century with tall fur hats and pipes, selling goats and ducks and deer. Selling all sorts of goods brought in from the lands around there. It was one of the most wonderful, unexpected sights of my life and my Russian translator/guard was completely blown away by the richness of the goods on display.
That’s as maybe. A propos of this morning’s programme. One of the reasons horses were so valued by the Chinese was that their origin seemed to be “the horses of heaven”. They were originally, it was thought, the winged horses. And the Arabic horses were supposed to be the direct descendants of these winged horses. One feature that they had was that they were messengers of the gods. Therefore, they brought divine favour for those who owned them. Those who owned the most, like the Emperor, had the greatest favour. If the Apocalypse happened, they could get onto them and get out of this world. In certain circumstances, they could get on these extraordinary horses and get out of this world without an apocalypse.
It seems (this is post-programme chat) that some 40 million words were translated from the Indian language to Chinese (via the Sogdians – the most strange and fascinating group I’ve come across for years). These and more translations are bigger than anything we know of in the world. The mass of them (it was Buddhist scripts through Sogdian to Chinese) more or less occluded the Iranian influence.
What else? Oh yes, the chair. It is almost beyond belief that Chairman Mao in Chinese means Principal Mat Person Mao because the Chinese sat on mats, not on chairs. But the chairs came to China from the Buddhists who sat on them to deliver their pronouncements/sermons. This was eventually taken up by the Chinese and special chairs – camp stools – were brought there for persons of great importance in the army. Generals sat on camp stools.
I don’t think I can go any further.
Best wishes
Melvyn Bragg
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