The Han dynasty soon lost its outposts beyond the wall, and made no effort to recover them until the reign of Kwang Vouti, 25–58 A. D., who made China a military power and conquered Anam, and by his policy towards the Yueh-chi reasserted sovereignty over Turkestan. His son, Mingti, began the aggressive westward policy which led to the great conquests of the general Pan-chao, who led his army of Chinese and Tartars as far as the Caspian, and who defeated near Khotan the Yueh-chi king Kadphises, then established in upper India. It was in this region that Buddhism seems first to have reached China, rather than through Tibet or Burma, and from this time China was always more or less directly in communication with Western Asia.
(See Hirth, Ancient History of China;—Richard, Comprehensive Geography of the Chinese Empire;—Douglas, China;—Boulger, History of China;—E. H. Parker, China;—H. B. Morse, The Trade and Administration of the Chinese Empire.)
64. Raw silk and silk yarn and silk cloth.—See also under §§ 39, 49 and 56. This is the earliest correct statement of the source of silk and of the routes by which it reached the world's markets.
Silk is the cocoon-secretion of the mulberry-leaf moth, Bombyx mori, family Bombycidae, order Lepidoptera; native, apparently, and first cultivated, in the warm-temperature climate of northwestern China.
Chinese legends mention the making of musical instruments of wood, with silk threads, under the emperor Fu-hi, (29th century B. C., while the rearing of the worms and the invention of reel, loom, etc., are ascribed to Lei-tsu, known as the "Lady of Si-ling," wife of the emperor Huang-ti (27th century B. C.). Cloth was woven of silk, embroidered by the empress, and those of the higher classes were enabled to discard skins as wearing apparel. Soon other textile materials were discovered, and dyeing introduced; so that rank and position were for the first time indicated by the man's outward appearance.
In the Chiu-li, dating from the 11th century B. C., it appears that the Chinese government supervised the production of silk in every detail, and that specialties of design, ornament, and embroidery, were already monopolized in different families. The same book describes the provinces of China: King-chóu, the modern Hu-nan, had a trade in cinnabar, ivory, and skins; Yu-chóu, next on the north and reaching the Yellow River, traded in bamboos, varnish, silk and hemp; while the northernmost, Ping-chóu (the modern Shan-si) was noted especially for cotton and silk textures. It was this province which
