In January 2013 we published our third special issue ‘Perfumery and Ritual in Asia’. As I wrote in the Introduction to that group of articles, the Journal's broad remit, both in terms of historical period and geographical boundaries, affords us the privilege of exploring those elements of human activity that historically ‘bind’ or ‘separate’ different Asian cultures. By the beginning of 2013 we had already published two other special issues, one on a linguistic topic and the other on a politico/religious topic and so we felt it was appropriate to devote space to the exploration of ‘material’ culture, an equally powerful force in shaping a huge range of human interactions.

The idea for this project was Helen Wang's. At the International Symposium of Ancient Coins and the Culture of the Silk Road, organised by the Shanghai Museum, in December 2006, she asked Rong Xinjiang and Valerie Hansen if they would be interested in working together on the theme of textiles as money on the Silk Road. Too often, money is assumed to mean metal coins, and the abstract concept of the Silk Road is used to evoke a somewhat ethereal east-meets-west context. While the idea of silk as money is not new to those who know Chinese history, it seemed that few people had really explored the mechanics of how textiles were used in this way.

Most economists and historians today conceive of money in narrow terms – probably because they have grown up in the modern world and are used to our system of coins, paper notes, cheques and credit cards. Although economic historians are generally aware that some earlier societies (in Africa, Scandinavia and elsewhere) used other items as money, they do not usually pay much attention to these examples. Few realise that the government of China, governing an empire of some 60 million people during the Tang dynasty (618–907), implemented a complex financial system that recognised grain, coins and textiles as money. The government received taxes in coin and in kind, produced to specific standards (specific widths and lengths of textiles) that would then be redistributed, being used for official salaries and military expenses among other expenditures. Although some of the surviving evidence comes from the Silk Road sites of Turfan, Dunhuang and Khotan in northwest China (where the dry climate has preserved many documents and some actual examples of tax textiles), this multicurrency system was in use throughout the entire empire during the seventh to tenth centuries. At the time, Tang China was possibly the largest economy in the world, rivalled only by the Abbasid Empire (751–1258).

The abstract concept of “the Silk Road” linking east and west shapes many popular narrative histories, encouraging readers to think dreamily of dazzling silks carried as luxury trade items on the backs of camels over sun-scorched sand dunes, and conveniently skirting more complex issues such as political, military, religious and cultural barriers. The actual mechanics of how any trading and other financial or economic transactions took place are seldom addressed, and references to money are few and far between.

How did people in Tang dynasty China view textiles and how did they conceive of their value? Those involved in production could calculate the value in terms of the costs of raw materials, labour and the loom used to weave a particular textile. They might add to this the costs of workshop supervision and maintenance, distribution and marketing, and they might expect to see some benefit – a profit – in the process. However, most people would be end users, and would reckon the value of textiles by eye, if not also by hand, and what they considered to be the market value. Some might have expert knowledge, but many would not. The non-expert evaluation by eye and hand would likely include aspects such as colour, pattern, level of workmanship and intricacy but would probably also reflect some awareness of status and fashion.

The excavation of tombs in the Astana graveyard, Turfan, has provided a wealth of evidence for studying everyday life on the Silk Road. Manuscripts and textiles constitute two major groups of the excavated finds. Among the manuscripts are over 60 burial inventories (yiwushu), listing items that would accompany the deceased to the afterlife. Some of the items on the inventories were real and can be identified with objects found in the tombs; some were represented symbolically: for example in miniature form; and others, probably included for formulaic purposes, were imagined. Although there have been several studies on the burial inventories and textiles from Turfan, the two are usually considered separately, with little attention to their correlation, mainly because burial inventories tend to be studied by specialists working on documents, and textiles are usually studied by textile specialists. In 2005 we were fortunate to be able to examine all the textiles from a mid-sixth century tomb at Astana (72TAM170), and to study the three burial inventories found in that tomb. Comparing the physical textile remains against the burial inventories from the same tomb offered us a rare opportunity to test the accuracy of the burial inventories, and also to identify the physical textile remains with the textile terminology of that time. This article is arranged in four parts which present a brief description of the tomb, details of the burial inventories, a comparison of the textile remains against the burial inventories and a closer look at the silk textiles found in the tomb.

When the Tang dynasty took power in 618, it inherited the multicurrency system of earlier dynasties. The zuyongdiao tax system, in effect from the start of the dynasty, required each taxpayer to submit taxes in grain, labour and cloth. At the same time, the government also minted coins, which constituted some 10 per cent of the total money supply. A persistent shortage of copper limited the number of minted coins the government could issue. Accordingly, officials tried to ensure that sufficient coins and textiles circulated so that both forms of money remained in use. They displayed no consistent preference for one form of money over the other but devised policies to encourage the use of whichever form was then in short supply.

From the inception of its military campaign into Central Asia via the Gansu corridor, the Tang dynasty had to ensure the shipment of extensive military supplies to support the activities of its occupying armies north and south of the Tianshan Mountains. Since the government paid soldiers’ salaries and bought supplies using silk, the timely delivery of silk from central China was critical. Most of the silk was collected in the central provinces under the zuyongdiao 租庸調 tax system, whether as stipulated payments of tax textiles or cloth-paid-in-place-of-annual-corvée tax. All this silk had to be shipped to the Western Regions. This article examines where this silk was made, how it was shipped to the north-west and how the system changed over time.

The Tang dynasty tax system is often referred to as zuyongdiao 租庸調, with each of these three terms having a specific meaning. Zu was the annual collection of 2 piculs, roughly 120 litres of grain (su 粟) per head. Yong was the annual corvée (labour) duty of 21 days per head, which could be substituted and paid for in silk or cloth, or the cloth-paid-in-place-of-annual-corvée tax. Diao was the tax in kind, payable in textiles (substitutions of other goods were sometimes permitted). In silk-producing areas the diao tax per head was 2 decafeet of silk, payable in ling-twill, juan-silk or silk thread (si 絲) and 3 ounces of silk floss (simian 絲綿). In areas that did not produce silk, the diao tax was 2 decafeet, 5 feet of hemp cloth and 3 pounds of hemp yarn.

Textiles, grain, coins; people living in the Silk Road oasis of Turfan, 160 km south-east of Urumqi in today's Xinjiang, used all three items as money between 273 and 769. The city of Gaochang (some 40 km east of today's Turfan) was one of the most important cities on the northern route around the Taklamakan Desert, and many of its inhabitants were buried in the adjacent Astana and Karakhoja graveyards. The region's dry climate has preserved an extensive group of paper documents dating to before, and after, the Tang conquest of the city in 640. The residents of Turfan buried their dead with shoes, belts, hats and clothing made from recycled paper with writing on it. These records offer an unparalleled glimpse of how people living along the Silk Road used textiles as currency.

The kingdom of Khotan lay 2,628 kilometres to the north-west of the Tang capital at Chang'an. Strategically located in the south-west of the Taklamakan Desert, Khotan was a meeting point of different ethnic groups, languages, cultures and traditions, and was renowned as a centre of Buddhism. With its unique combination of influences, Khotanese society was quite different from that of Turfan to the north of the Taklamakan. In addition to the indigenous practices and traditions that developed in Khotan, this kingdom was always under the influence of major external political powers: Khotan was a vassal kingdom of the Hephtalites or Turkic peoples during the sixth century, came under increasing Chinese influence in the seventh and eighth centuries, was under Tibetan occupation from the 790s to 840s, and thereafter under the Chinese again. The secular documentary evidence from Khotan, written in Khotanese and Chinese, from the seventh and eighth centuries reflects everyday life there, and reveals the impact of Chinese administrative changes on traditional practices.

The extensive documentary evidence collected and analysed in the previous studies in this issue suggest a preliminary conclusion that can be summarised as follows: from the collapse of the Han dynasty to the glorious days of the Tang dynasty, the peoples living in the Western Regions along the Silk Road used multiple co-existing forms of money – grain, cloth and coins – with one of these three items becoming predominant according to changes in political and/or economic circumstances. However, this multicurrency system did not outlive the political, economic and fiscal upheavals that shook the Tang empire from the mid-eighth century onwards. As far as the materials from Turfan and Dunhuang are concerned, the latest evidence for this monetary system is provided by a manuscript found at Dunhuang (P 3348 V°), already quoted in Arakawa Masaharu's article, which permits us to see how such a complex monetary system worked in real life once the silk shipped by the Tang government arrived in the Western Regions. In particular, a subsidiary account (P 3348 V°2 B) inscribed in this accounting report reveals how a local official called Li Jingyu 李景玉, who was vice-commissioner in the army stationed in that region, received his salary for the first semester of the year 745 ce.

This glossary presents 80 items of textile terminology that are found in the Chinese documents from Dunhuang and Turfan, or in historical texts. Some of these terms can be identified with actual textiles found at sites in north-western China. Readers should be aware that there are variations in textile terminology in this international field of research: for example, we have used “plain weave” where other textile specialists might prefer “tabby”; and “damask” where others might prefer “twill”.