VII — Geographica
On the Existence of a Nation Bearing the Name of Seres or a Country Called Serica or Terra Serica
From the Classical Museum of 1846. Vol. 3
The following train of thought presented itself to the writer upon the perusal of Mr. James Yates’s learned and interesting work entitled Textrinum Antiquorum or an account of the art of weaving among the ancients. With scarcely a single exception the facts and references are supplied from that work so that to the author of the present paper nothing belongs beyond the reasoning that he has applied to them.
This statement is made once for all for the sake of saving a multiplicity of recurring references.
The negative assertions as well as the positive ones are also made upon the full faith in the exhaustive learning of the writer in question.
Now the conviction that is come to is this, that no tribe, nation or country ever existed which can be shewn to have borne, either in the vernacular or in any neighbouring language, the name Seres, Serica, or Terra Serica or any equivalent term, a conclusion that may save some trouble to the inquirers into ancient geography.
The nation called Seres has never had a specific existence under that name. Whence then originated the frequent indications of such a nation recurring in the writings of the ancients? The doctrine, founded upon the facts of Mr. Yates and laid down as a proposition; is as follows.—
That the name under which the article silk was introduced to the Greeks and Romans wore the appearance of a Gentile adjective and that the imaginary root of the accredited adjective passed for the substantive name of a nation. Thus, in the original form seric, the -ic had the appearance of being an adjectival termination, as in Medic-us Persic-us &c.; whilst ser- was treated as the substantive name of a nation or people from whence the article in question (i. e. the seric article) was derived. The Seres therefore were the hypothetical producers of the article that bore their name (seric). Whether this view involves more improbabilities than the current one will be seen from the forthcoming observations.—
1. In the first place the crude form seric was neither Latin nor Greek, so that the -ic could not be adjectival.
2. Neither was it in the simpler form ser- that the term was introduced into the classical languages so that the adjectival -ic might be appended afterwards.—
3. The name in question whatever might have been its remote origin was introduced into Greece from the Semitic tongues (probably the Phoenician) and was the word שריק in Isaiah XIX. 9. where the יק (the -ic) is not an adjectival appendage but a radical part of the word. And here it may be well to indicate that, except under the improbable supposition that the Hebrew name was borrowed from the Greek or Latin, it is a matter of indifference whether the word in question was indigenous to the Semitic Languages or introduced from abroad, and also that is a matter of indifference whether silk was known in the time of the Old Testament or not. It is sufficient if a term afterwards applied to that article was Hebrew at the time of Isaiah. Of any connection between the substance called שריק and a nation called Seres there is in the Semitic tongues no trace. The foundation of the present scepticism originated in the observation that the supposed national existence of the Seres coincided with the introduction of the term seric into languages where ic- was an adjectival affix.—
As early as the Augustan age the substantive Seres appears by the side of the adjective Sericus. In Virgil, Horace and Ovid the words may be found and from this time downwards the express notice of a nation so called is found through a long series of writers.—
Notwithstanding this it is as late as the time of Mela before we find any author mentioning with detail and precision a geographical nationality for the Seres. “He (Mela) describes them as a very honest people who brought what they had to sell, laid it down and went away and then returned for the price of it” (Yates p. 184). Now this notice is anything rather than definite. Its accuracy moreover may be suspected, since it belongs to the ambiguous class of what may be called convertible descriptions. The same story is told of an African nation in Herodotus IV. 169.
To the statement of Mela we may add a notice from Ammianus Marcellinus of the quiet and peaceable character of the Seres (XXIII. 6.) and a statement from the novelist Heliodorus that at the nuptials of Theagenes and Chariclea the ambassadors of the Seres came bringing the thread and webs of their spiders (Aethiop. X. p. 494. Commelini).
Now notices more definite than the above of the national existence of the Seres anterior to the time of Justinian we have none whilst subsequently to the reign of that emperor there is an equal silence on the part both of historians and geographers. Neither have modern ethnographers found unequivocal traces of tribes bearing that name.
The probability of a confusion like the one indicated at the commencement of the paper is increased by the facts stated in p. 222. of the Textrinum. Here we see that besides Pausanias, Hesychius, Photius and other writers give two senses to the root ser- which they say is (1.) a worm (2.) the name of a nation. Probably Clemens Alexandrinus does the same νῆμα χρυσοῦ καὶ σῆρας Ἰνδικοὺς καὶ τοὺς περιέργους βόμβυκας χαίρειν ἐῶντας. A passage from Ulpian (Textrinum p. 192) leads to the belief that σῆρας here means silk-worm. Vestimentorum sunt omnia lanea lineaque, vel serica vel bombycina.
Finally the probability of the assumed confusion is verified by the statement of Procopius αὕτη δέ ἐστιν ἡ μέταξα ἐξ ἧς εἰώθασι τὴν ἐσθῆτα ἐργάζεσθαι, ἣν πάλαι μὲν Ἥλληνες Μηδικὴν ἐκάλουν, τανῦν δὲ σηρικὴν ὀνομάζουσιν. (De Bell. Persic. I. 20.).
Militating against these views I find little unsusceptible of explanation.—
1. The expression σηρικα δερματα of the author of the Periplus Maris Erythraei means skins from the silk country.
2. The intricacy introduced into the question by a passage of Procopius is greater. In the account of the first introduction of the silk worm into Europe in the reign of Justinian the monks who introduced it having arrived from India stated that they had long resided in the country called Serinda inhabited by Indian nations where they had learned how raw silk might be produced in the country of the Romans (Textrinum p. 231). This is so much in favor of the root Ser-being gentile, but at the same time so much against the Seres being Chinese. Sanskrit scholars may perhaps adjust this matter. The Serinda is probably the fabulous Serendib.
In the countries around the original localities of the silk-worm the name for silk is as follows—
| In Corean | Sir. |
| Chinese | se. |
| Mongolian | sirkek. |
| Mandchoo | sirghe. |
It is the conviction of the present writer that a nation called Seres had no geographical existence.