“前四史”中史家对希腊化世界的地理认识

Ancient Chinese Historians’Geographical Recognition of Hellenistic World in Early Four Historiographies

“前四史”中撰写西域文本的史家持狭义天下观,他们或多或少受到《禹贡》《山海经》等传统中国地理志的影响。因此希腊化世界虽然属于广义的“天下”,但《魏略·西戎传》的部分文本并不适用于历史地理学研究。利用语言学方法得到的希腊化地名不仅随着时间的推移数量逐渐增加,而且极富争议,但相同的地名也可能反映出诸位史家对希腊化世界的不同地理认识。这些史家对希腊化世界政区与自然地理认识的变化来源于希腊化世界中的族群互动,现有记述既说明古代史家对希腊化世界的认知程度有限,也说明古代史家持久关注了帕米尔高原以西的希腊化世界,只是未能把握“希腊化”这一特征。

Historians of Early Four Historiographies who had the concept of“Tianxia”(narrow sense)were more or less influenced by traditional Chinese geographical records,such as Yu Gong and Shan Hai Jing,when writing biographies of Western Regions.Though Hellenistic World was in the concept of“Tianxia”(broad sense),some texts in biography of“Xirong”aren’t applicable to research of Historical Geography.Hellenistic geographic names which were obtained by linguistic methods not only increased in number over time,but are also highly controversial.Meanwhile same geographic names may reflect different geographic understandings of Hellenistic World.Changes of descriptions of political regions and natural geography in Western Regions context stemmed from ethnic interactions in Hellenistic World.Existing descriptions illustrated that ancient Chinese historians knew little about Hellenistic World,and ancient Chinese historians paid attention to Hellenistic World for long.