身毒 / Shendu (Western Han-era)

Overview

身毒 / Shendu is the episode’s intended destination for a Han attempt to find a southwestern route from Shu toward the wider world known through 张骞’s report.

Current Profile

Hanji 306-2 begins from Shu bamboo staffs and fine cloth observed in 大夏. Their reported purchase farther southeast leads Zhang Qian to infer that the distant market may lie comparatively near Shu and could offer a route avoiding Qiang- and Xiongnu-exposed approaches.

Han envoys do not reach the target. Their reconnaissance instead reaches 滇国 and stops because passage farther west is blocked. Shendu therefore functions in the current evidence as an inferred destination and strategic hypothesis, not a polity directly described from successful Han diplomatic contact.

Key Characteristics

• Proposed southwestern destination inferred from commodity circulation.
• Alternative-route objective intended to bypass more dangerous northern and northwestern approaches.
• Unreached target of a four-direction reconnaissance from Shu and Qianwei.
• Historical-geography identity complicated by inconsistent transcription in the supplied summary.

Evidence

Commodity and distance inference:

• Hanji 306-2 says Zhang Qian uses Shu-associated goods found in Daxia and a reported southeastern market to infer a possible route from Shu.

Failed contact:

• Hanji 306-2 says the Han parties reach Dian but are unable to continue to their intended destination.

Qualifications

The episode title identifies the target as 身毒, while the supplied body summary uses the uncertain forms 渊都/运都. This page preserves 身毒 as the normalized identity but does not independently settle the underlying text, pronunciation, exact geography, equivalence with a modern territory, or the identities of merchants and intermediaries. The goods demonstrate some form of circulation; they do not prove direct bilateral trade or a traversable state-controlled road from Shu.

What Changed

• Created the page for the proposed destination behind Zhang Qian’s southwestern route hypothesis.
• Made the transcription mismatch and failed-contact boundary explicit.

Relationships

• 张骞 - infers a possible route toward Shendu from commodity evidence.
• 大夏 - observation point where Shu-associated goods trigger the inference.
• 滇国 - polity reached before the intended route is blocked.
• 商品踪迹式路线推断 - method by which Shendu enters the episode’s strategic map.
• 丝绸之路 - wider route-system comparison qualified by the failure to establish this southwestern branch.