索班 / Suo Ban (late Han)

Overview

Suo Ban is the Han long clerk sent to Yiwu with a small tuntian force after Cao Zong’s Western Regions request, and his death becomes the immediate trigger for the Hanji 791 frontier-strategy debate.

Current Profile

Hanji 790 introduces Suo Ban as the officer sent with more than one thousand men to garrison and cultivate Yiwu after Cao Zong asks the court to protect the Western Regions. Cheshi Qian and Shanshan initially submit. Hanji 791 then records Suo Ban’s killing after Northern Xiongnu and Cheshi Hou attack, turning a small re-entry force into a crisis over whether and how Han should return to the region.

Key Characteristics

• Field implementer rather than chief strategist of the Western Regions re-entry.
• Embodies the fragility of a small Yiwu garrison placed into a contested regional order.
• His initial success in receiving submissions is quickly reversed by Xiongnu-backed attack.
• His death becomes the practical problem around which Cao Zong and Ban Yong’s policy disagreement forms.

Evidence

• Deployment: Hanji 790 records Suo Ban being sent with more than one thousand men to Yiwu for tuntian.
• Initial submission: Hanji 790 says Cheshi Qian and Shanshan submit after the deployment.
• Fatal reversal: Hanji 791 reports the attack that kills Suo Ban.
• Strategic consequence: Hanji 791 uses his death as the occasion for competing frontier proposals by Cao Zong and Ban Yong.

Qualifications

The current profile does not infer Suo Ban’s personal competence beyond the bounded sources. His importance lies in the structural role of his mission and death inside Han’s Western Regions debate.

What Changed

• Created the page from Hanji 790 and Hanji 791.
• Added Suo Ban as the operational link between Cao Zong’s request and Ban Yong’s strategic critique.

Relationships

• 曹宗 / Cao Zong (late Han) - Frontier administrator whose request leads to Suo Ban’s deployment.
• 班勇 / Ban Yong (late Han) - Later critic whose proposal responds to Suo Ban’s death.
• 伊吾屯田 / Yiwu Garrison Farming (late Han) - Site and policy instrument of Suo Ban’s mission.
• 弃边失屏 / Strategic Frontier Abandonment - Conceptual frame for why Suo Ban’s small garrison becomes strategically consequential.
• 匈奴 / Xiongnu - Power whose attack coalition reverses Suo Ban’s initial success.