Kangju (; Eastern Han Chinese: kʰɑŋ-kɨɑ < *khâŋ-ka (c. 140 BCE)) was the Chinese name of a kingdom in Central Asia during the first half of the first millennium CE. The name Kangju is now generally regarded as a variant or mutated form of the name Sogdiana. According to contemporaneous Chinese sources, Kangju was the second most powerful state in Transoxiana, after the Yuezhi. Its people, known in Chinese as the Kāng (康), were evidently of Indo-European origins, spoke an Eastern Iranian language, and had a semi-nomadic way of life. They were probably identical to the "Saka" Sogdians, or other Iranian groups closely related to them, such as the Asii.
Name
According to John E. Hill, a historian specialising in ancient Central Asia, "Kangju (W-G: K'ang-chü) 康居" was in or near the "Talas basin, [modern] Tashkent and Sogdiana". (According to Edwin Pulleyblank, Beitian – the summer capital of Kangju – was in or near modern metropolitan Tashkent.) It is not clear whether the Chinese name 康居 Kangju was intended to transcribe an ethnic name, or to be descriptive, or both. 居 ju can mean: 'seat', 'central place of activity or authority; 'to settle down,' 'residence,' or 'to occupy (militarily).'... The term, therefore, could simply mean "the abode of the Kang," or "territory occupied by the Kang." ... As kang 康 means 'well-being', 'peaceful,' 'happy;' 'settle', 'stability,' Kangju can be translated as the 'Peaceful Land,' or 'Abode of the Peaceful (People).' ... Even if the name Kangju was originally an attempt to transcribe the sounds of a foreign name, it would still have carried the sense of a peaceful place to Chinese speakers, and the name 'Kang' would have had overtones of a peaceful people.
Later Chinese sources, during the Sui and Tang dynasties, refer to Kangju as the State of Kang (). By that time it was part of the Göktürk Khaganate.
Pulleyblank linked Kangju to the Tocharian A word kāṅka-, probably meaning "stone" and proposed that the Kangju were originally Tocharians who had migrated westward into Sogdia and established themselves in Chach (modern Tashkent). Pulleyblank also suggested that the Jié (羯) tribe Qiāngqú (羌渠) might be Kangju people who had been incorporated into the Xiongnu tribal confederation. Pulleyblank further connected Kangju to Kànjié 瞰羯 (*Kamkar?) and the name Kankar given to the lower Yaxartes by Persian geographer ibn Khordadbeh. Ünal (2022) instead reconstructs *kaŋk- as the underlying form of Chinese transcription 康居 EHC *kʰɑŋ-kɨɑ > standard Chinese Kāngjū), proposes that it was an Iranian word meaning "stone", and compares it to Pashto kā́ṇay "stone".
Joseph Marquart, Omeljan Pritsak and Peter B. Golden have noted phonetic similarities between Kangju and Kengeres mentioned in the Orkhon inscriptions, the Kangarâyê in Transcaucasia, the city of Kengü Tarban, and the three Pecheneg tribes collectively known as Kangar mentioned by Constantine VII Porphyrogenitus. Nevertheless, all those connections remain hypothetical.
Archaeological evidence suggests that the Kangju spoke an Eastern Iranian language, which was probably identical to Sogdian, or derived from it.
History
According to 2nd century BCE Chinese sources, Kangju lay north of the Dayuan and west of the Wusun, bordering the Yuezhi in the south. Their territory covered the region of the Ferghana Valley and the area between the Amu Darya and Syr Darya rivers, with the core territory along the middle Syr Darya. Since historians of Alexander the Great do not mention the existence of any political power in the area except the Khwarezmians, the Kangju must have appeared a little later. It is likely that the state of the Kangju emerged during the great upheaval in Central Asia following the withdrawal of the Yuezhi from Gansu and then the Ili Valley after their defeat by the Xiongnu and Wusun respectively. Chinese sources state that the Kangju were tributiaries of the Yuezhi in the south and the Xiongnu in the east.
Kangju was mentioned by the Chinese traveller and diplomat Zhang Qian who visited the area c. 128 BCE, whose travels are documented in Chapter 123 of the Shiji (whose author, Sima Qian, died c. 90 BCE):
"Kangju is situated some 2,000 li [832 kilometers] northwest of Dayuan. Its people are nomads and resemble the Yuezhi in their customs. They have 80,000 or 90,000 skilled archers. The country is small, and borders Dayuan (Ferghana). It acknowledges sovereignty to the Yuezhi people in the South and the Xiongnu in the East.
Qian also visited a land known to the Chinese as Yancai 奄蔡 (literally "vast steppe"), which lay north-west of the Kangju. The people of Yancai were said to resemble the Kangju in their customs: