The Discovery of Cyrus Cylinder's Copy in China: Contact between Iranian and Chinese Culture from the beginning until the end of Achaemenid Empire

Recent Scholarship on the Persian-Chinese relations tells us that contact between Iranian and Chinese Culture was initiated toward the end of the 2nd century B.C.E. by the envoy Chang Ch’ien (Zhang Qian). But, certainly, there had been contacts between these two cultures, from the Indo-Europeans time in Central Asia and later the Achaemenid period until the journey of Chang Ch’ien who was contemporary with Arsacids, which drew less attention. By studying the practices of Chu culture in China and its similarities to the Indo-Iranian and Zoroastrian practices, archaeological data, information in the Chinese and Greek writers’ books, we can speak of direct Contact between Iranian and Chinese Culture from the Achaemenid period. Since there is no independent research about the contact between Iranian and Chinese Culture before the journey of Chang Ch’ien to the west, the main purpose of this article is to discuss the mechanism of contact between Iranian and Chinese Culture until the journey of Chang Ch’ien according to the other archaeological and historical evidence.