Robert Bedrosian, in an article published in Armenian Review Vol.34 No.1-133 (1981) pp.17-24, "China and the Chinese according to 5-13th Century Classical Armenian Sources."
---Excerpt from that article:
The Chinese origin of the Mamikoneans is alluded to twice in the 5th century History of Armenia by P'awstos Buzand. In the first instance, the Armenian king Pap (A.D. 367-374) told prince Mushegh Mamikonean that the Mamikoneans were as respect-worthy as the Armenian royal house itself. For, he says, "their ancestors left the kingship of the land of Chenk', and came to our ancestors [in Armenia]. The second reference to the Chinese ancestry of the Mamikoneans appears later in the same History. In this episode, the Mamikonean prince Manuel boldly informed king Varazdat of Armenia (374-378) that the Mamikoneans were not the vassals of the royal house, but its equals. "For", he said, "our ancestors were kings of the land of Chen. Because of a quarrel among brothers, to prevent great. bloodshed we left [that land]. And to find rest, we stopped here [in Armenia].
Armenists have interpreted the information found in the Primary History and in P'aswtos in a variety of ways. For example, Nicholas Adontz in 1908 speculated that when the early sources spoke of "the Chenk"' they referred not to the Chinese, but to the Tzans, a warlike people of the Caucasus who lived near the Mamikoneans' hereditary lands in northwestern Armenia. He derived the name Mamikonean from Georgian mama (meaning "father") plus the Armenian deminuitive ending ik. Adontz was challenged by Michael Toumanean who, in an article published in 1911, sought to identify Armenian Chenk' with the house of Cheng which ruled south of Lo Yang in the 5-4th centuries B.C.
According to Toumanean, the Mamikonean emigration from Cheng took place around 221 B.C., at the time of the Qin conquests, when the Man people were expelled. To Toumanean, the name Mamikonean derives from Gun-Man or Xu-Gun Man which was the hereditary title of the head of the house of Cheng. The orientalist H. Skold in 1925 expressed the view that the Chenk' were not Chinese, but a Turkic group dwelling by the Syr-Darya river. H. Svazyan, who placed the Chenk' between the Amu-Darya and Syr-Darya rivers, suggested that the Mamikoneans may have come from Bactria. Finally, Cyril Toumanoff pointed out that the Mamikoneans' claim of exotic royal origins was nothing unusual within the Armenian political reality. For other families too claimed distinctive foreign origins. The Bagratids, for example, considered themselves descendants of the Biblical king David of Israel, while the Artsrunids claimed descent from the ancient kings of Assyria. Nonetheless, Toumanoff notes that the Mamikonean legend does concern China, even though the legend may not be true.
The origin of the Mamikoneans remains an issue of debate which probably will not be definitively resolved--at least based on the presently available Armenian historical sources. As for the geographical sources, for them China was a land of fantastic wealth; acknowledged, but not well known.
--end excerpt. 3
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