Description
Book Synopsis Towards the middle of the 20th century, scholarly research revealed that the fabled Silk Roads, far from being mere trade routes, were cultural highways that played a pivotal role in linking east and west, intermittently bringing together nomads and city dwellers, pastoral peoples and farmers, merchants and monks, and soldiers and pilgrims. The notion of movement is therefore central to an understanding of the relations between peoples; it is also the factor of which specialists have, for various reasons, not taken sufficient account. It is in this context that the Silk Roads Project, initiated by UNESCO, assumes its significance. It has proved very fruitful and led to a large variety of projects of which this volume presents a selection. Although the papers collected here are wide-ranging, they reveal the emergence of the concept of a common heritage and plural identity. The studies carried out under the Project have shown that identity, seen from a long-term perspective, cannot be viewed as a ghetto or an enclosure, but as the result of a whole process of synthesis and encounter between peoples and cultures. (from the Introduction)
Table of Contents Foreword
Doudou Diène
Contributors
List of Abbreviations
Introduction: Approaches Old and New to the Silk Roads
Vadime Elisseeff
Chapter 1. Perspectives on Buddhism in Dunhuang during the Tang and Five Dynasties Period
Henrik H. Sørensen
Chapter 2. The Expansion of Buddhism into Southeast Asia (Mainly before A.D. 1000)
J.G. de Casparis
Chapter 3. The Travels of Marco Polo in the Land of Buddhism
Ananda Abeydeera
Chapter 4. Indus-Gulf Relations: A Reassessment in the Light of New Evidence
Nilofer Shaikh
Chapter 5. The Southern Silk Road: Archaeological Evidence of Early Trade between India and Southeast Asia
Ian C. Glover
Chapter 6. An Inscription in Memory of Sayyid Bin Abu Ali: A Study of Relations between China and Oman from the
Eleventh to the Fifteenth Century
Liu Yingsheng
Chapter 7. The Mongol Empire in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries: East-West Relations
Bira Shagdar
Chapter 8. A Brunei Sultan of the Early Fourteenth Century: A Study of an Arabic Gravestone
Chen Da-sheng
Chapter 9. Caravanserais along the Grand Trunk Road in Pakistan: A Central Asian Legacy
Saifur Rahman Dar
Chapter 10. Maritime Trade from the Fourteenth to the Seventeenth Century: Evidence from the Underwater Archaeological Sites in the Gulf of Siam
Sayan Prishanchit
Chapter 11. The Ban on the Export of Certain Articles from the Levant to the Mediterranean Ports during the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries
Zeki Arikan
Chapter 12. The Impact of the Macao-Manila Silk Trade from the Beginnings to 1640
Rui D’Ávila Lourido
Chapter 13. Inner Asian Muslim Merchants at the Closure of the Silk Routes in the Seventeenth Century
Isenbike Togan
Chapter 14. The Exchange of Musical Influences between Korea and Central Asia in Ancient Times
Song Bang-Song
Chapter 15. The Trade Routes and the Diffusion of Artistic Traditions in South and Southeast Asia
Nandana Chutiwongs
Chapter 16. The Development of China’s Navigation Technology and of the Maritime Silk Route
Sun Guangqi
Chapter 17. Mongol Nomadic Pastoralism: A Tradition between Nature and History
Jacques Legrand
Chapter 18. The Spiritual Identity of the Silk Roads: A Historical Overview of Buddhism and Islam
Amir H. Zekrgoo
Appendix: International Seminars and Colloquiums Held during the UNESCO Silk Roads Expeditions
