Between Rome and China: History, Religions and Material Culture of the Silk Road

Editors:
S. N.C. Lieu, G. Mikkelsen

Publication Date:
2016.6

Publisher:
Brepols Publishers

Abstract:

This book contains a key study on sericulture as well as on the conduct of the trade in silk between China and the Roman Near East using archaeological and literary evidence.

The eight studies in this volume by established and emerging scholars range geographically and chronologically from the Greek Kingdom of Bactria of the 2nd century BCE to the Uighur Kingdoms of Karabalgasun in Mongolia and Qočo in Xinjiang of the 8th-9th centuries CE. 

It contains a key study on sericulture as well on the conduct of the trade in silk between China and the Roman Near East using archaeological as well as literary evidence. Other topics covered include Sogdian religious art, the role of Manichaeism as a Silk Road religion par excellence, the enigmatic names for the Roman Empire in Chinese sources and a multi-lingual gazetteer of place- and ethnic names in Pre-Islamic Central Asia which will be an essential reference tool for researchers. The volume also contains an author and title index to all the Silk Road Studies volumes published up to 2014. The broad ranging theme covered by this volume should appeal to a wider public fascinated by the history of the Silk Road and wishing to be informed of the latest state of research. Because of the centrality of the topics covered by this study, the volume could serve as a basic reading text for university courses on the history of the Silk Road.


Table of Contents

1. JOSEF WIESEHÖFER
    Greeks, Iranians and Chinese on the Silk Road                

2. ULRICH HÜBNER
    Palestine, Syria and the Silk Road                          

3. WERNER SUNDERMANN
     Manichaeism on the Silk Road: Its Rise, Flourishing and Decay      

4. THOMAS THILO
    Chang’an – China’s Gateway to the Silk Road   

5. GUNNER MIKKELSEN
    Religious Convergence in Sogdian Funerary Art from Sixth-Century North 
    China          

6. SAMUEL N. C. LIEU
    Da Qin 大秦 and Fulin 拂林 – the Chinese Names for Rome   
  
7. SAMUEL N. C. LIEU  &  GUNNER MIKKELSEN
    Places and Peoples in Central Asia and in the Graeco-Roman 
    Near East – A Multilingual Gazetteer from Select Pre-Islamic Sources             

8. LYNDON A. ARDEN-WONG
    Some Thoughts on Manichaean Architecture and its Application  in the 
    Eastern Uighur Khaganate