Download or read book Sogdian Traders written by Étienne de la Vaissière and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-11-12 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Sogdian Traders were the main go-between of Central Asia from the fifth to the eighth century. From their towns of Samarkand, Bukhara, or Tashkent, their diaspora is attested by texts, inscriptions or archaeology in all the major countries of Asia (India, China, Iran, Turkish Steppe, but also Byzantium). This survey for the first time brings together all the data on their trade, from the beginning, a small-scale trade in the first century BC up to its end in the tenth century. It should interest all the specialists of Ancient and Medieval Asia (including specialists of Sinology, Islamic Studies, Iranology, Turkology and Indology) but also specialists of Medieval Economic History.

Download or read book Sogdian Painting written by Guitty Azarpay and published by Univ of California Press. This book was released on 2023-12-22 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1981. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived

Download or read book ReOrienting the Sasanians written by Khodadad Rezakhani and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-15 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A narrative history of Central Asia after the Greek dynasties and before IslamCentral Asia is commonly imagined as the marginal land on the periphery of Chinese and Middle Eastern civilisations. At best, it is understood as a series of disconnected areas that served as stop-overs along the Silk Road. However, in the mediaeval period, this region rose to prominence and importance as one of the centres of Persian-Islamic culture, from the Seljuks to the Mongols and Timur. Khodadad Rezakhani tells the back story of this rise to prominence, the story of the famed Kushans and mysterious aAsian Huns, and their role in shaping both the Sasanian Empire and the rest of the Middle East.Contextualises Persian history in relation to the history of Central Asia Extends the concept of late antiquity further east than is usually done Surveys the history of Iran and Central Asia between 200 and 800 bc and contextualises the rise of Islam in both regions "e;

Download or read book Trade and Civilisation written by Kristian Kristiansen and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2018-07-05 with total page 567 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides the first global analysis of the relationship between trade and civilisation from the beginning of civilisation 3000 BC until the modern era 1600 AD. Encompassing the various networks including the Silk Road, the Indian Ocean trade, Near Eastern family traders of the Bronze Age, and the Medieval Hanseatic League, it examines the role of the individual merchant, the products of trade, the role of the state, and the technical conditions for land and sea transport that created diverging systems of trade and in the development of global trade networks. Trade networks, however, were not durable. The book focuses on the establishment and decline of great trading network systems, and how they related to the expansion of civilisation, and to different forms of social and economic exploitation. Case studies focus on local conditions as well as global networks until the sixteenth century when the whole globe was connected by trade.

Download or read book 2600 Years of Sambuddhatva written by and published by . This book was released on 2011 with total page 712 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Nativist Prophets of Early Islamic Iran written by Patricia Crone and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2012-06-28 with total page 585 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Patricia Crone's book is about the Iranian response to the Muslim penetration of the Iranian countryside, the revolts subsequently triggered there and the religious communities that these revolts revealed. The book also describes a complex of religious ideas that, however varied in space and unstable over time, has demonstrated a remarkable persistence in Iran across a period of two millennia. The central thesis is that this complex of ideas has been endemic to the mountain population of Iran and occasionally become epidemic with major consequences for the country, most strikingly in the revolts examined here and in the rise of the Safavids who imposed Shi'ism on Iran. This learned and engaging book by one of the most influential scholars of early Islamic history casts entirely new light on the nature of religion in pre-Islamic Iran and on the persistence of Iranian religious beliefs both outside and inside Islam after the Arab conquest.

Download or read book History of Central Asia The 4 volume set written by Christoph Baumer and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2018-04-18 with total page 1580 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This set includes all four volumes of the critically acclaimed History of Central Asia series. The epic plains and arid deserts of Central Asia have witnessed some of the greatest migrations, as well as many of the most transformative developments, in the history of civilization. Christoph Baumer's ambitious four-volume treatment of the region charts the 3000-year drama of Scythians and Sarmatians; Soviets and transcontinental Silk Roads; trade routes and the transmission of ideas across the steppes; and the breathless and brutal conquests of Alexander the Great and Chinghiz Khan. Masterfully interweaving the stories of individuals and peoples, the author's engaging prose is richly augmented throughout by colour photographs taken on his own travels. This set includes The Age of the Steppe Warriors (Volume 1), The Age of the Silk Roads (Volume 2), The Age of Islam and the Mongols (Volume 3) and The Age of Decline and Revival (Volume 4)

Download or read book Buddhism in Central Asia written by Baij Nath Puri and published by Motilal Banarsidass Publ.. This book was released on 1987 with total page 398 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Buddhism in Central Asia is a saga of peaceful pursuit by Buddhist scholars from Kashmir and Kabul to propagate the message of the Buddha. This vast region between the Tien-Shan and the Kunlun ranges was the centre of activities of these Buddhist savants. Here people of different races and professions, speaking many languages, were finally blended into a cosmopolitan culture. This created an intellectual climate of high order. In this context, the famous silk trade route was helpful in adding to the material prosperity of the people in this region. The present study, therefore, is not one of Buddhism in isolation. It equally provides an account of the political forces confronting each other during the course of history of this region for well over a thousand years. For centuries the drifting desert sand of Central Asia enveloped this civilization and the religion connected with it. The late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century explorers and archaeologists successfully uncovered it at different centres along the old Silk Route. This has been helpful for a comprehensive study of Buddhism with its literature and art. The finds of hundreds of inscriptions have added to the cultural dimensions of the study.

Download or read book The Spread of Buddhism written by Ann Heirman and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2007-07-30 with total page 484 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In no region of the world Buddhism can be seen as a unified doctrinal system. It rather consists of a multitude of different ideas, practices and behaviours. Geographical, social, political, economic, philosophical, religious, and also linguistic factors all played their role in its development and spread, but this role was different from region to region. Based on up-to-date research, this book aims at unraveling the complex factors that shaped the presence of particular forms of Buddhism in the regions to the north and the east of India. The result is a fascinating view on the mechanisms that allowed or hampered the presence of (certain aspects of) Buddhism in regions such as Central Asia, China, Tibet, Mongolia, or Korea.

Download or read book The Buddha Image written by Yuvraj Krishan and published by Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan. This book was released on 1996 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Illustrations: 247 b/w illustrations Description: This book deals with crucial though controversial questions in Buddhist art: the origin of the Buddha image and the iconography of the Buddha images. The earliest Buddhist art of Sanchi and Bharhut is aniconic : The Buddha is represented in symbols only. In the later Buddhist art of Gandhara and Mathura, the Buddha is represented in human form: he is the principal subject of sculptural art. The book seeks to explore the geographical area in which the image of the Buddha first emerged and whether the Buddhist doctrines-Hinayana or Mahayana-had anything to do with this transformation. The Buddha image, as developed eventually at Sarnath, became the model for the Buddha images in whole of Asia, south-east, central and eastern Asia. The iconographic features of the Buddha image are superficially an aberration, being in apparent conflict with the doctrine. The Buddha had cut off his hair at the time of his renunciation; the rules of the order enjoin that a monk must be tonsured and must discard and eschew all riches. However, in his images, the Buddha has hair on his head; later he is also endowed with a crown and jewels. After an exhaustive examination of the views of various scholars, the book answers these questions and resolves the controversies on the basis of literary, numismatic and epigraphic sources. More importantly it makes use of the valuable evidence from the contemporaneous Jaina art : Aniconism of early Jaina art and the iconographic features of Jaina images. The implications of this study are also important : Does India owe idolatry to Buddhism? Was this of foreign inspiration? Was the Buddha image fashioned after the Vedic Brahma and whether the Buddha's usnisa and Buddhist art motifs are rooted in the Vedic tradition? The book is profusely illustrated and provides rich and stimulating fare to students of Indian art in general and of Buddhist art in particular.

Download or read book Early Buddhist Art of China and Central Asia Volume 2 The Eastern Chin and Sixteen Kingdoms Period in China and Tumshuk Kucha and Karashahr in Central Asia 2 vols written by Marylin Martin Rhie and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-07-15 with total page 1635 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Volume two of Marylin Rhie’s widely acclaimed and formative multi-volume work presents a comprehensive, scholarly and detailed study of the Buddhist art of China and Central Asia from 316-439 A.D. during the formative early periods of Buddhism in the Eastern Chin and Sixteen Kingdoms Period. Using texts translated from the Chinese together with stylistic and technical analyses, the chronology and sources of the art are more clearly defined than in previous studies for the regions of South and North China (other than Kansu) and the important sites of Tumshuk, Kucha and Karashahr on the Northern Silk Route in eastern Central Asia. Furthermore, by incorporating extensive religious and historical materials, this work not only contributes to clarifying the regional characteristics of the art, but also offers new insights into the broader, interregional relationships of this politically fragmented period.

Download or read book Early Buddhist Art of China and Central Asia Volume 1 Later Han Three Kingdoms and Western Chin in China and Bactria to Shan shan in Central Asia written by Marylin Martin Rhie and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2019-01-28 with total page 924 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive analysis of the earliest Buddhist art of China, Bactria, and the Southern Silk Road in Central Asia from ca. 1st - 4th century A.D., elucidating the inter-relationships, history, religious elements, sources, dating and chronology.

Download or read book A History of the Tajiks written by Richard Foltz and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2019-06-27 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this comprehensive and up to date history, from prehistoric proto-Indo-Iranian times to the post-Soviet period, Richard Foltz traces the complex linguistic, cultural and political history of the Tajiks, a Persian-speaking Iranian ethnic group from the modern-day Central Asian states of Tajikistan, Afghanistan, and Uzbekistan. In eight chapters, the author explores the revitalisation of Persian culture under the Samanid Empire in the Tajik heartlands of historical Khorasan and Transoxiana; analyses the evolution of the politics of Tajik identity; and traces the history of the ethnic Tajik diaspora today.

Download or read book New Research on Central Asian Buddhist and Far Eastern Art and Archaeology written by Judith A. Lerner and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This second volume of the series offers a broad range of subject matter from an equally broad range of regions. Michael Shenkar compares a particular type of deity from the Parthian West (Palmyra, Hatra) with the colossal image of a divinity from Akchakhan-kala in ancient Choresmia (part of modern-day Uzbekistan). Careful iconographic analysis of a sealing showing the god Mithra, found at Kafir Qala near Samarkand, allows Fabrizio Sinisi to suggest a Kushan origin for the seal that made the impression. Several contributions on Sogdiana concern its archaeology and early history (Bi Bo on Kangju and Sogdiana); the iconography of one of the major wall painting cycles at Panjikent (Matteo Compareti) as well as the city's temples and deities worshipped (Markus Mode). By drawing on archaeological, ethnological and historical data, Soren Stark offers an extensive discussion of mountain pastoralism and seasonal occupation in northern Tajikistan, north of the Zerafshan River in what were borderlands for Sogdiana. Rounding out the first part of this volume is Suzanne G. Valentine's publication of a Bactrian camel clay sculpture, excavated in the Sui-Tang capital of Xi'an, its saddlebags decorated with an unusual motif. The second and last part is guest-edited by John Clarke, convener of a Buddhist conference in 2010. This section contains updated or new papers by some of the participants-Naman P. Ahuja on Buddhist imagery in Bengal; Amy Heller on the impact of Kashmiri art on Guge and Ladakh; Deborah Klimburg-Salter on Buddhist pilgrimage sites in Afghanistan; and Michael Willis on sculpture from Sarnath in the British Museum-along with that of Chiara Bellini on the restoration of the Alchi Sumtsek and the dating of the Ladakhi temple.

Download or read book The Art of Ajanta and Sopo ani written by Om Datt Upadhya and published by Motilal Banarsidass Publ.. This book was released on 1994 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Pauranic Prana-aesthetics, a finer shade different from that of vitalistic aesthetics )the earlier having breathing-rhythm of Ksaya-Vrddhi --diminuation and augmentation--other than the latter`s emphasis only on the rhythm of augmentation), has been delineated in this study with examples from the world`s two of the best art-monuments: Ajanta (India), now not remaining unknown even to the most casual connoisseur, and Sopocani (Yugoslavia), the most significant and monumentally beautiful work of Byzantine art. Tracing Prana-aesthetics as the aesthetics of inner-light coded in the creeper-motif by the artists of Ajanta, this work emphasises decoding of the creeper-motif by Byzantine artists culminating into the frescoes of Sopocani done in Hellenistic-Byzantine aesthetics beatifield by Hesycast meditation to which that of Buddhists was not unknown. Comparisons of various determinant aspects, aesthetics and artistic denominators, and constraints not allowing similar consummation are properly investigated to substantiate the thesis that Prana-aesthetics transfigures at Ajanta but transubstantiates at Sopocani. The significance of the anabolic aspects of this aesthetics is highlighted especially as a way out from the reductivistic tendencies of the present day visual-arts straining them upto the stage of catabolic dissolution.

Download or read book China written by James C. Y. Watt and published by Metropolitan Museum of Art. This book was released on 2004 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the great tradition of publications on Chinese art from the Metropolitan Museum, China: Dawn of a Golden Age will become an essential text for years to come. This book is the catalogue for a major exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art (October 5, 2004 to January 23, 2005).

Download or read book Art of the Yellow Springs written by Wu Hung and published by Reaktion Books. This book was released on 2015-02-15 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: We might think the Egyptians were the masters of building tombs, but no other civilization has devoted more time and resources to underground burial structures than the Chinese. For at least five thousand years, from the fourth millennium B.C.E. to the early twentieth century, the Chinese have been building some of the world’s most elaborate tombs and furnishing them with exquisite objects. It is these objects and the concept of the tomb as a “treasure-trove” that The Art of the Yellow Springs seeks to critique, drawing on recent scholarship to examine memorial sites the way they were meant to be experienced: not as a mere store of individual works, but as a work of art itself. Wu Hung bolsters some of the new trends in Chinese art history that have been challenging the conventional ways of studying funerary art. Examining the interpretative methods themselves that guide the study of memorials, he argues that in order to understand Chinese tombs, one must not necessarily forget the individual works present in them—as the beautiful color plates here will prove—but consider them along with a host of other art-historical concepts. These include notions of visuality, viewership, space, analysis, function, and context. The result is a ground-breaking new assessment that demonstrates the amazing richness of one of the longest-running traditions in the whole of art history.