Silk Road Links

: requires a Kenyon network connection.

Websites

History

Maps

Travelers

Buddhism

Dunhuang

Kushan

Ethnic groups

Mongols

Christianity

Mummies

News

Misc.

Websites:
• Silk Road Seattle: excellent site, with many internal links
  • Silk Road Cultures
  • Primary texts
  • Religions of the Silk Roads
  • Historical texts (translations of primary sources)
• The Silk Road Foundation: very good site
  • The Silk Road: journal, with full-text articles
• The Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War and Faith (British Library)
• The Silk Road and Central Asia: good list of links (Univ. of Washington)
• Yale Silk Road Database
• ECAI Silk Road Atlas (UC Berkeley)
• Monks and Merchants: Silk Road Treasures from Northwest China (Asia Society)
• Buddhist Art and the Trade Routes (Asia Society)
• Silk Road Chicago: Art Institute exhibit, 2006-07
• Digital Silk Roads: maps, photographs, rare books
  • Digital Archive of Toyo Bunko Rare Books (contains both color and high-resolution b/w images of every page, including photographs)
• Mark Aurel Stein: includes Ancient Khotan, 2 vols; Serindia, 5 vols., Innermost Asia, 4 vols, Ruins of Desert Cathay (including Dunhuang), and The Thousand Buddhas
• Paul Pelliot, Les Grottes de Touen-Houang, 6 vols. (photographs of every cave plus the exterior site, taken in 1908)
• Silk Road Museum (Jiuquan, Gansu Province)
• The Silk Road Project (organized by cellist Yo-Yo Ma to explore the cultural traditions of the Silk Road)
• The Silk Road: Materials for an e-History (collected pieces by Daniel C. Waugh)
• The Silk Road: exhibit at American Museum of Natural History (a bit superficial, but worth a look)
• Central and Inner Asia Studies (University of Toronto)
• From Silk to Oil: Cross-Cultural Connections along the Silk Roads: high-school level curriculum guide (China Institute)
• Re-Conceptualizing Asia in World History (special issue of World History Connected, Feb. 2012)
  
  History:
  
• "Silks and Religions in Eurasia, c. A.D. 600-1200" by Liu Xinru (JSTOR)
• Articles by Valerie Hansen (Yale University):
  • "The Impact of the Silk Road Trade on a Local Community: The Turfan Oasis, 500-800"
  • "How Business was Conducted on the Chinese Silk Road during the Tang Dynasty, 618-907"
  • "Religious Life in a Silk Road Community: Niya During the Third and Fourth Centuries"
  • "The Hejia Village Horde: A Snapshot of China's Silk Road Trade"
  • "The Astonishing Finds from the Turfan Oasis: What They Reveal about the History of the Silk Road"
  • "Introduction: Turfan as a Silk Road Community"
  • "A Brief History of the Turfan Oasis"
• Silk Road Chronology (Silk Road Foundation)
• Histories of the Silk Road:
  • by Morris Rossabi
  • by Oliver Wild
• "The Western Regions according to the Hou Hanshu" translated by John E. Hill
• "Silk Route" by William F. Powell (focusing on trade), in The Oxford Companion to Archaeology: requires Kenyon network connection
• Traveling the Silk Roads (special issue of Saudi Aramco World, 1988)
• Religions of the Silk Road (Silk Road Seattle)
• Essays on Central Asia by Andre Gunder Frank
• Bibliography of the Silk Road (Marilyn Shea)
• "Gutenberg and the Koreans: Did East Asian Printing Traditions Influence the European Renaissance?" by Thomas Christensen



Satellite view of the Taklamakan Desert (Tarim Basin) - click for larger view

Maps:

• Interactive Silk Road map (Stanford University)
• Ancient Trade Routes Between Europe and Asia (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
• East Asia in Geographic Perspective (Asia for Educators, Columbia University)
• East Asia topography
• China satellite
• Buddhist sites in Gansu Province (John C. Huntington)
• Dunhuang and Taklamakan (Silk Road Seattle)
• Han Empire
• Eurasian trade routes (1)
• Eurasian trade routes (2)
• China's foreign imports and trade routes
• Silk Road Atlas (Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative)
  
  Pilgrims and Travelers:
  

Stone carving of Xuanzang in Hangzhou

• Travelers on the Silk Road (Silk Road Foundation)
• Chinese Buddhist pilgrims in India (UNESCO Courier)
  
  
• Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms by Fa-hsien [Faxian] (Project Gutenberg)
  • excerpt 1 (Silk Road Seattle)
• excerpt 2 (Brooklyn College)
  
  
• Record of the Western Regions by Xuanzang, book 1 (Silk Road Seattle)
• Travels of Hsuan-tsang (Xuanzang) by Irma Marx (Silk Road Foundation)
• Xuanzang and the Buddhist "Conquest of China" by Daniel Waugh
• Xuanzang by Dan Lusthaus (focuses on his thought)
• The World of Xuanzang and the Silk Road (National Taiwan University - in Chinese)
• Biography of Xuanzang (from an ancient Buddhist text, not clearly identified here)
• "Xuanzang and the Buddhist 'Conquest of China'" by Daniel C. Waugh (Silk Road Seattle)
  
  
• "The World of Marco Polo and His Heirs" by Daniel C. Waugh (Silk Road Seattle)
• In the Footsteps of Marco Polo (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
• In the Footsteps of Marco Polo: An International Symposium on Italy-China Cultural Exchange in the 13th-17th Centuries (Library of Congress)
• In the Footsteps of Marco Polo (PBS film)
  • Timeline: Marco Polo’s Journey
    
    
• Sven Hedin (short article)
• Sven Hedin Chronology and Bibliography by Daniel Waugh
  
  
• Sir Aurel Stein (online book)
• Aurel Stein and the Caves of the Thousand Buddhas (Hungarian Academy of Sciences)
• "Fascinated by the Orient: Aurel Stein, 1862-1943" (Hungarian Academy of Sciences and University of Hong Kong)
• Aurel Stein's grave in Kabul (International Dunhuang Project News): 1 | 2
  
  Buddhism:
• Buddhism and its Spread Along the Silk Road (Silk Road Foundation)
• Buddhism on the Silk Road (International Dunhuang Project)
• Buddhism and trade: see also sidebar links (Silk Road Seattle)
  • printable version
• "Monuments in the Desert: A Note on Economic and Social Roots of the Development of Buddhism along the Silk Road" by Connie Chin (Silk Road Foundation Newsletter, 2005)
• Buddhism Among Iranian Peoples by Ronald E. Emmerick (Encyclopedia Iranica)
• The Historical Interaction between the Buddhist and Islamic Cultures before the Mongol Empire by Alexander Berzin
• Buddhism Across Boundaries: The Interplay of Chinese, Indian, and Central Asian Source Materials
  
  
Dunhuang:
• International Dunhuang Project
  • Silk Road topics
  • IDB Newsletter
  • The Story of Dunhuang, Gansu
• Dunhuang Academy
• Dunhuang cave art (from Caves of the Singing Sands: Buddhist Art from the Silk Road)
• Dunhuang cave art, by Ning Qiang (from Silkroad Foundation)
• The discovery of the Library Cave at Dunhuang (Silk Road Foundation)
• "Dunhuang Art Through the Eyes of Duan Wenjie" (Director of Dunhuang Research Academy)
• Article on temple remains in front of caves (JSTOR)
• "Khotanese Felt and Sogdian Silver: Foreign Gifts to Buddhist Monasteries in Ninth- and Tenth-Century Dunhuang" by RONG Xinjiang (Asia Major, 3rd series, vol. 17, part 1, 2004)
• "The Dunhuang Chinese Sky: A Comprehensive Study of the Oldest Known Star Atlas"
• Site conservation at the Mogao and Yungang Grottoes (Getty Foundation)
• Dunhuang Frescoes Enter the Digital Age
• 360° Quicktime view of Mogao cave site
• Merit, Opulence, and the Buddhist Network of Wealth (10th-century Dunhuang art)
• 360° images of two caves

Kushan Empire:
• Kushan Empire (2nd c. BCE - 3rd c. CE, northwestern India)
• Kushan History
• The Kushan Empire (Metropolitan Museum of Art)
• Kushan History
• Coins of Kushan Dynasty

Ethnic groups:

• "The Division and Destruction of the Xiongnu Confederacy in the first and second centuries AD" by Rafe de Crespigny (2004)
• "The Hsiung-nu [Xiongnu] Imperial Confederacy: Organization and Foreign Policy" by Thomas J. Barfield (1981)
• Xiongnu bibliography (Daniel Waugh)
  
  
• "Sogdian Trade" by Etiènne de la Vaissière (Encyclopedia Iranica)
• Sogdian Trade (Zoroastrian Heritage website)
• The Sogdian Ancient Letters
• "Sogdians and Buddhism" by Mariko Namba Walter (Sino-Platonic Papers, 2006)
• "The Yuezhi Migration and Sogdia" by Craig Benjamin
• "The Sogdian Trade Diaspora in East Turkestan During the Seventh and Eighth Centuries" by Jonathan Karam Skaff (Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, 2003)
  
• Sasanian Dynasty (Circle of Ancient Iranian Studies)
• Turks and Uighurs
• Bibliography of the Chinese Uyghurs (2002)
• History of the Turks
  
  Mongols:
• The Mongols in World History
• The Mongol Invasions of the Islamic world (University of Calgary)
• Modern Mongolia: Reclaiming Genghis Khan (Univ. of Pennsylvania exhibit)
• Mongolia Today (online magazine)
• Karakorum (Silk Road Seattle)

Christianity:
• "The rhetoric of antiquity: politico-religious propaganda in the Nestorian stele of Xi'an" by Max Deeg (Cardiff University)
• The Nestorian stele
• Accounts of Christian travelers and missionaries (scroll down)
• The Lotus & the Cross: East-West Cultural Exchange along the Silk Road (Ricci Institute, University of San Francisco)
  
  Tarim mummies:
• The Mummies of Xinjiang
• The Mysterious Mummies of China (PBS Nova)
• "The Dead Tell a Tale China Doesn't Care to Listen To" (NY Times, 11/19/08)
• Oldest Tarim mummies found (NY Times, 3/15/10)
• "Secrets of the Silk Road" (exhibit at Bowers Museum, Santa Ana, CA, including three mummies: 3/27/10 - 7/25/10)
  
  News articles:
• A Lost Asian Culture (NY Times, 5/13/01)
• Buddhist Treasures Emerge From Asia (NY Times, 12/26/01)
• Under Centuries of Sand, a Trading Hub (NY Times, 7/7/02)
• American-Mongolian team finds tombs near birthplace of Genghis Khan (Univ. of Chicago, 8/16/01)
• Remains of Genghis Khan Palace Unearthed (Associated Press, 10/6/04)
• Finding Hidden Tomb Of Genghis Khan Using Non-Invasive Technologies (Science Daily, 10/20/08)
• Tang shipwreck (National Geographic, June 2009)
  
  Misc.
• Silk Road bibliography (Naomi Standen)
• How the Romans learned of silk (slightly romanticized)
• Classical World Cities in East Asia: 1000 BC to1000 AD by George Modelski (University of Washington)
• Orientalism: A Bibliography
• Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul
• Silk Road Luxuries from China: exhibit at Freer Gallery of Art (Washington D.C.)