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| The future Buddha Maitreya (Metteyya) dressed as a Central Asian king like Shakyamuni |
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| What is the Silk Road? The Central Asian Overland Routes (amazing-iran.com) |
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| Yale Prof. Valerie Hansen on The Silk Road (Overland Central Asian Routes): MP3 |
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"The Silk Road" or "Silk Route" is iconic in world history, but what was it exactly? It is the Overland Central Asian Route.
It conjures up a hazy image of a caravan of camels laden with silk on a dusty desert track, spanning from China to Rome.
The reality's different -- and far more interesting. In The Silk Road: A New History with Documents, Yale Professor of History Valerie Hansen (The Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University) describes the remarkable archeological finds that revolutionized our understanding of these Buddhist culture and Central Asian trade routes.
We now have excavated documents, many from Turfan. Prof. Hansen explores eight sites along the road, from Xi'an to Samarkand, where travelers, envoys, pilgrims, and a few merchants (many fewer than people have imagined) mixed in cosmopolitan communities, tolerant of religions from shamanic animism to Buddhism to Zoroastrianism.
- [The Buddha's family were Saka, Scythians (Shakyians)]
- Letters & Politics Ancient History Collection Archives | KPFA
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| The Silk Road (Hansen, 2012) |
This includes a spoken form of Sanskrit called Pali* (the only exclusively Buddhist language and the language of the early Buddhist texts of the Theravada tradition), Sogdian which is related to Aramaic (the language Jesus of Nazareth spoke), and texts in Gandhari and the Kharosthi script.
The wide-ranging sources include memoirs of medieval Chinese Buddhist monks and modern explorers, letters
written by women, descriptions of towns, legal cofntracts, religious hymns, and many others.
A new final chapter provides coverage of the Silk Road during the period of Mongol rule. More
*Languages change, evolving and devolving. That makes it hard to know what great teachers meant. The same words no longer mean what they meant. UCLA Prof. of Buddhism Robert Buswell taught that it's fortunate that Pali is a dead language. It is frozen in time. The words still mean what the Buddha meant. It is ideal for retaining a snapshot of the Dhamma/Dharma. Sanskrit (the language of the Brahmins) is so old it has distinct early, middle, and late forms. The lingua franca was Pali in various forms -- Magadhi, Prakrit, and Gandhari spoken along the Silk Road through Gandhara, Bactria, Scythia, Shakya Land, Indo-Pakistan, Saka Land, Sogdiana of Central Asia and NW India (proto-India).
More on the Silk Road
The Silk Road is as iconic in world history as the Colossus of Rhodes or the Suez Canal. Its reality is different and far more interesting in this new history. Prof. Hansen describes remarkable archeological finds that revolutionize our understanding of these trade routes.
For centuries, key records remained hidden -- some deliberately buried by bureaucrats for safekeeping. But now the sands of the Taklamakan Desert have revealed fascinating material, some preserved by illiterate locals who recycled official documents to make paper insoles for shoes or paper garments for the dead.
Hansen explores seven oases along the road, from Xi'an to Samarkand, where every walk of life mixed in cosmopolitan communities, tolerant of religions from shamanic animism to Buddhism to Zoroastrianism.
There was no single, continuous Silk "Road," but a chain of markets that traded between east and west. China and the Roman Empire had very little direct trade.
China's main partners were the peoples of modern-day Iran (Aryans, Persians), whose tombs in China reveal much about their Zoroastrian beliefs.
"Silk" was not the most important good on the road.Paper, invented in China before Julius Caesar was born, had a bigger impact in Europe, while metals, spices, and glass were just as important as silk.
Perhaps most significant of all was the road's transmission of ideas (such as the Buddha's Dharma), technologies, and artistic motifs.
The Silk Road is a fascinating story of archeological discovery, cultural transmission, and the intricate chains across Central Asia and China.
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