Cultural Diffusion Along the Silk Road

Artistic Motifs

• The Hejia Village Hoard (found near Chang’an) includes vessels with bases in the Sassanian style, a small bowl with lions, ribbon-carrying birds, and pearls (Iranian motifs), a silver cup with a shape suggesting a Sogdian vessel and Western faces, a cup with an eight-lobed shape, a pearl border, and alternating hunters on horseback (Sassanian) and Chinese women with instruments. Some of these vessels are believed to be foreign-made while other are believed to have been made in China, influenced by foreign craftsmen. 1

• Western-looking faces and the Roman artistic motif of cherubs along undulating wreaths were discovered at Buddhist stupas in Miran, dating to before the 5th century.2

• Silk with Chinese characters woven into the cloth has been found in Palmyra, Syria, dating from 100-300 CE, some of the earliest Chinese art to be found in West Asia.3

• The Afrasaib Murals, found in Samarkand, depicts both Chinese and Zoroastrian scenes.4

• Around the 6th century, pottery using Buddhist lotuses begins to appear in Northern China. 5

• Around the end of the 8th century, stoneware and porcelain were imported from China to Baghdad. Imitations of the style of the T’ang dynasty, created by Muslim artists have been discovered dating to about the 9th century. More pottery has been discovered in a more distinctly Muslim style dating to later than the 9th century.6

Religion

• A collection of a variety of documents saved in a cave in Dunhuang, Western China, includes writings on Judaism, Manichaeism, Buddhism, Christianity, and Zoroastrianism.7

• Refugees moving from the Gandhara Region (modern day Afghanistan and Pakistan) were the first Buddhists in the Western Regions of China, specifically the city of Niya.8

• Tombs bui...

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...937, Eumorfopoulos Collection; Victoria & Albert Museum, London, UK.

11. H. Klimkeit, R. Meserve, E. Karimov, C. Shackle, “Religions and Religious Movements”, UNESCO History of Civilizations of Central Asia 4, no. 2 (2000): 72.

12. Ibid., 74.

13. Ibid., 80.

14. Silkroad Foundation, Buddhism and Its Spread Along the Silk Road, http://www.silk-road.com/artl/buddhism.shtml (accessed Apr. 6, 2014).

15. Hansen, The Silk Road, 240.

16. International Duhuang Project, International Dunhuang Project Statistics, http://idp.bl.uk/pages/about_stats.a4d (accessed Apr. 4, 2014).

17. Hansen, The Silk Road, 26.

18. Ibid., 221.

19. Ibid., 56.

20. Stephen Wuem, “The Silk Road and hybridized languages in north-western China”, Diogenes 43, no. 171 (1995): 57.

21. Stephen Wuem, “The Silk Road and hybridized languages in north-western China”, Diogenes 43, no. 171 (1995): 56, 58-60