ARH 382
ART OF THE SILK ROAD

WINTER 2004

ARH 382 - HOME >> ID Lists >> ID List 8
Places

Kyzyl
(Qizil, Kizil) - (Lit. "red")
One of the Buddhist cave temple sites on the northern Silk Road not far from Kucha. Kyzyl murals contain early examples (4th - 6th c.) to mature examples (7th - 9th c.) of the Buddhist art of the Silk Road.
MiranOne of the earliest Buddhist complexes on the Silk Road, dating to the 3rd - 5th centuries. Miran was located on the eastern end of the Silk Road's southern route.
ShorchukA Buddhist cave temple site on the northern route (east of Kucha and Kyzyl)
TumshuqOn the western half of the northern Silk Road not far from Kashgar.
SerindiaThe appellation used by Aurel Stein for the entire eastern region of the Silk Road around the Taklamakan Desert. Its meaning combines the Latin root for silk, "seri," with India.

People

Sven Hedin - (1865 - 1952)Swedish geographer and pioneering explorer who mapped Central and Inner Asia.
Sir Aurel Stein - (1862 - 1943)The Hungarian-English archaeologist and explorer who contributed greatly to the scholarship of Central Asia and the ancient world between East and West. Stein carried out three expeditions to Eastern Central Asia (the Tarim Basin region): 1906 - 1908; 1913 - 1916; and 1930. He was the Superintendant of the Indian Archaeology Survey (1910 - 1929) in British colonial India and was knighted in 1912.
Paul Pelliot - (1878 - 1945)The French linguist renowned as a Sinologist and polyglot who explored the Silk Roads of the Tarim Basin.
Albert von Le Coq - (1860 - 1930)The German explorer with a capitalist background who later turned archaeologist in East Central Asia. He and Grünewedel worked for the Ethnological Museum (Museum für Volkerkunde) in Berlin.
Albert Grünewedel - (1856 - 1935)The German linguist and art historian who led two of the four German expeditions into Central Asia. He and von Le Coq worked for the Ethnological Museum in Berlin.

Buddhism

Languages of the Tarim Region
Please keep in mind that the following languages occurred in scripts that were often derived from other language groups. The following classifications are based mainly on the orthography of the language:

ChineseA language belonging to the Sino-Tibetan family that is principally used in East Asia.
PaliA Middle Indo-Aryan language which was the language of the Theravadan Buddhist canon.
PrakritA Middle Indo-Aryan language used by the Gandharans. The word comes from Sanskrit and means "natural, usual, vulgar."
SanskritAn Old Indo-Aryan language considered the classical language for the Hindus but also the sacred language of the Mahayana tradition. The word means "prepared, cultivated, purified, refined."
SogdianA middle Iranian language that became the major language for trade on the Silk Roads.
TibetanA language belonging to the Sino-Tibetan family and spoken by the inhabitants of Tibet with southern dialects spoken in Nepal and Bhutan
TokharianAn extinct Indo-European language once spoken in the Tarim River Basin.
UighurA southeastern, Turkic language of the Altaic family used in the Uighur Autonomous Republic (Xinjiang, China)