This is a collection of seventeen essays on histories of the Silk Road and Central Asia. Following developments in international scholarship on this region, they collectively outline the historical links between India, Central Asia, China, and the Mediterranean.

A variety of topics, often veering well beyond the beaten track of the main historical narratives on these inter-regional links, is covered by the essays in this book. This results in opening up several windows for general readers and scholars to explore and understand India’s most historically relevant neighbouring regions.

Xinru Liu shows how Buddhism, scholarship, and languages, as much as manufactured goods and trade items, moved across vast distances from China to the Mediterranean regions via oasis cities in Central Asia, Afghanistan, North India, the spread of their influence flowing all the way south to the Gangetic regions.

As a Chinese scholar with a remarkable knowledge of Indian and Central Asian sources as well as modern research, Xinru Liu has often demonstrated that she is uniquely positioned to show the ancient trade and religious links between India, China, and Central Asia – as she does once more in this book.

XINRU LIU is Professor Emeritus of Early Indian History and World History at the College of New Jersey. Since 1993 she has held a full professorship at the Institute of World History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. She had little formal schooling and worked first as a peasant, then as a factory worker, during the Cultural Revolution in China. She taught herself English and history and gained admission to the University of Pennsylvania, where she earned a PhD in 1985 for work on Ancient Indian and Chinese History.