When I was in undergrad, there was this theory that Buddhism had inspired Christianity.
Basically, it was something like this: Ashoka the Great sent missionaries in every direction. The most influential are the ones who permeated Southeast Asia. But the ones who traveled west ended up first in the Near East/Jewish world and later in the Greek world and there's maybe a translation that the term "Theravada" became Hellenized as "Therapudae."
And so the idea is that Buddhist monks introduced this asceticism tradition throughout the early Western world and that descendants of this tradition led to Jesus (among others) who preached similar values but from a Jewish framework/pantheon instead of the Vedic tradition.
Maybe a stretch, I haven't studied in an academic setting in a decade, but this reminded me of that idea. Thanks for sharing.
If you're in San Francisco, the Asian Art Museum in Civic Center has an amazing Kushan and Gandharan art exhibit.
There is a similar set of exhibits at the Harvard Art Museum as well, but they don't really bring up the Yuezhi and Gandharan aspect due to donors and politics.
The Kushan and Gandharan era is also a much less researched portion of Central and South Asian history sadly, despite being an interesting tapestry of Indo-Iranian and pre-Turkic Central Asian history, and one of the first forms of proto-globalization.
Would love to visit Dunhuang, Pazyryk, and Ai-Khanoum as well as some point but that probably not happening in my lifetime.
"The Khyber Pass: A History of Empire and Invasion" by Paddy Docherty a good intro book as well about this historic (and imo underappreciated) connection.
At a guess: China doesn't like any suggestion of border regions being independent in history, although they most obviously were. Case in point, early 20th century Xinjiang coin in the British Museum coin gallery cast in Uyghur without any Chinese whatsoever.
Yep. All the Serindia exhibits were moved into a Chinese specific corner without any mention that they were from the Mogao Caves (fairly obvious with the Sodgian and Gandharan styles, and the fact that I've seen them labeled as such in various textbooks), yet only labeled as "Gansu, China" without any mention of the Silk Road, Tarim Basin, and Greco-Buddhist art.
Also, I'd be hesitant to call these "Uyghur". The Turkic migration didn't begin until the 6th-9th century. Most of Central Asia was still Indo-Iranian (more Iranian) until the Mongols and Turkic invasions and the slow assimilation of locals into Turkic speakers.
> early 20th century Xinjiang coin in the British Museum coin gallery cast in Uyghur without any Chinese whatsoever
Well Xinjiang in the 1700s-1911 was nominally Qing controlled. That's why it's called "Xinjiang" (new frontier) - it was conquered by the Qing and their allies during the Oirat Wars, but always had some limited form of protectorate designation many times in history.
And this is where the issue arises - the Qing Dynasty was multi-ethnic with Manchus, Mongols, Hans, Hakkas, Tibetans, Chaghtai (Turkic peoples that became Uzbeks and Uyghurs), Tajik, etc well represented.
If "China" is only a "Sino" or "Han" state, then minority identities and histories (which don't show any ethnicity in a positive light) are tampered with for political reasons.
There is no reason why PRC can't coexist ethnic identity with a "PRC" identity, and this was fairly common post-Mao to 2013.
Now you have towns being renamed from Aq Masjid to Tuanjie or Dutar to Hongqi, and traditional culture (which is heavily intertwined with Naqshabandi traditional) being Sinofied. Mahmud al-Kashgari is absolutely turning in his grave.
Yes, correct. Any suggestion that western regions of what is now claimed as modern Xinjiang were not "an inalienable part of China" since the ~Han dynasty is melodramatically proclaimed as deeply offensive.
Yep. In your description, maintain the present tense. IR isn't a calling, it's a sentence.
> ... was multi-ethnic with...
So was Han, so was Tang. Basically all the good periods.
Fast forward to Xi's COVID: great excuse to kick the foreigners out. What. What do you mean our forex is tanking? Come back, investors! We're "open for business"!
Policy (of which IR is a subset) is a calling (ie. job).
If you don't have an academic or professional background in the spaces you are discussing about, you're just noise (which I am increasingly becoming)
> So was Han, so was Tang. Basically all the good periods.
That's a very rose tinted view of a past without modern healthcare, with rampant feudalism and slavery, and an extremely stratified social system.
> Fast forward to Xi's COVID: great excuse to kick the foreigners out. What. What do you mean our forex is tanking? Come back, investors! We're "open for business"!
Foreign investors were leaving before COVID. The 2015-16 Market Crash was rough and both the US and China began cracking down on cross-listing Chinese entities in Western capital markets, preventing investors to have the ability to re-coup investments.
It is pompous to suggest that only 'academics' and 'professionals' have insight.
One does not "discuss about", one "discusses".
Those periods of ancient Chinese history most celebrated for their cultural and technical achievements are generally agreed upon by scholars, I simply provided the most referenced subset. By your logic, anything pre-modern is horrific. I would tend to side more with the inverse perspective.
As an actual foreign investor in China, I did not and do not care about listing rules, because they're irrelevant to most businesses in most situations.
When I was in undergrad, there was this theory that Buddhism had inspired Christianity.
Basically, it was something like this: Ashoka the Great sent missionaries in every direction. The most influential are the ones who permeated Southeast Asia. But the ones who traveled west ended up first in the Near East/Jewish world and later in the Greek world and there's maybe a translation that the term "Theravada" became Hellenized as "Therapudae."
And so the idea is that Buddhist monks introduced this asceticism tradition throughout the early Western world and that descendants of this tradition led to Jesus (among others) who preached similar values but from a Jewish framework/pantheon instead of the Vedic tradition.
Maybe a stretch, I haven't studied in an academic setting in a decade, but this reminded me of that idea. Thanks for sharing.
Happy to share. Found it intriguing (came from a recent thread - also great - on "connected" cultures and Egypt).-
Thanks for your comment.-
If you're in San Francisco, the Asian Art Museum in Civic Center has an amazing Kushan and Gandharan art exhibit.
There is a similar set of exhibits at the Harvard Art Museum as well, but they don't really bring up the Yuezhi and Gandharan aspect due to donors and politics.
The Kushan and Gandharan era is also a much less researched portion of Central and South Asian history sadly, despite being an interesting tapestry of Indo-Iranian and pre-Turkic Central Asian history, and one of the first forms of proto-globalization.
Would love to visit Dunhuang, Pazyryk, and Ai-Khanoum as well as some point but that probably not happening in my lifetime.
"The Khyber Pass: A History of Empire and Invasion" by Paddy Docherty a good intro book as well about this historic (and imo underappreciated) connection.
What are the political issues in this context?
At a guess: China doesn't like any suggestion of border regions being independent in history, although they most obviously were. Case in point, early 20th century Xinjiang coin in the British Museum coin gallery cast in Uyghur without any Chinese whatsoever.
Yep. All the Serindia exhibits were moved into a Chinese specific corner without any mention that they were from the Mogao Caves (fairly obvious with the Sodgian and Gandharan styles, and the fact that I've seen them labeled as such in various textbooks), yet only labeled as "Gansu, China" without any mention of the Silk Road, Tarim Basin, and Greco-Buddhist art.
Also, I'd be hesitant to call these "Uyghur". The Turkic migration didn't begin until the 6th-9th century. Most of Central Asia was still Indo-Iranian (more Iranian) until the Mongols and Turkic invasions and the slow assimilation of locals into Turkic speakers.
> early 20th century Xinjiang coin in the British Museum coin gallery cast in Uyghur without any Chinese whatsoever
Well Xinjiang in the 1700s-1911 was nominally Qing controlled. That's why it's called "Xinjiang" (new frontier) - it was conquered by the Qing and their allies during the Oirat Wars, but always had some limited form of protectorate designation many times in history.
And this is where the issue arises - the Qing Dynasty was multi-ethnic with Manchus, Mongols, Hans, Hakkas, Tibetans, Chaghtai (Turkic peoples that became Uzbeks and Uyghurs), Tajik, etc well represented.
If "China" is only a "Sino" or "Han" state, then minority identities and histories (which don't show any ethnicity in a positive light) are tampered with for political reasons.
There is no reason why PRC can't coexist ethnic identity with a "PRC" identity, and this was fairly common post-Mao to 2013.
Now you have towns being renamed from Aq Masjid to Tuanjie or Dutar to Hongqi, and traditional culture (which is heavily intertwined with Naqshabandi traditional) being Sinofied. Mahmud al-Kashgari is absolutely turning in his grave.
China doesn't like to acknowledge that Gandhara wasn't historically part of China?
Yes, correct. Any suggestion that western regions of what is now claimed as modern Xinjiang were not "an inalienable part of China" since the ~Han dynasty is melodramatically proclaimed as deeply offensive.
Yep. In your description, maintain the present tense. IR isn't a calling, it's a sentence.
> ... was multi-ethnic with...
So was Han, so was Tang. Basically all the good periods.
Fast forward to Xi's COVID: great excuse to kick the foreigners out. What. What do you mean our forex is tanking? Come back, investors! We're "open for business"!
> IR isn't a calling, it's a sentence
Policy (of which IR is a subset) is a calling (ie. job).
If you don't have an academic or professional background in the spaces you are discussing about, you're just noise (which I am increasingly becoming)
> So was Han, so was Tang. Basically all the good periods.
That's a very rose tinted view of a past without modern healthcare, with rampant feudalism and slavery, and an extremely stratified social system.
> Fast forward to Xi's COVID: great excuse to kick the foreigners out. What. What do you mean our forex is tanking? Come back, investors! We're "open for business"!
Foreign investors were leaving before COVID. The 2015-16 Market Crash was rough and both the US and China began cracking down on cross-listing Chinese entities in Western capital markets, preventing investors to have the ability to re-coup investments.
It is pompous to suggest that only 'academics' and 'professionals' have insight.
One does not "discuss about", one "discusses".
Those periods of ancient Chinese history most celebrated for their cultural and technical achievements are generally agreed upon by scholars, I simply provided the most referenced subset. By your logic, anything pre-modern is horrific. I would tend to side more with the inverse perspective.
As an actual foreign investor in China, I did not and do not care about listing rules, because they're irrelevant to most businesses in most situations.
They don’t have a monopoly on insight but they do have one on career prospects in the field unfortunately.
(You can always cheat your way in if you have fuck-you money though, so hedge fund managers always get a say too.)
Notable example now destroyed:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buddhas_of_Bamiyan
I found this incredibly sad at the time.-
Buddhist art that found its way to Egypt: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berenike_Buddha
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