Religion and Culture Along the Silk Road: East and West, Pro and Con

  This blog entry compares and contrasts the approach of two sources covering cultural and religious development in China along the Silk Road during its early and middle stages, emphasizing the impact that foreign travelers had in bringing ways of life and faith that would otherwise have taken much longer to reach China.  A broad overview from author Patrick Bresnan in Chapter Sixteen of Awakening: A History of Eastern Thought covers several varieties of Buddhism that developed in China's Tarim Basin near the Silk Road. A less detailed approach covering the history of the Silk Road and its mix of cultures and religions in China is the subject of the video The Silk Road: Where East Met West, which is much more greatly focused on the culture and its elements of trade instead of its religions.  For example, the video covers several influences the Muslims left behind that remain thriving in places like Xi'an. (Silk, 7:47-8:46)  Bresnan does not cover this at all in Chapter Sixteen. Instead he focuses on Buddhism almost exclusively and on how it is the only religion and "foreign philosophy of life ever to be integrated into the culture of China. (Bresnan, 381)

Watching the video before reading the chapter gave me a better idea of what the cultures along the Silk Road were like based on the destinations that were the main focus in the video.   The focus of the video overall was on the cultural mix in China as a result of Silk Road commerce and its local impact as well as the impact of China on points of trade along the Silk Road as far west as Venice... "Wherever he looked, he saw the Orient" in reference to Charles Dickens' visit to Venice in 1844 (Silk, 3:06-3:46).  The video then takes us into China as far east as Xi'an, "the beginning of the Silk Road" (Silk, 7:47-8:46) where the narrator refers again to Dickens and his confused sense of geography when the narrator sees how heavily the local cuisine is influenced by Turkish food, the fashion by Islamic prayer hats, and the community by Muslim settlers as far back as the 8th century when the Silk Road's Muslim traders were headed east from Istanbul. The book and the video have their most common focus in the crossroad at Dunhuang (Silk, 28:22-36:05), where Buddhism left its strongest imprint in China with the Mogao caves and mixed with the culture of the Sogdians, Silk Road's most successful traders. However, the video only mentions Buddhism in passing and instead covers in greater depth the Western plundering of the Mogao caves in 1907 and the thriving commerce of the Sogdians in fourth-century Dunhuang. Bresnan, on the other hand, mentions the Mogao caves briefly regarding their beauty and Buddhist tradition: "The walls and ceilings of the cave are decorated with very beautiful paintings of Buddhist themes that derive from the earliest period of Buddhism in China." (Bresnan, 378)  He covers the plundering as well, as cited in the next paragraph.

What I found most interesting was discovering how villainous the West was in plundering the treasures of the Mogao caves. (Silk, 28:22-36:05)  It seemed very clear that there was no thought given to how important it was to keep things intact or about what kind of damage could have been done from removing ancient works that are fragile and easily environmentally compromised. Bresnan covers this with no question about how poorly this reflects on the West historically: "Monastery libraries were looted of their manuscripts, well- preserved in the dry desert conditions. Much artwork too was stolen, some of it chiseled directly from the walls of monastery rooms, and shipped back to museums in Europe and America that were willing to pay top dollar for those treasures." (Bresnan, 379)


https://youtu.be/jBPq1YrToF0

Works Cited

Bresnan, Patrick S.  Awakening, An Introduction to the History of Eastern Thought. Routledge 2018

Dunhuang Academy website, The Grottoes (dha.ac.cn), accessed 18 April. 2022

Dunhuang Foundation website, youtube.com, accessed 18 April. 2022

The Silk Road: Where East Met West, Films Media Group, 2000, https://ffh.films.com/id/1460. Accessed 17 April. 2022


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