Beyond the Silk and Book Roads

Michelle C. Wang is Associate Professor of Art and Art History at Georgetown University. A specialist in the Buddhist and silk road art of northwestern China, she has published on maṇḍalas, art and ritual, miracle tales, and text and image. Ryan Richard Overbey serves as the Robert H.N. Ho Family Foundation Assistant Professor of Buddhist Studies at Skidmore College and studies the intellectual and ritual history of Buddhism, with particular focus on early medieval Buddhist spells and ritual manuals.

"(...) the articles in this beautifully illustrated book show that knowledge and materiality were closely intertwined in the movement of books and paintings across premodern Eurasia. Scholars will need to emulate contributors of this book in combining philological, historical, and art historical approaches if they intend to explore the full richness of the movements of things and ideas on the Silk/Book Road."Xin Wen, Princeton University, Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies 10, no. 1 (2025): 259-262. https://dx.doi.org/10.1353/mns.2025.a965567. "This book represents a groundbreaking effort to reimagine the networks of exchange and material culture that have shaped human interactions across regions and civilizations. Through a collection of diverse research manuscripts contributed by leading scholars in the field, the book offers a comprehensive exploration of the intricate web of connections that transcended the traditional Silk Road and the transmission of texts along the Book Road." - Religious Studies Review (50/2 2024)

• AcknowledgmentsList of FiguresAbbreviationsNotes on ContributorsIntroductionRyan Richard Overbey and Michelle C. Wangpart 1: Textual Production and Circulation1 Chinese Bamboo Slips Unearthed Abroad and the Book Road in East Asia: On the Bamboo Slips of the AnalectsGe Jiyong 葛繼勇2 Vowing the Buddhist Canon along the Silk Road(s): A Study of Colophons to Manuscripts from Dunhuang and JapanGeorge A. Keyworth3 The Transmission of Medieval Chinese Paintings to Japan: Paintings on the “Book Road” and Their ReceptionDing Li 丁莉4 A Gandhāran among the Türks: Buddhist Texts and Travels in the Biographies of *Dhyānagupta (528–605)Ryan Richard Overbey5 The Circulation of Texts between Dunhuang and Other Regions as Viewed from the Dunhuang ManuscriptsHao Chunwen 郝春文 and Wu Shaowei 武紹衛part 2: Centers and Peripheries6 The Khotanese and Tibetan Transmission of the Narrative of the Destruction of the Dharma in the Kingdom of Kauśāmbī II: DiscussionLiu Yi 劉屹7 An Epistolary Buddhist Network between Lhasa and Beijing in the 1740sLan Wu 烏蘭8 Images of Silk along the Silk Roads: Dunhuang Mural Paintings and Tang Funerary FigurinesSha Wutian 沙武田9 Birds of a Feather: Mahāmāyūrī between Khotan and DunhuangMichelle C. Wang10 White Silk, Gold Thread, Frosted Temples, and Fat Faces: The Radiating Branches of Zhuzhici, ca. 1700–1900Stephen RoddyIndex