The Enchanted Silk Road

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Geography of the great road

The Enchanted Silk Road will like to thank the following people for their permissions or for the information we have gathered from their website.

Oliver Wild for giving permission to use his pictures
http://gallery.sjsu.edu/silkroad/religion.htm for their wonderful pictures
The MSN Encarta for helping us with the research materials we used to make this site.
The British Museum's website, for the map of the Silk Road and some great pictures.

Do you want to learn even more about the Silk Road then check out these great references.

Silk Road : References

Gernet, Jacques, A History of Chinese Civilization, (Cambridge U. Press, 1982) [an excellent introduction to classical China]

Barber, E. W., The Mummies of Urumchi (W. W. Norton, 2000) [fascinating speculations about the prehistoric peoples of the Silk Road, based on mummies and textiles.]

Torday, Laszlo, Mounted Archers: The Beginnings of Central Asian History (Durham Academic Press, 1997) [authoritative, but a hard slog]

Frye, Richard N., The Heritage of Central Asia (Princeton: Marcus Wiener Publ., 1996) [a very readable and authoritative introduction].

Grousset, Rene, The Empire of the Steppes (Rutgers Univ. Press, 1989) [a monumental study of the Turkic and Mongol peoples, first published in 1939]

Hopkirk, Kathleen, A Traveler's Companion to Central Asia (London: John Murray, 1993) [delightful and authoritative: don't go there without it]

Whitfield, Susan, Life along the Silk Road (U. of California Press, 1999) [a delightful series of vignettes derived from actual documents found in the caves of Dunhuang]

Foltz, R. C., Religions of the Silk Road (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999)

Schafer, E. H., The Golden Peaches of Samarkand: A Study of Tang Exotics (1963: U. of California Press) [a wonderful account of the luxurious tastes of the Tang aristocrats].

Wiggins, Sally H., Xuanzang: a Buddhist Pilgrim on the Silk Road (Westview Press, 1998) [the definitive biography of one of the greatest explorer-scholars of all time].

Waley, Arthur (transl.), Monkey: Folk Novel of China by Wu Cheng-en (New York: Grove Press, 1958) [an abridged translation of Journey to the West, the Ming dynasty picaresque folk novel about the mischievous monkey god who travels to India and back with Xuanzang. A masterpiece, both for children and adults.]

Hopkirk, Peter, Foreign Devils on the Silk Road (U. Mass. Press, 1989) [the history of the re-discovery of the Silk Road at the beginning of the 20th C -- a great adventure story].