Eastern Silk and Western Gold : Early Chinese Contacts with Central Asia
작품 정보
This posthumous volume by Dr Kenneth Gardiner is a richly fascinating account of China’s contact with the nomadic peoples on the steppe through war and diplomacy. Drawing on a broad range of primary and secondary sources in several classical and modern languages and adopting a cross-disciplinary approach, combining history, archaeology, philosophy, mythology, art, literature and philology, the author has examined a range of issues concerning the frontier policy of early Han and the complex integratory processes of the dynamics of early relations between East and West with extraordinary sophistication and succinctness. Some of the topics that this book analyses and addresses are: image of central Asian peoples in Chinese mythology; penetration of Han China into the oasis kingdoms of the Tarim basin and beyond to Parthia and Mesopotamia in search of the celebrated “blood-sweating horses,” grapes and even slaves; and role of Zhang Qian, envoy of Emperor Wu of Han (r. 141-87 BCE) in the intricate politics of Central Asia.
received his PhD from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London in 1964, and two years later he joined the Faculty of Asian Studies, the Australian National University (ANU), Canberra as a lecturer in Early Chinese and Korean history. He retired from the position of Senior Lecturer at ANU in 1992.
