Friday, November 15, 2013

Sir Aurel Stein - Pioneer of the Silk Road

Urumqi Warrior. The Cave of 1000 Buddhas, guardian figure and Buddhist statues. Greco-style Buddha head - post Alexander, Greek influence.

Thursday, November 14, 2013

Turfan Translations

Dunhuang Moga textile. Lou Andreas-Salomé and her husband Friedrich Carl Andreas (1886). "Working with the Manichean fragments from Turfan, he quickly isolated those texts written in Parthian (which he called the “northern dialect”) and identified another “Pahlavi dialect” as the Sogdian language. Even when his ideas were later modified, they proved important starting-points for research; this is particularly true of the hotly debated “Andreas Theory". In an equally sharp controversy concerning an alleged Iranian “salvation mystery” Andreas took no personal position, but his translations of the Manichean Turfan fragments provided part of the basis for discussion." The excavations of Turfan by Aurel Stein. Turfan. The Silk Road monasteries and the Cave of 1000 Buddhas - artifacts, tapestries, murals, and scrolls. Turkoman Buddhists.