• Acta Via Serica
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.7-30
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• 2017

Looking beyond the assumptions and arguments of commercial liberalism, which sees economic interdependence and cooperation as fostering peace, this paper demonstrates that peace as an ideal can be found in various theories of international politics. The author finds the commercial liberal perspective to peace to be too narrow to explain the opportunities and challenges posed along the Silk Road and proposes to look at the peace narrative on the Silk Road through the lens of other approaches to peace, including the more interdisciplinary field of peace studies, for a more comprehensive picture.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.8 no.1
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• pp.101-120
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• 2023

In March 1245, Pope Innocent IV authorized three missions to the Mongols, seeking information about this menace from the East and summoning Eastern Christian support against an anticipated Mongol onslaught. Only one of the missions, led by John of Plano Carpini, reached Mongolia-the first-known Western European party to reach East Asia by a land route. Traveling along the Silk Road's new "Grasslands Route," John and his companion Benedict reached the camp of Güyüg Khan, where they witnessed his installation as the Great Khan. Upon their return to the papal court in 1247, they delivered Güyüg's letter demanding the submission of the pope and all the West's princes. John also presented a detailed report on what he and Benedict had learned. A close reading of it reveals a master intelligence operative at work. In addition to presenting an overview of Mongol history and culture, Friar John's report provides detailed information on the Mongols' grand strategy, their military organization and armaments, and their battle tactics. Turning from intelligence gathering to military operations, he offered practical advice on how to meet and defeat the coming Mongol onslaught, an attack that, providentially for the West, never came. What did occur was a modest but significant migration of Western missionaries and merchants to East Asia in the century following this pioneering journey.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.25-32
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• 2016

Iran's relations with the Far East date back to the Parthian Period. Despite this, the collapse of the Sasanian Empire and the escape of Yazdgird's survivors is currently being re-evaluated as the beginning of a new chapter in bilateral ties, especially between Iran and China and Iran and Silla. In a chapter of $Ku{\check{s}}-n{\bar{a}}meh$ (KN), the text describes Silla (an individual's name) as the father of the people of Silla (toponym). In this paper, I have tried to give a reasonable interpretation for this narration by KN. Also I have frequently referred to other texts to present a comparative study that supports my claim.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.15-23
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• 2016

The main aim this paper is to investigate the "Bayt al-Hikma" ("The House of Wisdom"), an important medieval centre for translation and science. In this paper, the author attempts to define the establishment, tasks and development of this institution and its place in medieval civilization. In addition, considerable attention is given to the scientific activity of the Central Asian scholars in Baghdad, who migrated there when caliph al-Ma'mun shifted his court from Marw to Baghdad in 819 CE. The paper describes "Bayt al-Hikma" as an important institution for translation and science and describes some of the Central Asian scholars' activities in Baghdad. Despite its brevity, this short overview shows that these scholars had an important influence on the development of medieval sciences.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.51-67
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• 2016

This article examines the nature of geopolitics and its impact on the international political economy of Eurasia/Silk Road. The research questions are exploratory and aim at revealing the differing geopolitical perceptions of the Russian Federation, the People's Republic of China (PRC) and the former Soviet Central Asian countries-Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan-within the context of an emerging "New Silk Road". Consequently, the main goal of this article is to contribute to a better understanding of what factors constrain and shape Silk Road initiatives in Eurasia. To this end, the article focuses on geopolitics and regional integration theories through a consideration of the Silk Road initiatives of a number of Eurasian countries.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.69-88
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• 2017

Since the beginning of the human world, man has tried to prove his presence on the earth. Wherever he moved, he left his marks in different forms. Whether he lived in caves, in open spaces or in-built structures, he left evidence in art form, the earliest of which are the cave paintings found in various regions of the world. These transformed into open spaces where man carved and painted images and writings on rock faces and boulders. Although Pakistan provided an early home to such art forms, they have been discovered in Kashmir for the first time and will be revealed in this paper. In the present survey, a great number of rock art sites were found and documented in detail. These rock art sites display the earliest communities who settled down or traveled through the region, highlighting their thoughts, beliefs and practices. The tentative chronology of these rock art sites ranges from Neolithic to Hindu periods, creating an interesting mosaic in the historic profile of Kashmir.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.113-132
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• 2017

Several theories about the ancestry of the Khazars and the origins of the Khazar state have been suggested to date. None of them provides a comprehensive solution for the controversial data of the written sources on the early history of the Khazars. This article investigates a possible link between the title of Kagan-Bek of the Deputy Kagan of the Khazars and a similar title Ellac/Ilek of the Akatsir-Huns. This study of the title argues for statehood and political culture connections between the earliest Turkic tribes of Western Eurasia and the Khazars and Turks of Central Asia.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.1-27
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• 2019

Beginning in the northwestern region of India, and spreading through Central Asia and the rest of Asia along the Silk Road, the making of colossal Buddha statues has been a major theme in Buddhist art. The colossal Buddha statues predominantly feature Śākyamuni (the Historical Buddha), Maitreya (the Future Buddha), and Vairocana (the Transcendant Buddha), and they were fashioned out of religious devotion and frequently in conjunction with notions of Buddhist kingship. This paper examines the religious, social and political circumstances under which these colossal statues were made, focusing on examples from Central and East Asia made during the first millennium CE. Beginning in the 1990s, there was a revival of making colossal Buddha statues across China and elsewhere. The paper also briefly compares the current wave of building colossal Buddha statues with historical examples.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.79-95
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• 2019

This article presents a brief reconstruction of the historic journey of Benedict the Pole and John of Pian de Carpine, the first known Europeans after A.D. 900 who completed a successful return journey east of Baghdad and gave surviving accounts of their travels. The article, which focuses mainly on the role of Benedict the Pole, is divided into five parts: the reasons and organization of the deputation sent to the Mongols by Pope Innocent IV from 1245-1248, the route travelled by the Papal envoys, the existing versions of the two surviving accounts of the mission, the role of Benedict the Pole as the secretary and translator to the papal legate Pian de Carpine, and the outcome of the journey as seen from the perspective of Europe-Asia contacts.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.97-118
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• 2019

This study presents a new conceptualization of the history of Islamic astronomy. Islamic history is an embedded global cultural phenomenon and will be analyzed at different levels: a) the history of institutional aspects (observatories, including buildings), b) instruments, c) manuscripts, and d) scholars. This phenomenon will be analyzed as a multi-lingual phenomenon with Arabic as the language of sciences as a starting point. Although this is not a study of a geographical region in a narrow sense, it is a historical note on the entanglement of research written in Arabic, Persian and other languages and contextualized in a framework reaching geographically far beyond the confines of the Islamic world and being part of global history.