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10th-14th centuries, a sizable community of Tamil merchants & their families thrived in Quanzhou, a port city on SE coast of China and a starting point of maritime Silk Road. They brought the art tradition of South India to China, exemplified by hundreds of finely carved stones:
On the left is a statue of Vishnu, one of the most important deities in Hinduism and the protector of the universe. On the lower right is a stone shrine of Vishnu's wife Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, fortune, and luxury.
Mahadevi ? (replica), Shiva Lingam, and Shiva as the dancer (Nataraja). After Tamil merchants left China, their temples came down to ruins. These stone carvings were reused by local Buddhists, who worshipped them as Buddhist or Daoist deities.
Stone pillars and panels on the right, now part of a Buddhist temple, came from what scholars believe to be the grandest Hindu structure the Tamils in Quanzhou had ever built. Left is a reconstruction of the temple.
Here's a stone plaque inscribed with Tamil and Chinese, uncovered in 1956. The Tamil inscription says that a merchant leader from South India built a temple for Shiva in 1281.
Most of the images are from the website of the Quanzhou Maritime Museum, where the stones are preserved and displayed:
qzhjg.cn/html/kpzp/2019…
Forgot to mention the extensive work on this subject by Risha Lee, an accomplished art historian and curator in America. Please check out her website for more information about Tamil merchant Temples in Quanzhou.
rishalee.com/work-1#/tamil-…
The reconstruction drawing is created by Risha Lee in her dissertation: "Constructing Community: Tamil Merchant Temples in India and China, 850-1281" academiccommons.columbia.edu/doi/10.7916/D8…
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Jin Xu
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Mongolian archaeologists' discovery of "Dragon City" is last piece of the puzzle of a road (s) connecting the seat of Xiongnu empire on Mongolian steppe & the capital of Han dyn in Central China, a route no less significant than the Silk Road. Here're some recent finds along it:
"Dragon City" is located on the north side of the Khangai Mountains, a place celebrated as the cradle of nomadic civilizations in Mongolia. Over the past 2 decades, cemeteries of Xiongnu nobles (at Gol Mod) were uncovered near the city, yielding a wealth of spectacular objects.
From "Dragon City" going southeast for about 500 km, on the north edge of Gobi desert, archaeologists found a lengthy Chinese inscription on a cliff in 2017; it was carved in 89 AD by a Han-dyn general who led an expedition of Chinese-Xiongnu alliance against Xiongnu in the North
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Jin Xu
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One of the most prosperous and prominent Christian communities in the history of East Asia was a Turkic tribe called Ongud active in present-day central Inner Mongolia during 9th -14th centuries. I want to use this thread to show some remains of their cities, cemeteries, and art:
Onguds were converted to Christianity as early as the 9th c by Church of the East (Nestorian) priests who fled Central China due to the Tang emperor's persecution. Yet they rose to prominence in the 13th c by allying with Genghis Khan. Here're two 9th-c Nestorian stones in China.
With the wealth and power they received from Mongol (Yuan-dyn) rulers, Onguds built a splendid city (Olon Süme) in their homeland on the Mongolian grassland. In the ruins of the city, archaeologists uncovered foundations of a palace and a grand Nestorian or Roman Catholic church.
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Jin Xu
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1900.6.22 A hidden “library” was found at Mogao Caves in Dunhuang. Sealed behind a wall ca. 1000 AD, it's packed with tens of thousands of manuscripts & paintings dating to as early as 4C AD. Most contents are Buddhist or in Chinese, but many of other religions & in non-Chinese:
L: 9C drawing of two Sogdian goddesses, possibly Den holding a dog figure & four-armed Nana
R: Earliest known Zoroastrian scripture (9C), written not in the sacred language of Avestan, but in Sogdian. It conveys one of the four greatest prayers: “Truth is the best good ... ”
1: 9C book of divination (Irk Bitig), the only complete text in old Turkic/runic script, used with a dice. Good omen–boy finds dung of an eagle; bad- camel fell into mud; very bad- a man with no titles, bad reputation
2: Drawing of a camel
3: Uyghur manuscript from a nearby cave
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