Early Buddhist Narrative Art is a pictorial journey through the transmission of the narrative cycle based on the life of the historical Buddha. Karetzky, while demonstrating the various evolutions that the image of the Buddha underwent, maintains that there is an underlying homogeneity of the tradition in the cultures of India, Central Asia, China and Japan. The author, while focusing on the visual representation of the Buddhist narrative, goes into some detail regarding the importance of scriptures in each society, and how the written tradition informed the pictorial. Over seventy photos fill this book, which will be of interest to scholars of art history, Eastern religion and Buddhism in particular.

South Asian religious art became codified during the Ku a Period (ca. beginning of the 2nd to the mid 3rd century). Yet, to date, neither the chronology nor nature of Ku a Art, marked by great diversity, is well understood. The Ku a Empire was huge, stretching from Uzbekistan through northern India, and its multicultural artistic expressions became the fountainhead for much of South Asian Art. The premise of this book is that Ku a Art achieves greater clarity through analyses of the arts and cultures of the Pre- Ku a World, those lands becoming the Empire. Fourteen papers in this book by leading experts on regional topography and connective pathways; interregional, multicultural comparisons; art historical, archaeological, epigraphic, numismatic and textual studies represent the first coordinated effort having this focus.

Artifacts from the Ancient Silk Road explores the interconnectivity of the Eurasian continent from 4000 BCE to 1000 CE. It focuses on the role played by Central Asia through which passed the major trade routes, the Silk Roads. Artifacts from the Ancient Silk Road covers life along the Silk Road over 5000 years as it can be understood by considering objects. In this first object-based study to consider all of the peoples involved on the Silk Roads, objects provide the vehicles for explorations of different aspects of life for the various peoples of the Silk Roads, including the sedentary peoples who established urban life on the Silk Roads, the steppe nomads who regularly interacted with the settled peoples, and the peoples at either end of the Silk Roads who drove certain kinds of economic exchanges. The book looks at Central Asia as an international zone during ancient times when multiple religious, political, and technological ideas found acceptance in the region and allows for a better understanding of how some ideas and forms developed in Central Asia while others passed through or were modified.

This set includes all four volumes of the critically acclaimed History of Central Asia series. The epic plains and arid deserts of Central Asia have witnessed some of the greatest migrations, as well as many of the most transformative developments, in the history of civilization. Christoph Baumer's ambitious four-volume treatment of the region charts the 3000-year drama of Scythians and Sarmatians; Soviets and transcontinental Silk Roads; trade routes and the transmission of ideas across the steppes; and the breathless and brutal conquests of Alexander the Great and Chinghiz Khan. Masterfully interweaving the stories of individuals and peoples, the author's engaging prose is richly augmented throughout by colour photographs taken on his own travels. This set includes The Age of the Steppe Warriors (Volume 1), The Age of the Silk Roads (Volume 2), The Age of Islam and the Mongols (Volume 3) and The Age of Decline and Revival (Volume 4)

A comprehensive analysis of the earliest Buddhist art of China, Bactria, and the Southern Silk Road in Central Asia from ca. 1st - 4th century A.D., elucidating the inter-relationships, history, religious elements, sources, dating and chronology.