Speaker 1 0:00
Good morning, and I guess it's our last day of the workshop, right? So welcome to the last day of the sites of the encounter in world history teacher workshop. I'm minjo. I'm Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Asian American Studies, the water and Shelley Wang endowed chair in US China relations and communications and director of the Asia Pacific Center. Today's keynote speech is by UCLA. Professor Diego UCLA about Dunhuang is a site in in China's North Western gangsu province, and a culturally diverse place of fusion. Now it's my great pleasure to introduce our speaker today, Professor Diego lukota. Dr lukoda is an assistant professor of Asian Languages and Cultures at UCLA. He is also member of our centers, advisory committee and program on Central Asia steering committee. Professor Lakota received his BA degree in Asian civilization and history from the University of Bologna, Italy, his MA degree in San crit Sanskrit and Pali from Beijing University China, and his PhD in Buddhist studies in from UCLA. He specializes on the spread of Buddhism along the Silk Road during the first millennium, CE, covering cultural areas of South Central and East Asia. A philologist by training. He works with texts in the main scriptural languages of Buddhism, such as Sanskrit, Pali, Chinese, Tibetan and other rarer Asian ancient languages. He is interested in the role of Buddhism within society and political power, its interaction with other religious traditions, and the texture of local culture and daily life in the Multicultural Mosaic of the Silk Road. His published works focus on how Iranian cynics his syndicate and Indic Traditions play a role in the development of Buddhism. His course offerings at UCLA highlights the interconnection of the Asian continent through Buddhism in antiquity. Now, Professor lucata, please go ahead. Well.
Speaker 2 2:56
Thank you very much, min for that generous introduction and hello everyone. I'm really thrilled to be here. I'm really passionate about what I study. I am therefore thrilled to share it to with with you who are training our our young people you know back in high school have been like absolutely delighted to learn about the sites that we are encountering in this occasion, quetzaltenago, Marrakesh, Don Juan. So I'm really, really happy to be here. I would like to start a on behalf of my department with the land acknowledgement. The Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at UCLA acknowledges our presence in the traditional ancestral and this is important and ceded territory of the Gabrielino and Tonga peoples as a land granting institution, we pay our respects to the ojonu, the ancestors a hihirom Elders and eyohinken relatives, past, present and future. So let's start with the map here. This is, of course, Eurasia rather or Asia, and we have here, if we are located within antiquity. Say, for for the sake of the talk today, let's frame this in terms of the first millennium of the common year, from the birth of Christ to the year 1000 we're going to have here Egypt, Mesopotamia, the Iranian plateau, Persia, India and China and more, of course, but these are all very powerful traditions, very powerful political systems. It which, of course, we're in constant dialog with, with each other. There was exchange, and we're going to talk a lot about that exchange today. So. The main issue, though, is that if you want to course through this, this land of mass, so sorry, this massive land the other way around, the other way around, you have a big problem, which is mountains, in fact, the biggest, tallest mountains in the world, the Himalayas here. This is, of course, all like a mass of mountains. Here. We're going to call these the kunduan Mountains, the tension mountains. And so if you want to move basically to China from from the rest of the world, you have to go through here. So you do have to cross some some mountains. But here you see this flat desert. This is the tech market desert. It's probably not very visible, but the foothills of the of the Kundu and tension have little oasis here. And in fact, this corridor, called the Hashi corridor, is the only flat area here. So it's an obligated pass in the it's an obligation, obligatory pass in the in the Silk Road, again, and the crossroads of all these ancient powerful cultures, Iran, India, China, the Roman Empire. A here the red dot marks are site of today, the oasis of tung Hun, whose original inhabitants may have spoken an Iranian language. However, the Oasis was under the control of the Chinese Han Dynasty, probably since the third century before the Common Era. Here we have my own very, very kind of schematic map of the Silk Road, connecting, once again, the Mediterranean, the Middle East, India, China, Persia, and again, for this chronological frame of reference of today, let's focus particularly on the first millennium of the Common Era. In the second millennium of the Common Era, land routes are going to become increasingly important, and therefore is the say the terrestrial silk route is going to become a bit less prominent. But during the first millennium of the Common Era, it was basically this, this path through which these ancient cultures of Eurasia interacted. So here I want to show you a few objects before you know, before we get into Tung Huang in particular, a few objects that traveled along the Silk Route during the first millennium of the Common Era. So we have this Indian mirror handle, which was it's made out of ivory, and it was manufactured in India. It depicts, probably a goddess, but it was found in the site of Pompeii in Italy, the famous site which was buried after the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in the first century. And within, in the ruins of Pompeii, of Pompeii, we found this Indian mirror handle. We have this glass base, which comes probably from from Roman Egypt. It depicts the object, depicts scenes of Greek mythology. But it was found in Afghanistan, particularly in the in the site of the gram which some which you may know as the site of an important military base, particularly during the American occupation of Afghanistan, which ended last year. Here we have a piece of Chinese silk found in Syria, beautiful, brightly colored, and found particularly in the site of Palmyra, which, again, it has been in the news in the in the last two years because of the massive destruction inflicted upon it by the Islamic State in Syria. This one is absolutely fascinating. On top you see a coin, a golden coin of Byzantine Emperor anastasius, the first from the sixth century, about which was found in China. So it traveled all the way through from the Mediterranean to China. The second, however, is a Chinese or Iranian imitation. So this tells us that these Byzantine coins were were popular, were prestigious, and people were making imitations of it for sale. So the top is an actual Byzantine coin. The second is a local limitation. It this tiny scrap is also a witness to very complex social interactions. Let's start with the material. The material which it is written is paper, Chinese paper, in fact, recycled Chinese paper. Reused, rather Chinese paper that was reused. Now the language of the fragment is Sanskrit, which is the classical language of India. Think maybe some sort of Sanskrit Latin of India, right? The Classical Sanskrit of scholarship and literature. And in this tiny script, contains grammatical exercises, exercises of grammar, however, so we have like Chinese material and Indian language. However, this was written by Tocharian people. These are people who lived in Central Asia, not far from Tung Hun, who were, like unrelated both to India and to China, but who looked up to India in particular, as a cultural reference. And so they were interested in this classical learned language of India and practiced grammar, made grammar exercises. However, on Chinese paper, one element that we're going to have to be talking about today. Here is Buddhism, right? A major world religion, of course, Buddhism as you as I'm sure you know, it's originally an Indian religion which arose in open opposition to the pre existing traditional ritual religion, which is one of the sources of Hinduism. You cannot directly equate it with modern Hinduism, but this traditional religion of India is like one of the sources of modern Hinduism, whereas Hinduism had, like prescribed different norms and different rules for specific social groups. For example, given social classes or castes, men, women, structures of kinship and clan, just like Christianity in Buddhism is interesting because it proposes a universal ethic that technically applies to everyone, right, without distinction of gender, ethnicity, social class, etc. A this universal ethic is supposedly, or, I mean, allegedly or basic level, aimed at eliminating the suffering that, according to Buddhist doctrine, is intrinsic to human life. According to Buddhism, human life is intrinsically hard and full of suffering. Now, again, the
Speaker 2 12:26
most basic formulations of Buddhism will have that the way to deal with the suffering is following a very regimented life, and in fact, becoming a monk or a nun, renouncing the world, shaving your head, wearing a robe, begging for food, right? And, of course, you know, meditating and following a path of, say, physical and mental discipline. As you can imagine, this path is not for for everybody. People have families, commitments. So again, at a deeper level, there's a second path. You can become a lay supporter who pays for these holy people to pursue the end of suffering, right? But in order to sustain these communities of monastics, of monks and nuns, etc, you have to make money. And so unlike, for example, this traditional ritual religion of India, there's this Vedic religion, Buddhism has a very positive outlook, a very positive vision of trade, whereas, again, in the traditional this traditional Vedic religion, trade is frowned upon. Buddhism depicts commerce and trade as very worthy occupations and Buddhism, we know in India, originally appealed exactly to people who were benefiting from the social, social mobility that this international trade allowed, who had bettered their station in life Through trades, through international trades, who were probably excluded from certain occasions and certain rituals, from the traditional religion, and so in Buddhism, a way of legitimation. Now Buddhism spreads through all of Asia, through trade and through the Silk Road, right? So this connection between trade and Buddhism, this religion, which, in spite of it's a very pessimistic surface, in fact, celebrates trade and finds it like a very worthy occupation. And I this is something I would like to stress. Min mentioned it when she introduced me, but Buddhism is one of the few common denominators of all of Asia, even though Buddhism is no longer practiced in the entirety of the Asian continent, any place in Asia will have at some point in its history. And experience of Buddhism places like, for example, Indonesia, where it's no longer practiced, however, have a very significant past in which Buddhism played a key role. Something about Buddhism that that is interesting to highlight is that unlike, for example, Judaism or Christianity or Islam, a Buddhism doesn't have a sacred language, right? So then Buddha is said to have said that a his message should be preached in whatever language people spoke locally. So there's no single sacred language in Buddhism. This tells you a bit about this cosmopolitan ethos, this cosmopolitan outlook on life and the world. And at Dong Wang, Buddhism acted as an international cultural idiom as some sort of like roadmap, a that allowed people who came from different places and spoke different languages to interact with each other. So let me introduce the core questions that I would like you to have in the back of of your minds, as we keep talking about the Toho noise. So what role did trade and geography have in to homes growth as a site of encounter where people were able to meet. What can we get? What can we take from the cultural diversity of Tongan? What new forms of culture emerge from the meeting of cultures at Tung HO and this one is one that I would like to stress in what way was cultural diversity and economic assets. What was the connection between, between cultural diversity and prosperity in pong and, you know, in the medieval world, if we want to expand beyond Okay, let's then now go on. Okay, here in this is one. What you see in the photo is one of the temples Tung Huang is famous for. And here it should. It's going to be really important to mention the close relationship between Buddhism and art since its very beginning in India, Buddhism, which is a proselytizing religion, one that's actively seeking new converts. And there's the Buddhist in India understood already a how powerful art would be as a means of again, finding new converts. So what we have from Buddhist in these dazzling temples, dazzling sacred art, and then China also a the same drive took to a led to the construction of magnitude magnificent temples. What major example are these? A temple caves of tung Huang. They are several hundreds. They were hewn from the rock of a cliff, and then plastered and painted beautifully. So here I would like to introduce you a very, very useful resource. This is hosted by the Tongan Academy in China. I'm going to switch my window here, so here you can search each individual cave. There's, of course, a few featured ones. This is cave 285, and so you can go to a page devoted to each of the caves. Here it will give you, like a general introduction to the cave. But of the you know, most useful thing here for teaching, which I use very often, is that you can do these 316 degree visits of the caves, just as, say, as Google Street View of sorts. So you can you start here on the outside, and you can enter the cave. I can go directly here. So as you can see here, you can quite literally, visit the cave. The introduction and the page will give you explain. No explanations here. I want to show you, for example, the Indian Gods, Ganesh and Shiva, here depicted in this cave at the center. There is, of course, the Buddha himself. And here you're given these sometimes have explanations, but they are close ups. For example, here we have donors, people, and in this case, case, they're probably merchants who paid for the construction and for the painting of the caves. And here we see the wood. Men of the family on the one side and the men on the other another. So we just talked about Buddhism and art. Another very interesting aspect of Buddhism, and this is all going to come together, is soon, is the particular connection of Buddhism with the written word. Many Buddhist texts, and in particular, those that became popular in East Asia, have a very interesting feature. They ask you, literally, to spread them. By the end of the text, it says, Please copy me. Please spread me, please. I want diffusion, right? And so it is widely believed that this imperative to spread them Buddhist texts had a major influence on two major, major technological developments. One was the usage of paper in China, which had been invented earlier on, but it was used for other purposes, apparently for wrapping things and also literally as toilet paper. But the usage of paper for books, apparently, is very closely connected with Buddhism and the oldest printed books that we have sort of your list. Chinese books on paper, still handwritten, are on paper. Now the other major one is printing. Printing, of course, allows you to cheaply produce books on a mass scale. And the oldest dated book in world history is a copy of a Buddhist text called the Diamond Sutra, which is the one that you see on the picture on the on the right, whose printing plates were finished. And this is very precise, on May 11, at 868 that is about 600 years before European printing right now. In the same injunction to spread the written word led to a what is perhaps the largest translation effort in all of human history, which is the translation of Buddhist texts from Indian languages into Chinese. And like Western religions, like Islam or Christianity, Buddhism, doesn't have a single Sacred Scripture. It has 1000s of them, and many of them, many of them were translated from Indian languages into Chinese. So this is a culture of translation, of books of printing.
Speaker 2 22:25
Now, where do we get all these documents from? This is so one highlight of Don Hong is this beautiful, hundreds of decorated caves, right? Beautifully frescoed, but maybe the, you know, one of the most mind blowing aspects of tung Hong is the so called library cave. So what is the library cave? Effectively, it was some sort of time capsule from from antiquity. We don't know why exactly the cave was sealed. This is one of those, those caves that we saw, but it was sealed with 1000s of books and documents inside it. There is no certainty as to why all these books and documents were sealed inside the cave. One the most common hypothesis nowadays is that, in the wake of a foreign invasion, the local Buddhist monks feared that there was going to be mass destruction. And again, given that there is this reverence towards sacred books, the monks went around town collecting sacred texts and sealed them the text. However, the point here is that this was done in a hurry, right? So they collected everything they could find in terms of books, and we're going to talk about the contents of the so called library cave in a moment. But in the library cave, we have texts in at least 15 different languages, 15 different languages, and that's mind blowing. They were carefully wrapped and carefully stored. Here you see the original the dominant book form. Here is the scroll. So these are bundles of scrolls which were like which were carefully labeled for circumstances that I cannot deepen today. The library cave was opened only in the 20th century, so it stayed closed from the 11th century to the 20th century, but then a its contents ended up mostly in European and Japanese collections. So most of it itself is outside of China nowadays, and the total number of documents is about 50,000 documents and books. So we have here the documents of the contents of the library King. So of course, it seems that the main goal was safeguarding the Buddhist sacred books. So that's the largest bulk Buddhist sacred Buddhist books. But we also have religious texts from other religious religions. For example, we have Taoist, Jewish, Christian, Manichaean and Turkic shamanic books. We also have literature like philosophy poems, historical texts, dictionaries. We have Chinese dictionaries, scientific texts like maps, star charts, texts and medicine, treatises and mathematics, a whole lot of administrative documents, letters, personal letters, business letters, every manner of letter and even entertainment. We have music scores. We have recorded, notated music from Tung HO and we even have treatises on board games like like the go game. So here, if you allow me with the with the remaining time that I have, I would like to introduce some of some of these documents that I find particularly telling. Before However, before doing that, let me just briefly introduce another, a very, very useful resource that I use on a daily basis. This is the so called International to Hong project. This is housed mostly by the British Library in in London, but in collaboration with other institutions that hold material from Tung so here, sorry, I'm struggling a bit with my tabs. So here, for example, if you go on this left hand menu, you will see that there has specific section for teaching. So here you have modules centered on the Silk Road and Tung Huang specifically designed for teaching. And here, for example, I have one on book form on book binding in Tung hun. So as I mentioned, the scroll is the indominant type. But there's many other book forms in Tung hun from all books in all these languages, etc. There's also a variety of of book forms. And this, this article in particular, deals with book binding. The site, this international Tung project, is a repository of material from not only from Tung Hoon, but mostly from Tung and the Silk Route. And if you go here in a dance search, it will allow you to search a objects from the language in which they're written. These often have translations in this in this site, the archeological site, for example, if you go for type of artifact and go for textiles. I have here the outcome already, you're going to be given all these textiles found in Don Juan and nearby oasis on the on the Silvert. Okay, so now let me show, show you some of these beautiful, wonderful documents. This is a sing single leaflet with a Hebrew penitential prayer, a prayer in, in in Hebrew. It has Hebrew is normally written without vowels, but this one has little vowel marks to aid recitation. So this was to for praying, right? But also the creases on the paper showed that it was folded and possibly was worn in next to them, body like either in a pocket or in a little case by the body as an amulet, as protection. We believe that the barrier of this, this prayer called silicon, came from either Iran or Mesopotamia, an Iranian or Mesopotamian Jew. This book is comes from India. And again, this was also found in the library cave in Tonga. What is in so the first interesting aspect about this this book. The book is made of several of these is the material. It's written palm leaf, which is a very traditional material for writing in India. However, we have studied the palm specifically. And the species of this palm grows only in South India, right? So, which is really far away from tungha, about 3000 miles away from from tungha. The script, however, is characteristic of what is nowadays Afghanistan and Pakistan. And the language is Sanskrit, again, this classical language of India. So this book, say, was produced in three steps. The leaves were produced in southern India. Then it traveled to Afghanistan or Pakistan, where it was the book was written down, and then it was taken to Tung Ho. And it is treaties on Buddhist philosophy. It's very, very technical. This one, as you can see, is not a scroll. It's this is technical. The Codex. Looks very much like our own own books. And this is a manual on divination, on divination with dice. If the dice that you can see them there on the on top are different from ours. They have only four sides. And then this dice throwing gives you a score, and that score takes you to to an omen, to a prophecy of sorts, and whether this prophecy is good or bad, let me remark briefly on the script. These are the so called Turkic runes, and the language is all Turkic. So this is related, of course, to modern Turkish but also to many other Turkic languages spoken throughout Central Asia, including, for example, the Uyghurs, the ethnic minority in western China, and the script, which are so called runes, but have nothing to do with, say, Viking or Scandinavian runes probably derived from the Aramaic language that the Persians used In the administration of their empire. So again, blend of cultures throughout this is one of the omens is. So this is what you get from a score of 444, and so you're given this vision. I am the road God with an dappled horse early in the morning and late in the evening. I am blow long. This road God apparently meant to joyful human beings. The human beings were afraid the road God said, Do not be afraid. I will give you my divine favor. And then you're told this vision that is apparently what, what the dies communicate is, is good. It's a good omen. Something good is coming for you. This is a very different kind of document. It's a court affidavit that records a legal dispute between a Chinese man and the family of an Iranian merchant who had died. So here, the family of the dead Iranian merchant is disputing the terms of a legal transaction of a commercial transaction. What is fascinating to understand from the document, though, is that the transaction originally was made through translators.
Speaker 2 32:10
So the Iranian merchant and the Chinese citizen did not speak the same language. They use translator. But not only that, the Chinese court considered evidence as evidence, documents written in the Iranian language of the merchant. So the Chinese court was geared, was was equipped with the capability of reading documents in other languages. And the court itself, we understand from the documents, had interpreters for witness the positions. So again, the very legal system was, or was, a fine tuned to allow all these people to do transactions, to do trade and to settle their disputes in court using their own languages. And here we go. This is the saddest of all the documents we're going to take a look at today. This is written in an Iranian language. Earlier, we encounter the phrase book, which is between Sanskrit, the language of the classical language of India, and cotanese, which is an Iranian language. This is a different one called Sogdian, closely related. And this was originally sent from Tung Huang to Samarkand in what is nowadays Uzbekistan, but it was never delivered. And this one doesn't come from the library. Case, this one was found inside a mail bag that was dumped in the middle of the of the desert. Another thing that you have to consider here is that Tung is an oasis in the desert, right? It's very dry, so it's very good for the preservation of documents. So let's, let's read the contents of this letter, which was written by an Iranian woman and her daughter to her husband, who lived in Samarkand, again, in what is nowadays Uzbekistan. So from his servant, munai to my noble lord and husband, Nana. Dad, these are just formulaic pleasantries. I am living badly, not well, wretchedly. I have been into for three years. I have become a servant of the Chinese foreign Coon, whom, from the context, understand to be probably a relative says, and I am not Nana. Dad, survey servant, nor do I hold his money. My dad is the is the name of the of the husband, again, again and again. I send you a letter by do not receive a single letter from me with my family. I did not have such a stressful life as with you. I obey. I obeyed your command and came to tun one, not paying heed to my mother or my brothers. I would rather be a dog or a dog's or a pig's wife than yours. Okay? The ending is devastating, but her situation seems absolutely dire. Then her daughter adds a note, and she says this man, fan Kun, has run away, and the Chinese seek him, but do not find him because of Frank, who's that? That we have become the servants of the Chinese, right? So this relative to that, but they had to pay for it, right, by working as servants. I, together with my mother, in you know, poor Muni is is far away in history. Her situation seems absolutely in desperate just in terms of historical evidence, it's interesting to see women here traveling alone along the Silk Road. And technically they had a rendezvous with, with, with the father of the family in Tong Hong, but he never came. Okay. Here, let me show you something a bit more uplifting. These are music scores. This is notated music. This manuscript in particular, has a notation for about 20 songs. There's a bit of debate on exactly how they should be read, but the notation is closest to modern guitar tabs. So it tells you which string you have to play and on which fret. But the notation is derived from the Chinese script. However, the instrument is not originally Chinese, but Iranian. And here we can see this about second century representation of the instruments from from nowadays, Pakistan, say, closer to the Iranian origin of the of the instrument. And the modern a Japanese example, because the instrument spread through the Silk Road. And, you know, interestingly, the sound holes on the instrument still have the same a moon shape in this, you know, second century representation from from Pakistan. And in this modern Japanese exam. So here at this point, I would like to invite you to listen to instrument presented by a very accomplished performance performer, Johnson.
Speaker 3 37:06
I was born in China, Wenzhou, a little town south of Shanghai.
Speaker 3 37:17
When I play PIPA, we'll always say it's traditional Chinese people. It came from Persia, 2000 years ago, through the Silk Road. You know, they sit on a camel. Imagine maybe at night in the desert, in the cave, they play this funny instrument,
Speaker 3 37:41
the PIPA, I signed mother's instrument in a summer I was nine years old. She said, shishin, can you do this, which is the very basic people technique. And somehow I did it. Then my mother said, Okay, from now on, you're gonna play the pipa. So it's so many years after and I'm still playing and learning.
Speaker 2 38:13
Okay, so in here I want to return before we wrap up to our core questions. And you know, if there's one of them that particularly fascinates me, and I would be very curious to hear how you view this is from this material. How do you understand that cultural diversity was understood as an asset, as something that makes the economy grow, that makes people thrive, rather than a than a threat, the source of tension, a source of disunity. In in closing, I want to recommend it to you some further reading. This is the most authoritative book on the Silk Roads, currently written by the greatest experts on the Silk Roads alive Professor Valerie Hanson. It is not limited to Tong Hong, but it takes an approach. It approaches various sites within the Silk Road, one of them being Tung Huang, and the chapter on to Hong been very substantial, and this has the advantage of being very much up to date and very say, is rigorous in a scholarly sense, but also very readable. It's written for a general audience that doesn't require previous knowledge. And as far as I understand, as part of the workshop, you were treated to a copy of Valerie Hanson's the Silk Road, which I highly recommend if you're curious. Now, for in depth reading, I would suggest John Xinjiang, who's the foremost Chinese, one of the you know, also a very, very reputed scholar of the Silk Road. And this one is just. Really encyclopedic, if you just want the detail of each of these documents, the context a general survey of tung Huang and the contents of the library, etc. This kind of an encyclopedia of tung Huang here. Sadly, these are all sites that I would recommend, but we'll have the time to for me to show you exactly we have the UNESCO site on Tung Huang, the in 2016 the getting did a spectacular, spectacular show on Tung hun that featured a life size replicas of some of the caves. It was absolutely mind blowing to be there. But the page stays and has very, very good material. The British Museum has a page on its holdings, and there's a couple of other materials. Again, I regret that we don't have the time to check them out. So with this, I finish. So once again, I thank you for your attention, and I'd like to highlight again, that it was just a pleasure to have a venue to share my research, and I say scholarly focus of research, with you. Yes, you're getting a lot of
Speaker 4 41:17
love in the chat you were getting it throughout the talk for the great sources that you were sharing and some of the stories that you were telling us. So thank you so much. That was such a great talk. So.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai