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shrines, and also larger caravanserai and trading centres. Many of the last developed into great crucibles for cultural development, cities that derived their often stupendous material wealth from trade, but also an equally magnificent cultural wealth derived from their location at the crossing point of cultures. It is this outpouring of human creativity at points along the Silk Road that is a major focus for Jonathan Tucker's book The Silk Road, subtitled Art and History.
Tucker's quest is bold, as befits his topic: to describe for the serious but not necessarily academic reader the art that flourished along the Silk Road during the fifteen hundred years of its heyday. Over four hundred colour illustrations conjure up a wonderful picture of the Silk Road, its places and people, its architecture (often in ruins today), paintings, sculpture, and even - through depictions on what remain of palace and temple walls - its music and ritual.
It is a difficult task that Tucker has set himself. To appreciate the art he presents, a knowledge of the complex passage and interaction of peoples and cultures is necessary. Tucker goes into enormous detail to try to ensure that his readers acquire this background. He gives the clearest picture when he concentrates on individual cities, for example, Chang'an (modern Xi'an) towards the eastern extremity of the Silk Road (which extended to Japan), and Baghdad towards the west (Istanbul is where Tucker draws his line here). By the Tang Dynasty, significant numbers of foreigners were reaching China along the overland route, and by then in Chang'an lived Zoroastrian refugees from Sassanian Persia (conquered by the Arabs in 651); Muslims (though the mosque in Chang'an is probably not as old, says Tucker, as the Huaisheng Mosque in Guangzhou, which dates from 627); Jews, who were significant and numerous Silk Road traders; Nestorian Christians; and followers of Manichaeism. Tucker painstakingly identifies elements that derived from non-Chinese influences in terracotta figurines, tomb paintings and sculptures, statues and other artefacts found in Chang'an and Luoyang from Tang and later periods. Most notable is a marble Bodhisattva, the 'Venus of the East' (his Fig. 119) which, in its sculptured clinging garments, reflected Indian antecedents, and was enormously influential on subsequent sculpture in this part of China.
Art from the one hundred and ninety-three caves not far from