Edwin G. Pulleyblank
In 1916 the French Sinologist and historian Paul Pelliot used Tang Chinese manuscripts excavated from Dunhuang, Gansu to identify an ancient Sogdian colony south of Lop Nur in Xinjiang (Northwest China), which he argued was the base for the spread of Buddhism and Nestorian Christianity in China. In 1926 Japanese scholar Kuwabara compiled evidence for Sogdians in Chinese historical sources and by 1933 Chinese historian Xiang Da published his "Tang Chang'an and Central Asian Culture" detailing the Sogdian influence on Chinese social religious life in the Tang-era Chinese capital city. The Canadian Sinologist Edwin G. Pulleyblank published an article in 1952 demonstrating the presence of a Sogdian colony founded in Six Hu Prefectures of the Ordos Loop during the Chinese Tang period, composed of Sogdians and Turkic peoples who migrated from the Mongolian steppe. The Japanese historian Ikeda on wrote an article in 1965 outlining the history of the Sogdians inhabiting Dunhuang from the beginning of the 7th century, analyzing lists of their Sinicized names and the role of Zoroastrianism and Buddhism in their religious life. Yoshida Yutaka and Kageyama Etsuko, Japanese ethnographers and linguists of the Sogdian language, were able to reconstruct Sogdian names from forty-five different Chinese transliterations, noting that these were common in Turfan whereas Sogdians living closer to the center of Chinese civilization for generations adopted traditional Chinese names.