Religions of the Silk Road
Subtitle: overland trade and cultural exchange from antiquity to the fifteenth century
By: Richard C. Foltz.
Publisher: St. Martin's Press
Published: 1999
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 186
Subjects: Asia, Central -- Religion; Silk Road -- History
Description: "Religions of the Silk Road looks behind the romantic notions of the colonial era and tells the story of how cultural traditions, especially in the form of religious ideas, accompanied merchants and their goods along the overland Asian trade routes in pre-modern times. As early as three thousand years ago Hebraic and Iranian religious ideas and practices traveled eastwards in this way, to be followed centuries later by the great missionary traditions of Buddhism, Christianity, Manichaeism, and Islam.

But the Silk Road was more than just a conduit along which these religions hitched rides East; it was a formative and transformative rite of passage, and no religion emerged unchanged at the end of the journey."--BOOK JACKET.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. [163]-178) and index.