92Casson, Periplus Maris Erythraei, 43, pp. 76–8; 46, pp. 78–80.
93Ibid., 39, p. 76; 48–9, p. 81. For the Kushans, see the collection of essays in V. Masson, B. Puris, C. Bosworth et al. (eds), History of Civilizations of Central Asia, 6 vols (Paris, 1992–), 2, pp. 247–396.
94D. Leslie and K. Gardiner, The Roman Empire in Chinese Sources (Rome, 1996), esp. pp. 131–62; also see R. Kauz and L. Yingsheng, ‘Armenia in Chinese Sources’, Iran and the Caucasus 12 (2008), 157–90.
95Sima Qian, Records of the Grand Historian of China, 123, 2, p. 241.
96Still see B. Laufer, Sino-Iranica: Chinese Contributions to the History of Civilisation in Ancient Iran (Chicago, 1919), and R. Ghirshman, Iran: From the Earliest Times to the Islamic Conquest (Harmondsworth, 1954).
97Power, Red Sea, p. 58.
98Schafer, Golden Peaches of Samarkand, p. 1.
99That the embassy brought tortoiseshell, rhinoceros horn and ivory suggests that the envoys had been well briefed on Chinese tastes, F. Hirth, China and the Roman Orient (Leipzig, 1885), pp. 42, 94. See here R. McLaughlin, Rome and the Distant East: Trade Routes to the Ancient Lands of Arabia, India and China (London, 2010).
100Fitzpatrick, ‘Provincializing Rome’, 36; Horace, Odes, 1.12, in Horace: Odes and Epodes, ed. and tr. N. Rudd (Cambridge, MA, 2004), p. 48.
101B. Isaac, The Limits of Empire: The Roman Army in the East (Oxford, 1990), p. 43; S. Mattern, Rome and the Enemy: Imperial Strategy in the Principate (Berkeley, 1999), p. 37.
102Cassius Dio, 68.29, 8, pp. 414–16; H. Mattingly (ed.), A Catalogue of the Coins of the Roman Empire in the British Museum, 6 vols (London, 1940–62), 3, p. 606. For Trajan’s campaign, see J. Bennett, Trajan: Optimus Princeps (London, 1997), pp. 183–204.
103Jordanes, Romana, in Iordanis Romana et Getica, pp. 34–5.
104Lactantius, De Mortibus Persecutorum, ed. and tr. J. Creed (Oxford, 1984), 5, p. 11.
105A. Invernizzi, ‘Arsacid Palaces’, in I. Nielsen (ed.), The Royal Palace Institution in the First Millennium BC (Athens, 2001), pp. 295–312; idem, ‘The Culture of Nisa, between Steppe and Empire’, in J. Cribb and G. Herrmann (eds), After Alexander: Central Asia before Islam: Themes in the History and Archaeology of Western Central Asia (Oxford, 2007), pp. 163–77. Long-forgotten Nisa is home to many magnificent examples of Hellenistic art forms. V. Pilipko, Rospisi Staroi Nisy (Tashkent, 1992); P. Bernard and F. Grenet (eds), Histoire des cultes de l’Asie Centrale préislamique (Paris, 1991).
106For Characene, L. Gregoratti, ‘A Parthian Port on the Persian Gulf: Characene and its Trade’, Anabasis 2 (2011), 209–29. For pottery, see for example H. Schenk, ‘Parthian Glazed Pottery from Sri Lanka and the Indian Ocean Trade’, Zeitschrift für Archäologie Außereuropäischer Kulturen 2 (2007), 57–90.
107F. Rahimi-Laridjani, Die Entwicklung der Bewässerungslandwirtschaft im Iran bis in Sasanidisch-frühislamische Zeit (Weisbaden, 1988); R. Gyselen, La Géographie administrative de l’empire sasanide: les témoignages sigilographiques (Paris, 1989).
108A. Taffazoli, ‘List of Trades and Crafts in the Sassanian Period’, Archaeologische Mitteilungen aus Iran 7 (1974), 192–6.
109T. Daryaee, Šahrestānīhā-ī Ērānšahr: A Middle Persian Text on Late Antique Geography, Epic, and History (Costa Mesa, CA, 2002).
110M. Morony, ‘Land Use and Settlement Patterns in Late Sasanian and Early Islamic Iraq’, in A. Cameron, G. King and J. Haldon (eds), The Byzantine and Early Islamic Near East, 3 vols (Princeton, 1992–6), 2, pp. 221–9.
111R. Frye, ‘Sasanian Seal Inscriptions’, in R. Stiehl and H. Stier (eds), Beiträge zur alten Geschichte und deren Nachleben, 2 vols (Berlin, 1969–70), 1, pp. 77–84; J. Choksy, ‘Loan and Sales Contracts in Ancient and Early Medieval Iran’, Indo-Iranian Journal 31 (1988), 120.
112T. Daryaee, ‘The Persian Gulf Trade in Late Antiquity’, Journal of World History 14.1 (2003), 1–16.
113Lactantius, De Mortibus Persecutorum, 7, p. 11.
114Ibid., 23, p. 36.
115Bodrum Museum of Underwater Archaeology. As far as I am aware, the inscription, discovered in 2011, is yet to be published.
116Pseudo-Aurelius Victor, Epitome de Caesaribus, ed. M. Festy, Pseudo-Aurelius Victor. Abrégé de Césars (Paris, 1999), 39, p. 41.
117Suetonius, Divus Julius, 79, in Lives of the Caesars, 1, p. 132.
118Libanius, Antioch as a Centre of Hellenic Culture as Observed by Libanius, tr. A. Norman (Liverpool, 2001), pp. 145–67.
119For a stern dismissal of the ‘myth of translatio imperii’, see L. Grig and G. Kelly (eds), Two Romes: Rome and Constantinople in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2012).
Chapter 2 – The Road of Faiths
1H. Falk, Asókan Sites and Artefacts: A Source-book with Bibliography (Mainz, 2006), p. 13; E. Seldeslachts, ‘Greece, the Final Frontier? – The Westward Spread of Buddhism’, in A. Heirman and S. Bumbacher (eds), The Spread of Buddhism (Leiden, 2007), esp. pp. 158–60.
2Sick, ‘When Socrates Met the Buddha’, 271; for the contemporary Pali literature, T. Hinüber, A Handbook of Pali Literature (Berlin, 1996).
3G. Fussman, ‘The Mat Devakula: A New Approach to its Understanding’, in D. Srivasan (ed.), Mathurā: The Cultural Heritage (New Delhi, 1989), pp. 193–9.
4For example, P. Rao Bandela, Coin Splendour: A Journey into the Past (New Delhi, 2003), pp. 32–5.
5D. MacDowall, ‘Soter Megas, the King of Kings, the Kushana’, Journal of the Numismatic Society of India (1968), 28–48.
6Note for example the description in the Book of Psalms as ‘the God of God . . . the Lord of Lords’ (Ps. 136:2–3, or ‘God of gods and Lord of lords’ (Deut. 10:17). The Book of Revelations tells how the beast will be defeated, because the Lamb is ‘the Lord of Lords and King of Kings’ (Rev. 17:14).
7The Lotus of the Wonderful Law or The Lotus Gospel: Saddharma Pundarīka Sūtra Miao-Fa Lin Hua Chung, tr. W. Soothill (London, 1987), p. 77.
8X. Liu, Ancient India and Ancient China: Trade and Religious Exchanges AD 1–600 (Oxford, 1988), p. 102.
9Sukhāvatī-vyūha: Description of Sukhāvatī, the Land of Bliss, tr. F. Müller (Oxford, 1883), pp. 33–4; Lotus of the Wonderful Law, pp. 107, 114.
10D. Schlumberger, M. Le Berre and G. Fussman (eds), Surkh Kotal en Bactriane, vol. 1: Les Temples: architecture, sculpture, inscriptions (Paris, 1983); V. Gaibov, ‘Ancient Tajikistan Studies in History, Archaeology and Culture (1980–1991)’, Ancient Civilizations from Scythia to Siberia 1.3 (1995), 289–304.
11R. Salomon, Ancient Buddhist Scrolls from Gandhara (Seattle, 1999).
12J. Harle, The Art and Architecture of the Indian Subcontinent (New Haven, 1994), pp. 43–57.
13See above all E. de la Vaissière, Sogdian Traders: A History (Leiden, 2005).
14K. Jettmar, ‘Sogdians in the Indus Valley’, in P. Bertrand and F. Grenet (eds), Histoire des cultes de l’Asie centrale préislamique (Paris, 1991), pp. 251–3.
15C. Huart, Le Livre de Gerchāsp, poème persan d’Asadī junior de Toūs, 2 vols (Paris, 1926–9), 2, p. 111.
16R. Giès, G. Feugère and A. Coutin (eds), Painted Buddhas of Xinjiang: Hidden Treasures from the Silk Road (London, 2002); T. Higuchi and G. Barnes, ‘Bamiyan: Buddhist Cave Temples in Afghanistan’, World Archaeology 27.2 (1995), 282ff.
17M. Rhie, Early Buddhist Art of China and Central Asia, vol. 1 (Leiden, 1999); R. Wei, Ancient Chinese Architecture: Buddhist Buildings (Vienna, 2000).
18G. Koshelenko, ‘The Beginnings of Buddhism in Margiana’, Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 14 (1966), 175–83; R. Foltz, Religions of the Silk Road: Premodern Patterns of Globalization (2nd edn, Basingstoke, 2010), pp. 47–8; idem, ‘Buddhism in the Iranian World’, Muslim World 100.2–3 (2010), 204–14.
19N. Sims-Williams, ‘Indian Elements in Parthian and Sogdian’, in R. Röhrborn and W. Veenker (eds), Sprachen des Buddhismus in Zentralasien (Wiesbaden, 1983), pp. 132–41; W. Sundermann, ‘Die Bedeutung des Parthischen für die Verbreitung buddhist
ischer Wörter indischer Herkunft’, Altorientalische Forschungen 9 (1982), 99–113.
20W. Ball, ‘How Far Did Buddhism Spread West?’, Al-Rāfidān 10 (1989), 1–11.
21T. Daryaee, Sasanian Persia: The Rise and Fall of an Empire (London, 2009), pp. 2–5.
22Many scholars have written on the question of continuity and change. See here M. Canepa, The Two Eyes of the Earth: Art and Ritual of Kingship between Rome and Sasanian Iran (Berkeley, 2009).
23M. Canepa, ‘Technologies of Memory in Early Sasanian Iran: Achaemenid Sites and Sasanian Identity’, American Journal of Archaeology 114.4 (2010), 563–96; U. Weber, ‘Wahram II: König der Könige von Eran und Aneran’, Iranica Antiqua 44 (2009), 559–643.
24For Sasanian coinage in general, R. Göbl, Sasanian Numismatics (Brunswick, 1971).
25M. Boyce, Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (London, 1979).
26R. Foltz, ‘Zoroastrian Attitudes toward Animals’, Society and Animals 18 (2010), 367–78.
27The Book of the Counsel of Zartusht, 2–8, in R. Zaehner, The Teachings of the Magi: A Compendium of Zoroastrian Beliefs (New York, 1956), pp. 21–2. Also see here M. Boyce, Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism (Manchester, 1984).
28See for example M. Boyce, Textual Sources for the Study of Zoroastrianism (Manchester, 1984), pp. 104–6.
29M. Boyce and F. Grenet, A History of Zoroastrianism (Leiden, 1991), pp. 30–3. For Zoroastrian beliefs, including prayers and creed, see Boyce, Textual Sources, pp. 53–61; for rituals and practices, pp. 61–70.
30J. Harmatta, ‘Late Bactrian Inscriptions’, Acta Antiqua Hungaricae 17 (1969), 386–8.
31M. Back, ‘Die sassanidischen Staatsinschriften’, Acta Iranica 18 (1978), 287–8.
32S. Shaked, ‘Administrative Functions of Priests in the Sasanian Period’, in G. Gnoli and A. Panaino (eds), Proceedings of the First European Conference of Iranian Studies, 2 vols (Rome, 1991), 1, pp. 261–73; T. Daryaee, ‘Memory and History: The Construction of the Past in Late Antiquity’, Name-ye Iran-e Bastan 1.2 (2001–2), 1–14.
33Back, ‘Sassanidischen Staatsinschriften’, 384. For the full inscription, M.-L. Chaumont, ‘L’Inscription de Kartir à la Kabah de Zoroastre: text, traduction et commentaire’, Journal Asiatique 248 (1960), 339–80.
34M.-L. Chaumont, La Christianisation de l’empire iranien, des origines aux grandes persécutions du IV siècle (Louvain, 1988), p. 111; G. Fowden, Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity (Princeton, 1993), pp. 28–9.
35R. Merkelbach, Mani und sein Religionssystem (Opladen, 1986); J. Russell, ‘Kartir and Mani: A Shamanistic Model of their Conflict’, Iranica Varia: Papers in Honor of Professor Ehsan Yarshater (Leiden, 1990), pp. 180–93; S. Lieu, History of Manicheanism in the Later Roman Empire and Medieval China: A Historical Survey (Manchester, 1985). For Shāpūr and Mani, see M. Hutter, ‘Manichaeism in the early Sasanian Empire’, Numen 40 (1993), 2–15.
36P. Gigoux (ed. and tr.), Les Quatre Inscriptions du mage Kirdir, textes et concordances (Paris, 1991). Also C. Jullien and F. Jullien, ‘Aux frontières de l’iranité: “nasraye” et “kristyone” des inscriptions du mobad Kirdir: enquête littéraire et historique’, Numen 49.3 (2002), 282–335; F. de Blois, ‘Narānī (Ναζωραȋος) and anīf (ἐθνικός): Studies on the Religious Vocabulary of Christianity and of Islam’, Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 65 (2002), 7–8.
37S. Lieu, ‘Captives, Refugees and Exiles: A Study of Cross-Frontier Civilian Movements and Contacts between Rome and Persia from Valerian to Jovian’, in P. Freeman and D. Kennedy (eds), The Defence of the Roman and Byzantine East (Oxford, 1986), pp. 475–505.
38A. Kitchen, C. Ehret, S. Assefa and C. Mulligan, ‘Bayesian Phylogenetic Analysis of Semitic Languages Identifies an Early Bronze Age Origin of Semitic in the Near East’, Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 276.1668 (2009), 2702–10. Some scholars suggest a North African origin for Semitic languages, e.g. D. McCall, ‘The Afroasiatic Language Phylum: African in Origin, or Asian?’, Current Anthropology 39.1 (1998), 139–44.
39R. Stark, The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History (Princeton, 1996), and idem, Cities of God: The Real Story of How Christianity Became an Urban Movement and Conquered Rome (San Francisco, 2006). Stark’s views and methodologies have proved controversial, see Journal of Early Christian Studies 6.2 (1998).
40Pliny the Younger, Letter 96, ed. and tr. B. Radice, Letters and Panegyricus, 2 vols (Cambridge, MA, 1969), 2, pp. 284–6.
41Ibid., Letter 97, 2, pp. 290–2.
42J. Helgeland, R. Daly and P. Patout Burns (eds), Christians and the Military: The Early Experience (Philadelphia, 1985).
43M. Roberts, Poetry and the Cult of the Martyrs (Ann Arbor, 1993); G. de Ste Croix, Christian Persecution, Martyrdom and Orthodoxy (Oxford, 2006).
44Tertullian, Apologia ad Nationes, 42, in Tertullian: Apology: De Spectaculis, ed. and tr. T. Glover (London, 1931), p. 190; G. Stoumsa, Barbarian Philosophy: The Religious Revolution of Early Christianity (Tübingen, 1999), pp. 69–70.
45Tertullian, Apologia, 8, p. 44.
46W. Baum and D. Winkler, Die Apostolische Kirche des Ostens (Klagenfurt, 2000), pp. 13–17.
47S. Rose, Roman Edessa: Politics and Culture on the Eastern Fringes of the Roman Empire, 114–242 CE (London, 2001).
48T. Mgaloblishvili and I. Gagoshidze, ‘The Jewish Diaspora and Early Christianity in Georgia’, in T. Mgaloblishvili (ed.), Ancient Christianity in the Caucasus (London, 1998), pp. 39–48.
49J. Bowman, ‘The Sassanian Church in the Kharg Island’, Acta Iranica 1 (1974), 217–20.
50The Book of the Laws of the Countries: Dialogue on the Fate of Bardaisan of Edessa, tr. H. Drijvers (Assen, 1965), p. 61.
51J. Asmussen, ‘Christians in Iran’, in The Cambridge History of Iran: The Seleucid, Parthian and Sasanian Periods (Cambridge, 1983), 3.2, pp. 929–30.
52S. Brock, ‘A Martyr at the Sasanid Court under Vahran II: Candida’, Analecta Bollandiana 96.2 (1978), 167–81.
53Eusebius, Evaggelike Proparaskeus, ed. K. Mras, Eusebius Werke: Die Praeparatio Evangelica (Berlin, 1954), 1.4, p. 16; A. Johnson, ‘Eusebius’ Praeparatio Evangelica as Literary Experiment’, in S. Johnson (ed.), Greek Literature in Late Antiquity: Dynamism, Didacticism, Classicism (Aldershot, 2006), p. 85.
54P. Brown, The Body and Society: Men, Women and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity (London, 1988); C. Wickham, The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000 (London, 2009), pp. 55–6.
55B. Dignas and E. Winter, Rome and Persia in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 2007), pp. 210–32.
56See A. Sterk, ‘Mission from Below: Captive Women and Conversion on the East Roman Frontiers’, Church History 79.1 (2010), 1–39.
57For the conversion R. Thomson (ed. and tr.), The Lives of St Gregory: The Armenian, Greek, Arabic and Syriac Versions of the History Attributed to Agathaneglos (Ann Arbor, 2010). For the much debated date, W. Seibt, Die Christianisierung des Kaukasus: The Christianisation of Caucasus (Armenia, Georgia, Albania) (Vienna, 2002), and M.-L. Chaumont, Recherches sur l’histoire d’Arménie, de l’avènement des Sassanides à la conversion du royaume (Paris, 1969), pp. 131–46.
58Eusebius of Caesarea, Bios tou megalou Konstantinou, ed. F. Winkelmann, Über das Leben des Kaisers Konstantin (Berlin, 1992), 1.28–30, pp. 29–30. For Constantine’s conversion and in general, see the collection of essays in N. Lenski (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to the Age of Constantine (rev. edn, Cambridge, 2012).
59Sozomen, Ekklesiastike Historia, ed. J. Bidez, Sozomenus: Kirchengeschichte (Berlin, 1995), 2.3, p. 52.
60Eusebius, Bios tou megalou Konstantinou, 2.44, p. 66.
61A. Lee, ‘Traditional Religions’, in Lenski, Age of Constantine, pp. 159–80.
62Codex Theodosianus, tr. C. Pharr, The Theodosian Code and Novels and the Simondian Constitutions (Princeton, 1952), 15.12, p. 436.
63Eusebius, Bios tou megalou Konstant
inou, 3.27–8, p. 96.
64Ibid., 3.31–2, p. 99.
65P. Sarris, Empires of Faith (Oxford, 2012), pp. 22–3.
66Eusebius, Vita Constantini, 4.13, p. 125; translation in Dodgeon and Lieu (eds), The Roman Eastern Frontier and the Persian Wars A. D. 226–363: A Documentary History (London, 1991), p. 152. For the date, G. Fowden, Empire to Commonwealth: Consequences of Monotheism in Late Antiquity (Princeton, 1993), pp. 94–9.
67J. Eadie, ‘The Transformation of the Eastern Frontier 260–305’, in R. Mathisen and H. Sivan (eds), Shifting Frontiers in Late Antiquity (Aldershot, 1996), pp. 72–82; M. Konrad, ‘Research on the Roman and Early Byzantine Frontier in North Syria’, Journal of Roman Archaeology 12 (1999), 392–410.
68Sterk, ‘Mission from Below’, 10–11.
69Eusebius, Vita Constantini, 5.56, p. 143; 5.62, pp. 145–6.
70T. Barnes, ‘Constantine and the Christians of Persia’, Journal of Roman Studies 75 (1985), 132.
71Aphrahat, Demonstrations, M.-J. Pierre, Aphraate le sage person: les exposés (Paris, 1988–9), no. 5.
72J. Walker, The Legend of Mar Qardagh: Narrative and Christian Heroism in Late Antique Iraq (Berkeley, 2006), 6, p. 22.
73See in general J. Rist, ‘Die Verfolgung der Christen im spätkirchen Sasanidenreich: Ursachen, Verlauf, und Folgen’, Oriens Christianus 80 (1996), 17–42. The evidence is not without problems of interpretation, S. Brock, ‘Saints in Syriac: A Little-Tapped Resource’, Journal of East Christian Studies 16.2 (2008), esp. 184–6.
74J. Wiesehöfer, Ancient Persia, 500 BC to 650 AD (London, 2001), p. 202.
Chapter 3 – The Road to a Christian East
1O. Knottnerus, ‘Malaria in den Nordseemarschen: Gedanken über Mensch und Umwelt’, in M. Jakubowski-Tiessen and J. Lorenzen-Schmidt, Dünger und Dynamit: Beiträge zur Umweltgeschichte Schleswig-Holsteins und Dänemarks (Neumünster, 1999), pp. 25–39; P. Sorrel et al., ‘Climate Variability in the Aral Sea Basin (Central Asia) during the Late Holocene Based on Vegetation Changes’, Quaternary Research 67.3 (2007), 357–70; H. Oberhänsli et al., ‘Variability in Precipitation, Temperature and River Runoff in W. Central Asia during the Past ~2000 Yrs’, Global and Planetary Change 76 (2011), 95–104; O. Savoskul and O. Solomina, ‘Late-Holocene Glacier Variations in the Frontal and Inner Ranges of the Tian Shan, Central Asia’, Holocene 6.1 (1996), 25–35.
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