Introduction

For nearly four thousand years, particularly from the 3rd century BC, very substantial land and sea connectivities existed across the Asian continent and the Indian Ocean, linking the commercial centres across its great landmass and ocean and also making Asian goods available to Western markets, particularly in Constantinople and Rome.

Given that silk was one of the most valuable items traded with the West, the German geographer, Baron Ferdinand von Richtofen (d. 1905) in the late 19th century coined the term “Silk Road” for this East-West network. The term “Spice Route” refers to the maritime connections, though some scholars use “Silk Road” to cover both linkages.

The Silk Road consisted of a network of hundreds of roads that linked the entire Asian continent. Numerous market towns emerged to handle these commercial engagements, including Xian, Chengdu and Kunming (in China); Kashgar, Khotan, Samarkhand and Bukhara (in Central Asia); Persepolis, Taxila, Bagram, Bactria, Kandahar and Merv (in India and Iran), and Tyre and Antioch on the Mediterranean. Besides silk, the caravans carried gold, precious stones, textiles, ceramics, furs and various metal items.

At the same time, the sea routes linked the peoples of Northeast, Southeast and South Asia with the Arabian Peninsula, Egypt and Mesopotamia. Caravans from the ports of Yemen and Hijaz carried Asian products brought by sea across the Peninsula to markets in West Asia and further West to the ports on the Mediterranean. Thus, for several centuries, India met the needs of the people of the Gulf and the Peninsula, providing foodstuffs, textiles and items of gracious living such as silks and jewellery.

The Silk Road did not just provide commercial connectivities; it also facilitated the movements of peoples, ideas, religions and culture: religious ideas, such as Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism, Nestorian Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism and Islam, moved along the route and influenced the various civilizations in Mesopotamia, Persia, India and China. In fact, Andre Frank has suggested that what we call “modernism” was generated out of the millennia of interaction and the Afro-Eurasian civilizations interacting along the Silk Road.