Chinese perfumery arts have a history of two or three thousand years. Theart however, was never specifically separated from medicine, personalgrooming or food culture; many aromatic materials were used for all of thesepurposes. In comparison to western traditions it is notable that Chineseperfumery was local in character. The aromatic raw materials employed wereoften native to Chinese lands, or imported from nearby. Moreover, Chineseperfumery differs from the western tradition in regard to the way in which afew outstanding aromatics have been employed.

Textiles, grain, coins; people living in the Silk Road oasis of Turfan, 160km south-east of Urumqi in today's Xinjiang, used all three items as moneybetween 273 and 769. The city of Gaochang (some 40 km east of today'sTurfan) was one of the most important cities on the northern route aroundthe Taklamakan Desert, and many of its inhabitants were buried in theadjacent Astana and Karakhoja graveyards. The region's dry climate haspreserved an extensive group of paper documents dating to before, and after,the Tang conquest of the city in 640. The residents of Turfan buried theirdead with shoes, belts, hats and clothing made from recycled paper withwriting on it. These records offer an unparalleled glimpse of how peopleliving along the Silk Road used textiles as currency.

The kingdom of Khotan lay 2,628 kilometres to the north-west of the Tangcapital at Chang'an. Strategically located in the south-west of theTaklamakan Desert, Khotan was a meeting point of different ethnic groups,languages, cultures and traditions, and was renowned as a centre ofBuddhism. With its unique combination of influences, Khotanese society wasquite different from that of Turfan to the north of the Taklamakan. Inaddition to the indigenous practices and traditions that developed inKhotan, this kingdom was always under the influence of major externalpolitical powers: Khotan was a vassal kingdom of the Hephtalites or Turkicpeoples during the sixth century, came under increasing Chinese influence inthe seventh and eighth centuries, was under Tibetan occupation from the 790sto 840s, and thereafter under the Chinese again. The secular documentaryevidence from Khotan, written in Khotanese and Chinese, from the seventh andeighth centuries reflects everyday life there, and reveals the impact ofChinese administrative changes on traditional practices.

The extensive documentary evidence collected and analysed in the previousstudies in this issue suggest a preliminary conclusion that can besummarised as follows: from the collapse of the Han dynasty to the gloriousdays of the Tang dynasty, the peoples living in the Western Regions alongthe Silk Road used multiple co-existing forms of money – grain, cloth andcoins – with one of these three items becoming predominant according tochanges in political and/or economic circumstances. However, thismulticurrency system did not outlive the political, economic and fiscalupheavals that shook the Tang empire from the mid-eighth century onwards. Asfar as the materials from Turfan and Dunhuang are concerned, the latestevidence for this monetary system is provided by a manuscript found atDunhuang (P 3348 V°), already quoted in Arakawa Masaharu's article, whichpermits us to see how such a complex monetary system worked in real lifeonce the silk shipped by the Tang government arrived in the Western Regions.In particular, a subsidiary account (P 3348 V°2 B) inscribed in thisaccounting report reveals how a local official called Li Jingyu 李景玉, who wasvice-commissioner in the army stationed in that region, received his salaryfor the first semester of the year 745 ce.

This glossary presents 80 items of textile terminology that are found in theChinese documents from Dunhuang and Turfan, or in historical texts. Some ofthese terms can be identified with actual textiles found at sites innorth-western China. Readers should be aware that there are variations intextile terminology in this international field of research: for example, wehave used “plain weave” where other textile specialists might prefer“tabby”; and “damask” where others might prefer “twill”.