Southern Tarim route

Assembled from 34 blocks · 2 evidence · 43 related

1. Story
2. The corridor running west from Dunhuang along the southern rim of the Taklamakan, at the northern foot of the Kunlun, through Miran, Niya, Khotan and Yarkand to Kashgar. Like the northern route it hugs the desert edge rather than entering it, following streams that run north off the Kunlun and die in the sand. Khotan, on this route, was the source of the nephrite jade traded east into China long before silk moved west. Several of its oases, including Niya and Loulan, were abandoned as water courses shifted, and the sand preserved them.
3. Knowledge
4. Dunhuang
5. Kashgar
6. Taklamakan Desert
7. Southern Tarim route
8. Connections
9. Taklamakan Desert
10. Dunhuang
11. Kashgar
12. Jade
13. Northern Tarim route
14. Southern Tarim route
15. Han Empire
16. Han establishes the Protectorate of the Western Regions
17. Northern Tarim route
18. Southern Tarim route
19. Mogao Caves
20. Mogao Caves
21. First cave cut at Mogao (traditional date)
22. The Sogdian Ancient Letters are abandoned west of Dunhuang
23. Mogao Cave 17 is sealed
24. Wang Yuanlu opens Mogao Cave 17
25. Silk Road religious corridor
26. Buddhism attested in Han China
27. Traditional founding of the first cave at Mogao
28. Pamir Mountains
29. Northern Tarim route
30. Southern Tarim route
31. Islam
32. Evidence
33. Argues from excavated documents at seven Tarim and Central Asian sites that most recorded traffic was local and small-scale rather than long-distance luxury trade, and that Chinese government military expenditure was the dominant economic driver in the Tarim oases. A necessary corrective to the popular image of continuous caravans crossing the whole length.
34. Eyewitness description of the Tarim oasis kingdoms, the Pamir crossing, Central Asia and seventh-century India, compiled the year after Xuanzang's return. It records the state of Buddhist communities city by city and has been used by archaeologists to identify and locate sites.