Project Summary
Due to the “Belt and Road Initiative”, the economic dynamics between China and Central Asia have recently again caught the world’s attention. However, the origins of these relationships go back millennia. The project “Sino-Indo-Iranica rediviva” examines the earliest exchanges of commodities along the ancient Eurasian trade networks using linguistic, historical, and archaeological data. The project loosely follows in Berthold Laufer’s (1874-1934) footsteps who masterfully demonstrated the intensive cultural contacts between the early Iranian and Chinese civilizations by using loanword data. In his ground-breaking “Sino-Iranica” published roughly a century ago (Chicago 1919), he not only combined information about hundreds of Chinese plant names with their corresponding Middle Iranian…. MORE ON PROJECT’S WEBSITE
Iranistik in der Schweiz 