Archaeological Evidence, Cultural Imagination and Image of the Mediaeval World: New Perspectives on Treasures from Qiuci (Kucha)

Abstract

The Kingdom of Qiuci (now Kucha in Xinjiang) was a key city along the central east-west route of the Silk Road, providing many unusual treasures. This paper analyses five of these treasures: the Quzhi pot, Qiuci board, golden glass, the silver bowl known as Polou (patrōδ) and the Youxian (immortals' land) pillow. This study of foreign cultures in the medieval Chinese imagination stands at the intersection of philology, material culture studies and art history, utilising a range of sources, such as historical records, literary anecdotes, excavated documents, archeological finds and Chinese rare books. Treasures from Qiuci constitute one case study of a larger topic that the author has been grappling with, namely what can be considered as Chinese “natural history” and concerning China's mediaeval understanding of the world. The treasures are valuable because they show how foreign treasures, both in material objects unearthed through modern archaeology, and in the lore and symbolism of the objects circulating in the medieval Chinese imagination, are a synthesis of history and myth, of the known and the mysterious.