Yury N. Roerich on the Spread of Indian Visual Images along the Great Silk Road

Abstract

The paper discusses the studies of Yury N. Roerich (1902–1960) in the field of Central Asian art. In his opinion, the Great Silk Road should be considered not only as a caravan road providing trade routes between the countries of the ancient and medieval world, but also as an important arterial system of cultural interchange. The Kushan Empire, founded by the Tochars, who adopted Buddhism as the dominant religion, played a special role in the development of the art of the Great Silk Road region. Buddhism began to spread along the arteries of the Great Silk Road, forming a belt of Buddhist culture of great extent, based on Indian art, rethought by the masters of local traditions. According to Yury N. Roerich, this process should be considered a unique historical and cultural phenomenon. In 1923–1928 Yury N. Roerich made a great journey as a member of his father’s Central Asian expedition. Part of the expedition ran along the ancient routes of the Great Silk Road. During the expedition, the scholar managed to explore dozens of Buddhist art masterpieces, described, and photographed some of them. Yury Roerich believed that Central Asia, the Western and Eastern Turkestan regions became a kind of melting pot, where the interconnected and synthesized Indian, Iranian, and Chinese artistic styles, influencing the Buddhist art of Tibet, as well as the Chinese art of the 13th–14th centuries of Yuan and Ming Dynasties.