Treasure trove of texts in languages dead and alive tells story of thriving communications

It's a letter that slumbered in the desert for 1,000 years undelivered and unanswered, having been lost in transit somehow as it was on its way to a place far off in the West.

In the ninth-century scribbling, unearthed in Hotan prefecture, Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region, a Jewish merchant reels off a greeting to the expected recipient before cutting to the chase: he wants his contact to obtain some sheep from his landlord no matter the cost.

The one-page letter, written in Persian using Hebrew script, is now on display in an exhibition at the National Library of China that brings to light an all but forgotten aspect of the ancient Silk Road, the network of Eurasian trade routes that thrived for much of the period between the second century BC and the 14th century.

"Nowadays barely anyone seems to know about how active Jewish traders were in the eastern part of the Silk Road," says Liu Bo, a researcher in the ancient books department of the national library. "That letter not only throws light on this research field but also gives people a new understanding of the Silk Road."

Since 2005 the library has collected more than 700 ancient manuscripts from Hotan, which Liu says has greatly helped studies on the Western Region (a term historians use to denote Xinjiang and Central Asia).

"Numerous caravans and explorers shuttled along the routes bringing frequent cultural communications," Liu says. "Each person on the routes may have traveled only on a small section of this huge network, but as their stories are put together we can get a much broader picture of the Silk Road."

The library's text collections abound with ancient tales and stories that tell of the prosperity along the eastern section of the Silk Road not only in Chinese but also in many ancient Indo-European languages, some of which no longer exist, but hints of which are on display in the exhibition.

Maitrisimit, dating back to no later than the ninth century, was found in Hami prefecture in Xinjiang and written in Kuchean, the earliest known archaeological discovery of drama scripts in China. It includes 27 acts that follow various anecdotes of Maitreya, the Laughing Buddha.

Another outstanding exhibit from Hotan, the Buddhist Golden Light Sutra written in Khotanese, can also be dated back to the 8th to 9th centuries. Buddhism was a crucial medium for cultural communication of the time, Liu says.

"Many Buddhist sutras were brought in from India and translated into Chinese in Chang'an (what is today Xi'an, Shaanxi province). However, their influence expanded westward again along the Silk Road."

The Biography of Master Sanzang, written in Huihu (ancient Uygur) language, found in Xinjiang, and which hails the great Tang Dynasty (618-907) monk's contribution to Buddhism, is also on display in the exhibition

When it comes to the spread of Buddhism along the Silk Road, Dunhuang, Gansu province, probably offers an incomparable reference for today's studies.

In 1900, 60,000 ancient documents in many different languages were discovered in one of the Mogao Caves in Dunhuang, also known as the "library cave". The encyclopedic manuscripts spanned almost a millennium, and religion plays a key theme in the documents.

Many Dunhuang manuscripts were snatched and taken to the West, but the National Library of China is fortunate to have 16,000 of those that were left. A few of the most precious ones are now publicly shown.

Vinaya (Buddhist principles) in Four Parts, written in 417, is the earliest known work among Dunhuang manuscripts now held in China. In a post script to the Lotus Sutra, written in 968, a monk vividly describes his difficulties in traveling to India, which Liu says "has filled many voids in studies of extant files".

A scripture of Manichaeism, a religion whose genesis was in what is today Iran in the third century, and which once held wide sway across Eurasia, is also among the exhibited manuscripts.

Only three scriptures of Manichaeism were found in Dunhuang, the other two being in France.

"These documents marking the history of the Silk Road are like windows of accessibility for academia worldwide," Liu says.

"Western scholars can easily find familiar cultural elements that echo their own. That will also inspire today's people to think of modern issues from a cross-cultural perspective."