Sino-Iranica: investigating relations between medieval china and sasanian iran
An investigation of Sino-Iranian connections from the third to tenth centuries, with a particular focus on political, religious and material exchanges between China and Sassanian Iran. The aim will be to build a bridge between modern Sinology and Iranology and to further build our understanding of the history of Sino-Iranian relations in close coordination with Iranologists in Italy and Europe. The project will aim to highlight Sino-Iranian relations as having been significantly more important than is normally recognized, and to provide new knowledge that will be useful to both Sinology and Iranology. This two-year project will excavate primary and archaeological sources in Chinese while documenting modern scholarship on Sino-Iranian relations, especially in Modern Chinese and Japanese. The project will make great use of the digitized and searchable corpus of classical Chinese, and reevaluate the roles of Iranian religions in medieval China. The findings and data from this study will be digested and presented as a single monograph. The proposed project will be actively interdisciplinary. It will involve the research, a Canadian Sinologist trained in Japan and the Netherlands, being hosted by Iranologists in Italy. Such an arrangement will allow for gainful two-way exchanges of knowledge and skills.