Christian relics unearthed along the Silk Road, offering insight into the spiritual practices of past civilizations

eLibrary: Afterlife Along the Silk Road

Death was a fate suffered by everyone who lived and travelled along the Silk Road. What happened next, depended on individuals' religious beliefs. The exhibitions feature Christan, Zoroastrian and Buddhist art over three museums.

NOTE:

Some of these links come from Academia.edu and Researchgate.net. These require a free one-time registration.

To research further yourselves, you may consider registering with Jstore.org which gives limited but free monthly access to its collections.

Articles

Bremmer, J.N., The rise and fall of the afterlife. Routledge.2003 [pdf]

Oestigaard, T. Death in world religions Human responses to the inevitable, Bergen, 2004. 130pp [pdf]

Buddhism

Albahari, M., ‘Nirvana and ownerless consciousness’, Self, no self, 2011,.79-113. [pdf]

Assandri, F., 2013. ‘Examples of Buddho–Daoist interaction: conceptions of the afterlife in early medieval epigraphic sources’ The e-Journal of East and Central Asian Religions, 1, 2013,1-38. [pdf]

Cheng, F.K. ‘Buddhist Insights into Life and Death: Overcoming Death Anxiety’, Athens Journal of Social Sciences, 4, 1, 67-88 [pdf]

Della Santina, P., 1998. The Tree of Enlightenment–An Introduction to the Major Traditions of Buddhism. [pdf]

Durning, K., 2022. ‘Buddhist Hell: Overview and Structure’, China's Magical Creatures. [website]

Jiang, X., 2022. ‘Dizang and the Three Kings: Constructing Buddhist Hell by Imitating the Bureaucratic System in the Tang Dynasty’, Religions13(4), p.317. [pdf]

Kim, Y. ‘Buddhism and the Afterlife in the Late Joseon Dynasty: Leading Souls to the Afterlife in a Confucian Society’, Korea Journal, 60, 4, 267–293 [pdf]

MacLaughlin, M.S., Life in Samsara: Torment, Torture and Tolerance in Buddhist Hell, Undergrad essay, Bard College, 2013. I06pp [pdf]

Moretti, C., ‘Scenes of Hell and Damnation in Dunhuang Murals’, Arts Asiatiques74, 2019, 5-30. [article]

Onozawa, Y., 2002. An analysis of hell-narratives in early Hinduism and Theravada Buddhism. MA Thesis, , University of Regina. [pdf]

Sarao, K.T. ‘Saṃsāra (Buddhism)’ in Buddhism and Jainism [Researchgate]

Sharf, R., 2013. ‘Art in the dark: the ritual context of Buddhist caves in western China’, Art of merit: studies in Buddhist art and its conservation, 2013, 38-65. [Academia]

Sørensen, H.H., ‘The Meeting of Daoist and Buddhist Spatial Imagination: The Construction of the Netherworld in Medieval China’, In Locating Religions 2017 (pp. 234-292). Brill. [pdf]

Thanissaro, P.N., ‘The Enlightenment Debate in Early Buddhism’, Challenging Religious Issues, 10, 2016, 15-20 [pdf]

Tsomo, K.L. ‘Dying, Death, and Afterlife from a Buddhist Perspective’ In A. Deepak and R. DasGupta Shenna Dying (eds) Death, and afterlife in Dharma traditions and Western religion, 2006, 29-44. [pdf]

Willard, A.K., e.a  ‘Rewarding the good and punishing the bad: The role of karma and afterlife beliefs in shaping moral norms’, Evolution and Human Behavior, 41, 5, 2020, 385-396. [pdf]

Christianity

Brown, P., 1996. The end of the ancient other world: Death and afterlife between late antiquity and the early middle ages. Yale University Press, 1966 [pdf]

Brown, P., 2015. The ransom of the soul: Afterlife and wealth in early western Christianity. Harvard University Press 2015 [pdf]

Forbes, H.F. The Theology of the Afterlife in the Early Middle Ages, c. 400–c. 1100 in Imagining the Medieval Afterlife  [pdf]

Korpiola, M. and Lahtinen, A.,  Cultures of death and dying in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: an introductionCultures of death and dying in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, 2015, 1-32. [pdf]

Zoroastrianism

KEY TEXT Martin Haug, ‘The Book of Arda Viraf’ in C.F. Horne (ed) The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, Volume VII: Ancient Persia, 1917 [book]

Anita, K.H. ‘Zarathushti view of death and the afterlife’ Fezana Journal, 2005, 32-36, 55 [pdf]

Apinis, V. Zoroastrian influence upon Jewish Afterlife: Hell punishments in Arda Wiraz and Medieval Visionary Midrashim, PhD Thesis, Riga, 2010, 200pp [pdf]

Emadinia, A. The Soul in the Afterlife: Individual Eschatological Beliefs in Zoroastrianism, Mandaeism and Islam, PhD Thesis, Göttingen, 2017, 240pp [pdf download]

Hintse, M. ‘Zoroastrian afterlife beliefs and funerary practices’, in C. Moreman (ed.), The Routledge Companion to Death and Dying. London/New York, 2017, 86–97. [Academia]

Leurini, C. ‘Hell of Hells in Zoroastrian Afterlife’, Cahiers de Studia Irania, 25, 2002, 207-220. [Academia]

Tatu, R. ‘Being total: considering the end of the human person in Zoroastrian perception’ Phronimon, 12, 2, 2011, 53-68. [pdf]