• Journal of the Korean Professional Engineers Association
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• v.44 no.1
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• pp.53-57
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• 2011

말로만 듣던 고대 인류의 도서야 교통로인 비단길(실크로드) 즉 돈황, 하미, 선선, 투루판, 우루무치 지역의 역사유적지의 유물들을 실제로 단기간 탐방하는 기회를 갖게 되어 주마간산 격으로 체험한 관광기행문을 실크로드 개요와 탐방현지를 중심으로 소개한다.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.109-120
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• 2017

The city of Basra, established on the shore of Basra Bay in the south of modern Iraq, played an important role in agriculture and trade for centuries, with its geography and its position where two great rivers of Mesopotamia flow. Before being established with its current name by the Muslim Arabs, the city was known as Teredon in the Chaldean period and VehiŞtebad ErdeŞir in the Sasanid period. It was reestablished with the name Basra in the early period of Islam by Arabs between Hijri 14-16 (635-637 CE). Afterward, the city became one of the most important centers of trade, science and thought; had a perfect cultural diversity; and hosted important schools of Arabic language and thought for centuries. Besides the commercial effects of its being a transfer point on the axis of Europe, Mesopotamia, Iran, and India, the schools of thought which emerged here were affected by this mobility. In this paper, we try to reveal the philosophical-religious approach which the Ikhwan al-Safa school of thought in Basra, one of the most important cities of the Silk Road, created in parallel with the characteristics of this city. Shiite Ismaili beliefs and thoughts in the region and its characteristics which feed different religions and traditions emerging from Egypt and with the scientific approach of Greek thought; with Indian-Iranian teachings that merge Greek thought and Neoplatonic philosophy, give us the summary of Silk Road civilizations.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.105-117
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• 2016

The Silk Road named by Ferdinand von Richthofen was not designated as a specific route. A lot of East-West trade routes had already existed across the continent and the geographical scope and definition of the Silk Road is still expanding. In particular, the claim that the Eastern end of the Silk Road reaches Gyeongju is an example of this expansion. Burial treasures from tombs on the Korean Peninsula have already been identified as products from the Sassanian Dynasty of Persia, and various archaeological and epical evidences support this finding. However, the specific route where these exchanges were made, around the 6th-8th centuries, has yet to be identified. Maritime as well as inland routes can easily be hypothesized. The Silk Road was largely activated by the Yam postal system with the expansion of the Mongol Empire. It not only served as an effective pathway for the Yuan to rule over the Goryeo, but also connected the Eastern end of the Silk Road to Gyeongju. This can explain the situation since the 13th century. Therefore, this paper claims that the Yeokcham system had been operating on the Korean Peninsula since the Unified Silla Kingdom, the previous period of Goryeo, or perhaps even before then. The Yeokcham should thus be regarded as a prototype of the Mongolian Yam, and the Korean peninsula should be recognized as another route which contributed specifically to the development of the Silk Road, not just as a user or a beneficiary.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.117-140
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• 2021

At the beginning of the Roman imperial period, moralizing authors criticized a material from the East that quickly gained popularity among the elites: silk. During Late Antiquity, the trade, production, and use of purple-dyed silks increasingly became the privilege of the emperors. While literature, court poetry, and laws give insights into the discourses surrounding silk, they are rather unspecific concerning silk qualities. This contribution analyzes the scattered descriptions of silks in Greek and Latin texts in a diachronic perspective, with a focus on the 1^st cent. BCE to the 4th cent. CE, paying particular attention to the terminology, products, origins, and qualities of silk. The aim is to build a framework for comparisons with archaeological silk finds and other textile terminologies along the Silk Roads. Here, the silk finds from the oasis city of Palmyra/Tadmor in modern-day Syria, dating from the 1st cent. BCE to the 2nd cent. CE, will be used as a case study for the early imperial period. Taking these silk finds as a comparison, it will be shown that Greek and Latin terminology does not match the variety of silks known in the Mediterranean. Rather, linguistic differentiations focus on the forms in which silk reached the Mediterranean, as skeins, yarns, and fabrics, as well as on the different kinds of silks that were produced in the West, namely pure silk and half-silken fabrics, checkered "scutlata" damasks, purple-dyed, and gold-embellished silks. In contrast, silks from the East were subsumed under the term for "silks from the silk people" or simply "silks". Moreover, ancient authors do not use the terms in the same way. These findings show the limitations of Western silk terminology and the importance of combining archaeological and written sources.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.3 no.2
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• pp.161-180
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• 2018

Pax Sinica is a historiographical term, modeled after the original phrase Pax Romana. It refers, in Latin, to a Chinese-provided peace which in turn is used to describe an era of peace in East Asia sustained by Chinese hegemony. In historical terms, both the Pax Sinica of the Eastern hemisphere through Han China and the Pax Romana of the Western hemisphere through Rome signified a trans-regional order based on rules and regulations. This orderly world of the Pax Sinica generated a number of positive results such as the intensification of travel, ever-expanding trade relations, an increase in the overall living standards of the populace, the proliferation of cities, and a demographic upsurge in Eurasia along the ancient Silk Road. During this period, China was the dominant civilization not only in the Eastern hemisphere but also in the Middle hemisphere due to its political, economic, military and cultural influence. This paper aims to reintroduce this historiographical term to elucidate the recent Chinese initiatives in Eurasia along the Silk Road to facilitate the integration and connectivity of the continent.

• Asian review of World Histories
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• v.2 no.1
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• pp.105-127
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• 2014

The Silk Road, a trans-Eurasian network of trade routes connecting East and Southeast Asia to Central Asia, India, Southwest Asia, the Mediterranean, and northern Europe, which flourished from roughly 100 BCE to around 1450, has enjoyed two modern eras of intense academic study. The first spanned a period of little more than five decades, from the late nineteenth century into the early1930s, when a succession of European, Japanese, and American scholar-adventurers, working primarily in Chinese Turkestan (present-day Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, which comprises China's vast northwest) and China's Gansu Province (to the immediate east of Xinjiang) rediscovered and often looted many of the ancient sites and artifacts of the Silk Road. The second era began to pick up momentum in the 1980s due to a number of geopolitical, cultural, and technological realities as well as the emergence of the New World History as a historiographical field and area of teaching. This second period of fascination with the Silk Road has resulted in not only a substantial body of both learned and popular publications as well as productions in other media but also in an ever-expanding sense among historians of the scope, reach, and significance of the Silk Road.

• Journal of Fashion Business
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• v.22 no.1
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• pp.100-113
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• 2018

From the late 17th to the early 18th century, Europeans were strongly intrigued by products from the East. Therefore, several countries like England, France, and Netherlands formed the 'East India Company' to pursue trade. First, European markets rapidly responded to this desire for exoticism by importing goods; then, they produced imitation Oriental goods. Finally, they made stylistically advanced exotic merchandise from the perspectives of European. In terms of the textile industry, this trend was expressed in the pattern design of silk, or the so called 'bizarre silk.' In this paper, bizarre silk patterns were scrutinized based on a digital archive of museums, catalogues of museums, portal sites, and the literature. The bizarre silk patterns were analyzed then classified into six categories: pseudo-Oriental plant pattern, pattern mingled with architectural motifs, pattern of juxtaposed with Oriental goods, abstract pattern, exuberant pattern with metal threads, and semi-naturalistic pattern. These patterns were characterized according to the following features: strangely large exotic floral patterns were undulating and asymmetrical; exotic foliage and flowers were sometimes mixed with architectural motifs or Oriental goods to easily show the Oriental influence; motifs of bizarre silk patterns were abstractly stylized; bizarre silk patterns became luxurious once more like the Baroque period; finally, floral patterns became more natural, and still exotic motifs remained in the background to maintain the bizarre silk features. These bizarre silk patterns evolved from the viewpoints of Europeans through acceptance stage, compound stage, and confluent stage.

• Acta Via Serica
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.25-69
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• 2019

India has occupied the most important position of sea trade in the entire South Asian region since the beginning of maritime trade. The extensive maritime trade network between the Harappan and Mesopotamian civilizations as early as the $3^{rd}$ millennium BCE is testimony to the long maritime trade history of India. The Harappans constructed many seaports including the first high-tide dockyard in the world for berthing and servicing ships at the port town of Lothal, Gujarat. From the dawn of the historical epoch, the maritime trade network of India expanded extensively. The long 5422.6 kms coastline of the Indian mainland (excluding the coastlines of the Andaman and Nicobar islands and the Lakshwadweep Islands) is well known for its several seaports manly located at river mouths or outlets to the sea. The main objective of this paper is to discuss in detail all the major ancient seaports on the eastern coast of India and their maritime trade activities. The narrative of these ports is based on archaeological explorations and excavations, foreigners' accounts, Indian literary sources, inscriptions, archival materials, and the field study and personal observation of the author.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Marine Environment & Safety
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• v.13 no.1 s.28
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• pp.75-92
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• 2007

This article is to investigate the development of seamanship and the art of ship building, marine environment, Silk Road through the sea, and spice exchange at the trade growth of Song Dynasty. For better understanding marine environments, I exemplified what goes before such essential factors as experience and skills in maritime activities. I also demonstrated that South Song Dynasty's abundant economic strength and foreign opening strategy had been supervised systematically through the trade management organization and noted that the nation's overseas exchange had made great effects on its society. The import of the perfume provided the cause where the western influence occupies the orient in the same time when it is a keychains of the orient and the western interchange. For this reason, perfume, which once contributed 1/20 of the revenue, enlarged its portion to 1/10 of the revenue. This indicates the influence of perfume on the national finance in the Song period.

• Journal of Sericultural and Entomological Science
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.47-55
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• 1981

Silk textile finishing has been studied for many years by many workers in order to meet more utilities for various endusers. Such studies, however, could not be successful because any natural fibers are hardly change their natures by artificial treating methods. Textile finishing is of course to improve the mechandise qualities and the poor natures of silk so that it may be available as the best textile fiber in the world. Sometimes, famous trade marked textile plays more power than its quality in the silk market, nevertheless, this should be over line of research activities. Meantime, the silk demand has been also transferred from ladies stocking to other clothes since nylon or other synthetic fibers were developed. That is why, the extension of silk demand should be developed by various research works. Specially, silk is known as difficult textile to handle it during washing or ironing process which happened to depress down the silk usage for house wives. In order to solve such problems, the reporter has been worked for many years and now, he believes that he has developed a proper finishing method to coversuch problems. The developed finishing method may be said to eligible with economical aspect and shorten the dry duration after water washing in half against normal silk textile without harming the specific silk nature. As all of us know, silk fiber starts to denature since it was spinned by silkworm and the fiber is formed as overlapped "S" type curves during its concooning process. After it is made as raw silk or sericin silk, it shows as straight line form, but it changes in to waved form in case refining or degumming process in order return to its original spinned form. Such nature is continued during its textile form and ends with hard ironing nature than other textile fibers. Mean while, the silk fiber keeps to continue its denaturing and this is iniciated by repeat of washing and drying which takes many years to reach its final stage, The reporter has found the iniciating denature of silk by his finishing process, with out heat, decreasing the swollen nature which ended with shortening the drying duration after wash. Each washing was carried out by soaking the previously weighed sample in cold water for one hour, then pressed the sample for ten minutes to eliminate its free water component before weighing with same condition. According to this, the treated silk showed much denaturing after the finishing, but the standard silk progressed the denaturing by and by with the repeat of washing and drying, finally reached the same swollen degree of treated silk, Such treating result explains that the treated silk happened to be stebilized nature by the treating immediately. On the other that the treated silk happened to be stebilized nature by the treating immediately. On the other hand, standard silk may reach to such condition by the time of worn out clothes after repeat of washing and drying for many years while the clothes will be no more useful. The decreased swelling nature has brought about the drying period in half against standard silk after all. Not only the tests of tenacity and elongation but also crease resistance recovery, stiffness and shrinkage tests were carried out after each washing and drying which he has found better result on the treated silk textile against the standard silk. The most important thing was to keep the textile feeling of silk by such finishing work before improve any poor nature of silk. The general silk has a nature to absorb smoke or dirt from its surrounding air and reaches to dirty color shade upon such exposure, but the treated one has improved such nature because of its artificial denaturing, another word, it keeps clean longer than the normal silk. Many previous finishing works could improve some specific nature of silk, but it happened to deprave other important natures. The reporters work is, however, specialized to improve the silk to be useful as Wash and Wear Silk without harming its standard natures. So far, this work happened to be a overall innovative finishing method of silk textile.