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AbstractThe Silk Road trade network was arguably the most important network of global exchange and interaction prior to the fifteenth century. On the question of how and when it developed, scholars have focused mainly on the role of either the empires dominating the two ends of the trade network or the nomadic empires on the Eurasian steppe. The sedentary people of Central Asia have, however, mostly been neglected. This article traces the development of the city-states of the Tarim Basin in eastern Central Asia, from c. 2000 bce to 400 bce. It argues that the development of the city-states of the Tarim Basin is closely linked to the rise of the ancient Silk Road and that the interaction between the Tarim polities, the nomads of the Eurasian steppe and the Han Empire was the central dynamic in the creation of the ancient Silk Road network in eastern Central Asia.

AbstractThe common understanding that Shinto is Japan's “indigenous religion” makes it difficult to raise the question of when and how this Shinto emerged as a religious identity distinct from Buddhism. This article argues that Shinto arose from a Buddhist cult that incorporated the kami as jindō, rather than from the classical court cult that created a distance between Buddhism and the kami, and that defined the latter as jingi. This Buddhist jindō cult had obvious parallels in other Buddhist states (notably in the Burmese cult of nats), and a comparative approach is essential if we are to understand the dynamics at work here. To explain Shinto's emergence, we must, first, recognize and analyse its origins in jindō and, second, address its medieval dispersal from the royal court into the periphery – another process that can be fruitfully compared with Burma's nat cult.