Seals, Sealings, and Tokens from Bactria to Gandhara (4th to 8th century CE)

This publication is the result of a fruitful collaboration in the framework of the National Research Network (NFN) “The Cultural History of the Western Himalaya from the 8th Century,” sponsored by the Austrian Science Fund (S 9806-G21). The NFN is closely associated with the Research Platform Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Documentation of Inner and South Asian Cultural History (CIRDIS) at the University of Vienna which is directed by Deborah Klimburg-Salter, who is also the speaker of the NFN project. As outlined in the project goals, the NFN concentrates its efforts on the Western Himalayan region, where the great cultures of China, India, Persia and Tibet converge. Through the centuries this region, traversed by trade and pilgrimage routes from the Mediterranean to the China Sea and the Indian Ocean, was, and continues to be, an area of intense cultural exchange. These corridors of communication connected far flung centers and thus over the millennia contributed to common cultural features despite great ethnic and linguistic diversity.