Silk and Religion: An Exploration of Material Life and the Thought of People, AD 600-1200
- A review by Tom Witmer

Xinru Liu’s examination of the impact of religion on the silk trade, Silk and Religion: An Exploration of Material Life and the Thought of People, AD 600-1200 (1996), epitomizes the scholarship that has recently become possible with the shift toward a true world history. In a study that encompasses China, Central Asia, India, the eastern Mediterranean region and Western Europe, he illustrates a fascinating series of largely parallel developments. According to the author, it was during the period in question that silk evolved from a luxury item to a commodity. Religious institutions, somewhat surprisingly, contributed substantially to this transition. Prompted by an emerging preoccupation with the afterlife or other world, religious rituals across several cultural areas incorporated the use and donation of silk. As a result, government monopolies on its production and use, which were already difficult to enforce, began to give way. The relaxation of controls, in turn, allowed the volume of the trade to increase and facilitated the use of silk as currency. Collectively, these changes enabled silk to become a global commodity.

For a relatively brief work, there is an abundance of evidence to support this argument including archaeological studies related to textiles and government documents such as laws and tax records. While the density of the evidence would make this work difficult for students to read on their own, the thesis can easily be used by teachers to highlight important similarities across several regions during this period and to clarify the extent of trade along the silk routes, both land and sea. In addition to supporting this thesis, the evidence could also be used to shed light on the frontier regions of China and to foster discussion over the degree to which cultural diffusion in those areas can fairly be called sinicization.

Having just attended an institute focusing on the frontier regions of China, I found several pieces of evidence presented by Liu to be particularly noteworthy. One emerged from a 1990 study of silk samples found in Western churches. Of the more than 1000 samples reviewed, only one was clearly from China. In Tang China, meanwhile, the volume of silk traded was such that it functioned as a currency. Indeed, registers of the Tang government in the middle of the eighth century indicate that more than seven million bolts of silk were collected in taxes annually. Evidently, the trade along the silk routes did not only flow westward from China. Indeed, Liu makes references to foreign silks being purchased and worn in China by the fifth or sixth century. Some of the other interesting evidence pertained to changes in the process of silk production in China. Whereas warp-faced compound tabby silk was common in the Han era, Tang artisans produced warp-faced compound twill and the weft-faced compound twill common to wool producers in the West. They also incorporated designs from India and Central Asia such as the bodhi tree and various animal motifs. Thus, while Tang artisans continued to produce the premier polychromatic silks in the world, they did so with methods and designs borrowed from other cultures. These facts quite convincingly illustrate that China, during the Han, Northern Wei and Tang dynasties, was both a donor and recipient of cultural influences.

Within this book, Liu presents at least two solid case studies that could be incorporated into world history lessons. To begin, there is substantial evidence to support a comparison of Tang China and the Byzantine Empire. Both bureaucratic governments, he argues, controlled silk in order to control power. In Han China, for example, only leading civil servants and members of the imperial family were allowed to wear polychromatic patterned silks. Merchants were specifically prohibited from doing so. In Byzantium, meanwhile, emperors carefully restricted knowledge of purple dyes. Purple silk was synonymous with royal authority and divinity, so its production and use was strictly regulated. Given its rarity and prestige, both governments used gifts of silk in the course of diplomacy, and both granted gifts of silk as patrons of increasingly powerful, organized religions.

The author also documents significant similarities between Christianity and Buddhism. As both religions developed, they incorporated a greater emphasis on rituals that could influence ones status after death. Within Buddhism, the shift from Hinayana to Mahayana Buddhism’s many Buddhas and boddhisatvas spawned rituals that centered on earning merit and improving one’s material conditions. Within Christianity, the shift from urban to rural areas led to the emergence of the cult of saints and the development of rituals based on relics that could free one of sin. In both cultural areas, the donation of silk became an integral part of these rituals and the patronage of the institutions that performed them. Similarly, in both regions, the traffic in relics that accompanied these changes led to the increased use of silk as a currency.