Half of Asia, for a Thousand Years

Start Page

by Joe Bernstein

Introduction - Structure - Complete Documents - Detailed Contents Links - Flaws - Updates

Introduction

"Half of Asia, for a Thousand Years" is offered as a bibliographic guide to the period 475 BC to AD 525 in Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrein, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Xinjiang-Uigur, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, and Siberia (Russia in Asia). But none of what's here was originally written for that purpose. This page explains what you need to know to use it for that purpose anyway, and some of the flaws in it.

I'm writing a history of fantasy. Chapter 2 of that history concerns the period and region that "Half of Asia, for a Thousand Years" covers. While researching chapter 2, I ran into extreme difficulties, described in general terms in the beginning of the "Main Guide". I originally compiled the "Main Guide" so as to organise what I was learning in the face of these difficulties, and from a reasonably early date concluded that I might not be the only person who could use it.

However, my main purpose was, and is, to write a history of fantasy. Thus you will find a persistent skew in attention, in all that "Half of Asia, for a Thousand Years" offers, towards literature, towards narratives, towards fiction, and towards the supernatural. This skew is particularly pronounced in the chapter text and notes, which is why the "Main Guide" is likely to be the most useful part of the whole for most users.

Introduction - Structure - Complete Documents - Detailed Contents Links - Flaws - Updates

Structure

The "Main Guide" offers references from a bibliographic essay organised in three main groups. First I discuss a large number of relevant and for that matter irrelevant languages. (The irrelevant languages are usually dismissed with brief references showing them to be irrelevant; the relevant ones get rather more detailed treatment.) Next I offer, at a considerably more elementary level, references to basic works on a number of religious traditions present in the region. Finally, I offer similarly basic references on the history of each country in the region. After the essay, of course, comes the bibliography.

The chapter text is unlikely to be relevant to the average researcher's needs, but is here partly because it does provide some guidance to the total literary survivals from this region and period, and mostly because it is the only way to make sense of the footnotes.

The footnotes can be reached from the chapter text, of course; a few of them are also linked from appropriate places in the "Main Guide", although in general these documents are not very intensively hyperlinked. There are several footnotes of some substance, for which you can also find links below.

An additional document explains my approaches to footnoting and citation, both of which are moderately unconventional.

Finally, a page lists books that came to my attention too late to be used in my own research, but that I thought worth pointing out in case anyone ever looks up this page.

Further down this page, links to each language, religion, and country, and to the more substantial footnotes, can be found. Right here, you will find links to the documents entire. There are two formats for each document: one uses ISO-Latin-1, the current de facto standard on the Web, while the other uses Unicode 3.2, the current de jure standard on the Web. If you have appropriate Unicode fonts on your machine for transliteration of such languages as Arabic and Sanskrit, you're probably better off with the Unicode versions; otherwise, the ISO-Latin-1 ones, although they lack a bunch of diacritics, are going to be more readable. Over time, I hope, Unicode support will become general enough that the ISO-Latin-1 versions will no longer be needed. Meanwhile:

Introduction - Structure - Complete Documents - Detailed Contents Links - Flaws - Updates

Complete Documents - Unicode

Complete Documents - ISO-Latin-1

Introduction - Structure - Complete Documents - Detailed Contents Links - Flaws - Updates

Detailed Contents Links

Note that for any link you follow among these, you will get the whole of the relevant document; these links just point you to whichever place in that document you aim at. Therefore, be prepared to download 212K if you follow a link to the "Main Guide", 93K if you follow a link to the footnotes, and 35K if you follow a link to the chapter text.

The "Main Guide" covers the following relevant languages in detail:

The "Main Guide" also offers detailed coverage of Manichæan writings, Unicode or ISO-Latin-1.

Introduction - Structure - Complete Documents - Detailed Contents Links - Flaws - Updates

The "Main Guide" covers the following irrelevant languages in less detail:

Introduction - Structure - Complete Documents - Detailed Contents Links - Flaws - Updates

The "Main Guide" covers the following religions although not in detail:

Note that Mandaism is not on this list. For what I do offer on Mandaism, see Mandaic, under languages, and see in the chapter text and footnotes: (Unicode) notes 61, 67, 68, and 69; (ISO-Latin-1) notes 61, 67, 68, and 69.

Introduction - Structure - Complete Documents - Detailed Contents Links - Flaws - Updates

The "Main Guide" covers the following countries or regions although not in detail:

Introduction - Structure - Complete Documents - Detailed Contents Links - Flaws - Updates

The footnotes include the following more or less substantial discussions:

Introduction - Structure - Complete Documents - Detailed Contents Links - Flaws - Updates

Flaws

These documents were flawed at their inception, and will become more so over time. The flaws I think particularly likely to hurt your research are:

All of that said, I really hope all of this is some use to you. Good luck!

Introduction - Structure - Complete Documents - Detailed Contents Links - Flaws - Updates

Updates

Sigh... Didn't I just say I wouldn't do any?

OK, OK. In reality, I'm not providing updates. But since my projects on languages and regions (mentioned above) are unlikely to progress as quickly as I'd like, this page would be a logical place to put updates. And although I'm NOT repeating my research on this region and period, and therefore not subjecting new references to the kind of attention I devoted to the ones listed in, notably, the "Main Guide", I still do have my eyes open when I visit libraries and bookstores, and therefore still do occasionally become aware of relevant books. For various reasons, in August 2002 I'm becoming aware of a bunch of such books simultaneously, and this has induced me to put a page up listing the ones I've noticed so far.

If my attention span holds up, I'll also call attention to these books in the "Main Guide" text in some way.

But really, don't count on me, OK? To give you some notion of what's happening here, this is the set of events that led to my starting that list in August 2002: I saw a book on the "new books" shelf of my local public library that fills a niche whose emptiness I had decried in the "Main Guide". The book in question happened also to be relevant, albeit peripherally, to my current research on areas west of the region covered by "Half of Asia, for a Thousand Years", so I borrowed it. Its bibliography then informed me of a series of books covering other topics I'd thought neglected. Separately, I did fairly thorough shelf-reading in a library whose separate existence I had not previously understood, and found there yet another book of interest. This meant that I suddenly knew of something like six books relevant to "Half of Asia, for a Thousand Years" and not mentioned there, to add to two which I'd discovered in the preceding year and a half. This is, obviously, not a sign that I'm keeping up with the scholarly literature; it's only a sign that I'm sometimes awake.

So in my opinion the best thing that could happen would still be this page's complete replacement by pages written by Real Scholars. In the meantime, however, feel free to mail me any suggestions you may have for other updates; assuming I find these, amid the torrents of spam in my mailbox, I'll either add them as you send them, or if I'm feeling energetic enough to look at them but not energetic enough to do what I should be doing, I'll look at 'em myself.

Thank You

Many people helped me over the years I worked on this chapter, and at some point I hope to acknowledge them more fully on this page. At the time of webbing, only the most recent debt sticks in my mind, but it is an important one. Ed Schoenfeld took time from his busy research to review the manuscript, a review which resulted in the modification or removal of a few of the worst of the acid comments. He is not responsible for what remains, but if you're offended by what I say herein, please consider that but for him, you would have been even more offended.

Half of Asia, for a Thousand Years - Start Page

Main Guide - ISO-Latin-1 - Footnotes - ISO-Latin-1 - Linking Text - ISO-Latin-1 - About the Notes - ISO-Latin-1 - Some More Books - ISO-Latin-1

Main Guide - Unicode - Footnotes - Unicode - Linking Text - Unicode - About the Notes - Unicode - Some More Books - Unicode

URL: <http://turing.postilion.org/these-survive/fishtory/chapter2/halfasia.html>.

Copyright Joe Bernstein <joe@sfbooks.com>, 2001-2002. Electronic transfer permitted.

Written August 28, 2001, and webbed between then and August 31, 2001. Please do not expect updates; see above for more information about why not. But last modified August 19, 2002.