Information, Medium & Society: Eighteenth International Conference on Publishing Studies

Abstract

Culture in various material forms had long traveled across the Eurasian continent in the first millennium. Printed ephemerals and Books had been carried by merchants, Buddhist and Christian clergy, and officials along the Silk Road between the tenth and fourteenth century. Religious prints such as Buddhist dharani had traveled from China to West Asia and the Middles East. Artistic motifs and visualization skills were disseminated across Eurasia, the Levant, and the North African coast as prints travel with human agents. Evidence from Asian and Byzantine religious prints registers the historical trajectory of the travel of print and the dissemination of information, technology, and culture. By comparing the artistic motifs and images in Buddhist dharani, Arabic Tarsh, and Christian talisman, this paper documents the travel of religious art and print technology in medieval times.