Resources

A brief introduction to the Qu’ran. Includes audio by Qamar Adamjee, Malavalli Family Foundation Associate Curator of Art of the Indian Subcontinent.

The Han Dynasty is one of the great dynasties in Chinese history, encompassing nearly four hundred years of expansion and consolidation which coincided with the period of the Roman republic and empire in the West.

Professor Robert Sharf, University of California, Berkeley, discusses Japanese Buddhism at the Medieval Japan Teacher Institute at the Asian Art Museum.

Just east of the modern city of Xi’an, you can see an army of soldiers unearthed. Discovered first in 1974, the work continues on three pits containing over 7,000 model soldiers. The army was buried within a framework of wooden pillars just east of the large tumulus containing the tomb of the First Emperor. It was a massive undertaking, certainly the largest ceramic project ever undertaken anywhere.

The Buddha—that is, the “Enlightened One”—lived nearly 2500 years ago in northern India. His followers have always seen his life as a shining example to all, but what “really happened” is now impossible to know for certain. Even the earliest stories of his life include miraculous events that may seem hard to take literally. Later versions are even more elaborate, and they differ from one another in many details.

Among the most globally significant innovations of the Tang and Song dynasties were the inventions of woodblock printing and moveable type, enabling widespread publishing of a variety of texts, and the dissemination of knowledge and literacy.

Scholars often refer to the Tang (618–907) and Song (960–1279) dynasties as the “medieval” period of China. The civilizations of the Tang (618–907) and Song (960–1279) dynasties of China were among the most advanced civilizations in the world at the time. Discoveries in the realms of science, art, philosophy, and technology—combined with a curiosity about the world around them—provided the men and women of this period with a worldview and level of sophistication that in many ways were unrivaled until much later times, even in China itself.

Watch artist Kong Pak-yu demonstrate brushpainting at the Asian Art Museum.