Members

Before being associated with various sobriquets such as “Graveyard of Empires”, Inner Asia was one of the greatest cultural melting pots in the world. Its aridness has preserved numerous sites, which shed light on the network of exchanges in historical times.

During my study at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, I started investigating numerous manuscripts discovered from this region that are presently kept in Europe and other countries. In 2009, I began to organize fieldwork around Ancient Kucha, a kingdom situated between the Tianshan mountains and the Taklamakan Desert. One of the main results of this fieldwork was published as L. Zhao and X. Rong (eds.), Cave Inscriptions in Ancient Kucha (3 vols. 2020). In addition, I have taken other approaches for my individual research, such as the decipherment of the “Kucha- Kharoṣṭhī” script, and the comparative analysis of expedition records. In 2015, I learnt non-destructive digital microscopy at Ryukoku University. As to the History of Central Asia in a broader sense, I helped to open a seminar at the Collège de France in 2021 by critically reading Chinese classics together with archaeological and linguistical data.

During my Hakubi project, I will integrate my research ideas and experiences in order to reconstruct the prosperity of pre-Islamic Inner Asia from the perspectives of philology and cultural history.