Contiguous with the vast Eurasian steppe and encompassing the fabled Silk Road, the land corridor stretching from the Caspian Sea to the Bohai Gulf has long been an important channel for trade and travel. As part of the vast Eurasian “exposed zone,” it was also a fecund contact zone for cultural, religious, and technological exchange. From the end of classical antiquity (ca. 400), a watershed moment for the emergence of script diversity in Central Asia, until the period of early modern globalization (ca.1500–1800) that saw the rapid spread of standardized national scripts, the region saw the use, modification, and even invention of hundreds of different writing systems, derived from a wide-range of script technologies. These include the Aramaic-derived scripts (Kharoṣṭhī, Pahlavi, Sogdian, Manichean, Mongolian, Manchu), Brāhmī-derived scripts (Tocharian, Khotanese, Tibetan), Arabic-based abjads (Persian, Chagatai), Sinitic (Chinese) and Sinitic-inspired scripts (Khitan, Jurchen), as well as newly-minted scripts drawing from a variety of traditions (’Phags-pa, Tangut, Korean).
The historical presence of these numerous, diverse writing systems provides an opportunity to critically examine persistent, but problematic conceptions concerning the emergence of writing and its relationship to broader cultural and social phenomena. For one, the proliferation of diverse scripts throughout the region undermines the ubiquitous stereotype of nomadic societies as “illiterate,” a view informed by an evolutionary view on the relationship between culture, writing, and civilization. What the region points to instead is a more nuanced cultural history of literacy, one that challenges the notion that scripts are innately linked to national identities, that script innovation is the prerogative of sedentary political powers, and that script is inextricably tied to specific spoken languages.
This multitude of scripts also invites us to explore a different paradigm of scripts, where literacy is not a binary concept but a multi-dimensional one, and where the mastery of multiple scripts is not the exception, but the rule. While script systems are rightly understood both as a conduit for cultural transmission and a symbol for cultural, religious, and political identities, literate societies in this “Eurasian zone” were often multiscriptal, with members of the educated elite commonly proficient in multiple scripts and languages. For example, a seventeenth-century Mongolian Buddhist monk might travel between Tibetan, Mongol, and Manchu, a thirteenth-century Jurchen imperial literatus interfaced between Jurchen, Khitan, and Sinitic, and an eighth-century Sogdian merchant might engage in texts written in his native language but in three different scripts: Sogdian proper, Manichaean, and Brāhmī. In a cultural context where multiscriptalism, not just multilingualism, was the norm, the coexistence of diverse script technologies often, in a single community, points to tensions between writing as a vehicle for “spreading” culture and a marker of cultural difference. This lived reality disrupts presupposed links between script and identity, requiring a reexamination of how languages and scripts have shaped individual and collective identities.
By examining these different contexts of script interaction, we are provided with a unique opportunity to interrogate and rethink these phenomena. Through this, we are able to illuminate not only the multi-layered history of the region’s writing systems, but also challenge our assumptions and broaden our understanding of the complex dynamics between language, script, culture, and society.
