Includes bibliographical references and index.

Chinese transliterations -- Maps -- The Silk Road and its travelers -- Religion and trade in ancient Eurasia -- Buddhism and the Silk Road -- A refuge of heretics : Nestorians and Manichaeans on the Silk Road -- The Islamization of the Silk Road -- Ecumenical mischief -- A melting pot no more.

"Religions of the Silk Road looks behind the romantic notions of the colonial era and tells the story of how cultural traditions, especially in the form of religious ideas, accompanied merchants and their goods along the overland Asian trade routes in pre-modern times. As early as three thousand years ago Hebraic and Iranian religious ideas and practices traveled eastwards in this way, to be followed centuries later by the great missionary traditions of Buddhism, Christianity, Manichaeism, and Islam. But the Silk Road was more than just a conduit along which these religions hitched rides East; it was a formative and transformative rite of passage, and no religion emerged unchanged at the end of the journey."--BOOK JACKET.