Cambridge University, King’s College Silk Roads Programme Online Lecture
Aquilaria and Exotic Aromatics on the Maritime Silk Roads
Dr. Bill Mak, Director of Chinese Research Center, The ISF Academy
The historical importance of the overland Silk Road connecting China, India, and other Eurasian cultures has generated much scholarly interest in the past century. On the other hand, that of the maritime routes requires further exploration, especially from a longue-durée perspective. This paper examines the role of the Maritime Silk Road connecting South China, Southeast Asia, India, and beyond from the first millennium CE, focusing on the case of aromatic trade, from which Hong Kong was named after. The spread of the exotic aromatics and the cultivation of a variety of species of Aquilaria across tropical and subtropical Asia demonstrate the robust and long-lasting connectivity between a number of Asian cultures from China to the far end of the Indian Ocean.
Date : Friday, May 19
Time : 6:00 p.m. (Hong Kong Time); 11:00 a.m. (British Standard Time)
Speaker : Dr. Bill Mak, Director of Chinese Research Center, The ISF Academy
Language : English
Link : https://www.kings.cam.ac.uk/research/silk-roads-programme/silk-roads-programme-events
Registration : Click here
About the Speaker:
Dr. Bill Mak is Director of Chinese Research Center, the ISF Academy, Fellow of the Jao Tsung-I Petite Ecole, University of Hong Kong, and Research Associate of the Needham Research Institute, Cambridge, U.K. He completed his linguistic training at McGill University (B.A. Hons.) in 1996, specialising in Sanskrit and East Asian languages. His areas of research include history of science in Asia, historical Sino-Indian cultural contact, and Buddhist philology. After he received his Ph.D. in Indian languages and literature from Peking University in 2010, he held several research and teaching positions in Germany (Hamburg University), Hong Kong (University of Hong Kong), and Japan (Kyoto University). Mak has authored over 30 academic articles in peer-reviewed journals and is the co-editor of Overlapping Cosmologies in Asia, published by Brill in 2022. He is now completing a book project titled Foreign Astral Sciences in China, from Six Dynasties to Northern Song, to be published by Routledge under the Needham Research Institute Monograph Series.
