Abstract
The term Silk Road often conjures images composed of ancient caravan traders traveling over the vast regions of remote lands, picturesque scenes of mountains and deserts, foreign music and dance, exotic costumes, and adventures. Those popular images of the Silk Road were often constructed by documentary films on TV, and travel logs in journals and newspapers. However, it is not so well known that the Silk Road is not entirely remote and foreign, but rather part of our Korean cultural and historical heritage. Furthermore, we would do well to reconsider our past in terms of the inter-cultural or inter-civilizational exchanges occurring on the Silk Road to have a better understanding of it. In this respect, The Silk Road Encyclopedia (2016) is a significant scholarly achievement, and a work that will promote the studies of Silk Road.
The English rendition of The Silk Road Encyclopedia is a work combining two Korean books, The Silk Road Encyclopedia (2013) and The Sea Silk Road Encyclopedia (2014). The Silk Road Encyclopedia (2014) had been compiled over several decades alone by Jeong Su-il, a prominent expert on the subject, while The Sea Silk Road Encyclopedia is a joint project conducted by Jeong together with other scholars. The publication of this English version represents a summation of his lifelong study of the Silk Road, encompassing as it does histories of cultural exchanges between Europe and Asia, from the Greek peninsula to the road's Eastern end point, Korea and Japan. It contains more than 2000 entries ranging from geographical information and historical facts to oral tradition, myths and legends, musical instruments, literary works, crafts, weapons, and the names of scholarly, political, and historical figures. It may be an interesting coincidence that its very first entry is “Abbas, Shah,” a sage king of the Safavid Dynasty of Iran and the last one is “Zuchio Tachibana,” a Japanese Silk Road explorer of the 20th Century, representatives respectively of the western and eastern ends of the road. Just one look at these pages can tell us how extensive was the author's research on the Silk Road and in inter-civilization studies.
Silk Road study as a discipline emerged more than 130 years ago, but it is still a relatively new field in Korea. In this situation, the publication of this English version of The Silk Road Encyclopedia marks a significant milestone in three respects. First, up until now most Silk Road studies have been conducted by scholars and explorers from the West and from a western point of view. Jeong Su-il's work is an attempt to rectify this trend by offering a new perspective from the East. Second, it paves the way for future scholarship and translation by providing standard terminology concerning geographical features, personal names, book titles, minerals, plants, and animals belonging to the regions of the Silk Road. It is not a small contribution, although in the book there still exists some confusion to be cleared up in choosing proper terminology. Thirdly, this work helps us to enlarge our scope of understanding Korean history and cultural heritage by relocating them in a bigger picture of inter-civilizational exchanges. By uncovering the ancient roads though which western civilizations traveled to the East and eastern civilizations to the West, colliding with and enriching each other, this encyclopedia inspires us to reconsider our past as well as stimulating our curiosity regarding the rich history of the Silk Road,
I myself have participated in the process of translating this book as a reviewer. My job was checking the English translation and comparing it with its original Korean version. It was a very interesting experience for me. Thanks to the meticulous reading required for the job, I was able to immerse myself in the richness of the text, which may not be possible under an ordinary reading condition. Given this rare privilege, I may be able to mention a few things about the book. Translated by a group of people, not just by one or two specific translators, there exist some discrepancies in style and quality among entries. Some read better than others, and certain notions are less clear than others. Some terms and notions are not so easily translatable to English due to the lack of proper terms equivalent to the Korean originals, which are themselves often translated from other languages and cultures. In spite of those problems, this encyclopedia is, I believe, certainly a considerable achievement with no precedent in its kind in Korea. Jeong Su-il's The Silk Road Encyclopedia serves as a primer for exploring our undiscovered past on the ancient Silk Road, and paves the way for future research for generations to come.