Xinru Liu

Xinru Liu is an associate professor of early Indian history and world history at The College of New Jersey, and has held since 1993 a full professorship at the Institute of World History, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.^[1]

Born in 1951 she had little formal schooling but instead worked as a peasant farmer and then as a factory worker during the cultural revolution. She taught herself English and history and gained admittance to the University of Pennsylvania where she earned a PhD in 1985 for work on Ancient Indian and Chinese History. Her PhD was published by Oxford University Press as Ancient India and Ancient China: Trade and Religious Exchanges, A.D. 1-600 (1988).^[2][3] She has written many books on Indian and Chinese history.

Xinru Liu has won a Grant from American Association of University Women, 1984, a Grant from Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1990. Her book, "Ancient India and Ancient China: Trade and Religious Exchanges, A.D. 1-600" won the award for Outstanding Research Works done between 1977-1991 from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences. She is a member of the American Association of Asian Studies, The American Historical Association, and the World History Association.^[4]

Her most recent work is Dionysus and drama in the Buddhist art of Gandhara written jointly with Pia Brancaccio and published in the Journal of Global History.^[5]

Books

• Ancient India and Ancient China: Trade and Religious Exchanges, A.D. 1-600 (1988)

• A Social History of Ancient India, Beijing: the Publisher of Chinese Social Sciences (1990)

• Studies on Monarchism and Despotism in the Ancient World (1993)

• Silk and Religion—An Exploration of Material Life and the Thought of People in A.D. 600-1200 (1996)^[6]

• The Silk Road, in the series of Essays on Global and Comparative History (1998)

• Connections Across Eurasia: Transportation, Communication, and Cultural Exchange on the Silk Roads (2007)

Articles

• “Republics in Ancient India,” World History, Beijing, 1996, no.3.

• “A Study of Primitive Democracy,” Historiography Quarterly, Beijing, 1997 no.2.

• “Origin of the Caste System in South Asia,” Historiography Quarterly, Beijing, 1998, no.2.

• “Social Mobility in the Caste System in South Asia,” Historiography Quarterly, Beijing, 1999, no. 4.

• “Silk, Robes and Relations between Early Chinese Dynasties and Nomads beyond the Great Wall,” in Robes and honor: the Medieval World of Investiture, ed. Steward Gordon, St. Martin’s press.

• “Migration and Settlement of the Yuezhi-Kushan : Interaction and Interdependence of Nomadic and Sedentary Societies,” the Journal of World History, Fall 2001.

• “Trade and Pilgrimage Routes from Afghanistan to Taxila, Mathura and the Ganges Plains,” Hindistan Turk Tarihi Arastirmalari, The Journal of Indo-Turcica, no.1, 2001, 113-140.

References