This book is Volume 2 of Silk Road Cultural Exchange between East and West and the Art of the Northern Steppes. It offers a wide-ranging study of artistic diversity along the Silk Road, highlighting the rise of Mahayana Buddhist art, the growth of Central Asian urban art, and Sassanian Persian influence on Sogdiana. Blending a broad historical framework with focused regional case studies, it traces how artistic traditions moved, adapted, and converged, bringing to life the flourishing of ancient art from India and Persia to China’s Western Regions and the Hexi Corridor. Grounded in scholarship, field investigation, and vivid historical narrative, the volume provides essential materials for research in art history and Silk Road studies while remaining accessible to interested general readers. It illuminates key cultural interactions—from Indian Buddhism and Hellenistic legacies to Kushan, Parthian–Sassanian, and Sogdian traditions—alongside the Kucha Grottoes and Hexi-Longdong mural art.

Professor Shen Aifeng, editor and lead author of this volume, is a professor at Soochow University School of Art. He also serves as a doctoral supervisor at Lahore University of Education and Varna Free University. He graduated from Nanjing college of Arts and Herzen University in St. Petersburg. His research focuses on world art history and the ancient art of the Silk Road; he is also a painter and contemporary art critic. He has led two national research projects and published two monographs—From the Lapis Lazuli Road to the Silk Road (2 volumes) and Ancient Art of China’s Western Regions along the Silk Road (co-authored). He also co-authored the textbook History of Chinese and Foreign Design and has written around 60 academic papers.

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