Abstract

This lecture explores how astral knowledge travelled across Eurasia and took root in China during the first millennium CE. Through a series of case studies, it examines moments of intercultural scientific dialogue in which monks, merchants, and travellers from India and other parts of Eurasia engaged with Chinese intellectual and religious communities during some of China’s most cosmopolitan periods. Drawing on close comparisons between Chinese sources and parallel materials preserved in their original languages—most notably Sanskrit and Pāli Buddhist texts, as well as works associated with Nestorian, Zoroastrian, and Manichean traditions—the lecture highlights concrete processes of transmission, adaptation, and reinterpretation. By foregrounding the human agents and cultural contexts that shaped these exchanges, it offers a nuanced account of how foreign astral sciences were negotiated, transformed, and localised in China, thereby shedding new light on the broader role of cross-cultural scientific exchange in East Asian history. The case studies and key findings presented in this lecture are drawn from the author’s recent book, Foreign Astral Science in China— from the Six Dynasties to the Northern Song (Needham Research Institute Monograph Series, Routledge).