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This book breaks new ground in the perception of Central Asian history by a comparison of the archaeological evidence with Tibetan and Chinese historiographic sources as well as Sanskrit texts which have rarely been used. It narrates Indian references to Central Asian peoples in the Rigveda, Brahmanas, Puranas, Palisuttas and Buddhist Sanskrit works. It was not merely the Silk Route, but primarily the Sutra Route. Sanskrit was the mind of this Route. It lived as long as Buddhism flourished. Jade and silk were the main trading items: the influence of sericulture on iconography has been discussed. Special relations of Khotan and Kashmir, their impact on the new technology of silk production and transmission of silk production from Khotan (Serindia of Procopius) to Byzantine clarify the word Serº, serikes>silk. The defence of settled kingdoms threatened by nomadic onslaughts gave rise to military cantonments, and the emergence of guardian deities named in the ancient annals which have provided the correct nomenclature of deities shown on the panels. The heavenly mandate of the only political Sutra, the Sutra of Golden Light, has been brought out for the first time. The primacy of the ‘sons of the soil’ (bhumiputra) in the Sa.nu legend has been explained in its precise political context. Hindu deities, the Rocana of Balawaste to RoshanaDaibutsu of Nara in Japan, Buddhist remains in Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and other modern countries of western Central Asia provide new breakthroughs. This work resurrects the resonances of culture, defence, sericulture, political doctrine of bhumiputra (alive to this day in Malaysia), painting, philosophy across the “deep sands” and thence to its flowering in the civilizations of China, Korea and Japan.