 in the subject matter of sculptures and bas-reliefs. Nepal's traditions in architecture and painting were adaptations of those of India, whether the themes were Hindu or Buddhist. Buddhist religious art was gradually introduced into Tibet from the 8th century, and a distinctive Tibetan imagery was subsequently developed. See also Gandhara art; Kushan art; Scythian art.
* * *Introductionthe literary, performing, and visual arts of a large portion of Asia embracing the Turkic republics (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan), Tajikistan, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Mongolia, Tibet, Nepal, Sikkim, Bhutan, and parts of Russia and China. As used here, the term denotes only those traditions that were not influenced by the religion of Islām.This immense tract of land—with its highly varied topography and climate and its diversity of ethnic and linguistic backgrounds—encouraged the development of greatly varied artistic styles and traditions among the inhabitants of widely separated regions. These differences were magnified by the emergence of dissimilar religions, which in turn encouraged the formation of distinctive schools or traditions of art. Further artistic variances can be attributed to cultural time lag, for comparable stages of artistic development were not reached simultaneously throughout the area.The arts that developed across Central Asia often fed or were fed by those of adjoining cultural regions or by such supraregional influences as Islam. Although reference will be made to such cross-cultural interactions wherever appropriate, more detailed information on these other areas may be found in the articles East Asian arts (arts, East Asian); Islamic arts; and South Asian arts. (The peoples and cultures of the region are treated in the articles Asia and Central Asia (Central Asia, history of), and in articles on specific Asian peoples, such as Pashtun.)Tamara Talbot RiceLiteratureOf the relatively few Central Asian languages that have developed written literatures, the most important are Turkic, Tibetan, and Mongol. (For a treatment of these languages, see Altaic languages and Sino-Tibetan languages.) This article will deal with Tibetan and Mongolian literatures from their inception to the 20th century and with Turkic literature from its inception to the 11th centuries, when the Muslim invasion introduced a period of Islāmic culture. Subsequent Turkic literature and Central Asian literatures written in Arabic and Persian are treated in the article arts, Islāmic (Islamic arts). (For literature in Chinese, see the article Chinese literature.)The purely Turkish period in the history of Turkish literatures came before the conversion of the Turks (Turkic peoples) to Islām and covers approximately the 8th to the 11th centuries AD. The oldest literary legacy of the period is found in the Orhon inscriptions, found in the Orhon valley, northern Mongolia, in 1889 and deciphered in 1893 by the Danish philologist Vilhelm Thomsen. The inscriptions are on two large monuments erected in 732 and 735 in honour of the Turkish prince Kül and his brother Bilge Kagan; they are carved in a script (epigraphy) used also for inscriptions found in Mongolia, Siberia, and western Turkistan and called by Thomsen “Turkish runes.” They relate in epic and forceful language the origins of the Turks, their golden age, their subjugation by the Chinese, and their liberation by Bilge Kagan. The polished style suggests considerable earlier development of the language. Excavations in Chinese Turkistan have brought to light specimens of writings of the Uighur Turks from the 9th to the 11th century. Maḥmūd Kāshgarī's comprehensive dictionary (1071?) contains specimens of old Turkish poetry in the typical form of quatrains (dörtlük), representing all the principal genres: epic, pastoral, didactic, lyric, and elegiac.Fahir İzTibetan was developed as a literary language from the 7th century onward as a result of earlier cultural contacts with neighbouring Buddhist (Buddhism) countries—namely, the small states of the Takla Makan, especially Khotan (Ho