I.

The history of Asia can be seen as the collective history of several distinct peripheral coastal
regions such as, East Asia, South Asia, and the Middle East linked by the interior mass of the
Eurasian steppe. The coastal periphery was the home to some of the world's earliest known
civilizations, with each of the three regions developing early civilizations around fertile river
valleys. These valleys were fertile because the soil there was rich and could bear many root
crops. The civilizations in Mesopotamia, the Indus Valley, and China shared many similarities
and likely exchanged technologies and ideas such as mathematics and the wheel. Other notions
such as that of writing likely developed individually in each area. Cities, states and then empires
developed in these lowlands. The steppe region had long been inhabited by mounted nomads,
and from the central steppes they could reach all areas of the Asian continent. The northern part
of the continent, covering much of Siberia was also inaccessible to the steppe nomads due to the
dense forests and the tundra. These areas in Siberia were very sparsely populated. The centre and
periphery were kept separate by mountains and deserts. The Caucasus, Himalaya, Karakum
Desert, and Gobi Desert formed barriers that the steppe horsemen could only cross with
difficulty. While technologically and culturally the city dwellers were more advanced, they could
do little militarily to defend against the mounted hordes of the steppe. However, the lowlands did
not have enough open grasslands to support a large horsebound force. Thus the nomads who
conquered states in the Middle East were soon forced to adapt to the local societies. Asia's
history would feature major developments seen in other parts of the world, as well as events that
would affect those other regions. These include the trade of the Silk Road, which spread cultures,
languages, religion, and disease throughout Afro-Eurasian trade. Another major advancement
was the innovation of gunpowder in medieval China, which led to advanced warfare through the
use of guns.
II. The Culture of Asia is human civilization in Asia. It features different kinds of cultural
heritage of many nationalities, societies, and ethnic groups in the region, traditionally called a
continent from a Western-centric perspective, of Asia. The region or "continent" is more
commonly divided into more natural geographic and cultural subregions, including Central Asia,
East Asia, North Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia and West Asia. Geographically, Asia is not a
distinct continent; culturally, there has been little unity or common history for many of the
cultures and peoples of Asia. Asian art, music, and cuisine, as well as literature, are important
parts of Asian culture. Eastern philosophy and religion also plays a major role, with Hinduism,
Taoism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Judaism and Islam all playing major roles. One of the most
complex parts of Asian culture is the relationship between traditional cultures and the Western
world. Religion Asia is the world's largest and most populous continent, with millions of
different peoples following a wide variety of different religions. The largest religion in Asia is
Islam with approx. 1.1 billion adherents. Asia was the birthplace of many religions such as;
Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Jainism, Sikhism, Zoroastranism, as well as many
other religions. If one looks at the map of the world, it is hard not to notice that Asia is the
biggest land mass. Asia is important to the rest of the world. The importance of this part of world
is not only because it is the biggest continent of the world, but also because it is the portion if the
world which is home to the majority of humanity. All densely populated countries are located in
Asia. Asia spans hundreds of longitude and as a result you find a variety of culture and traditions
in Asia. Asian people are generally closely bound to their traditions and for them it is always
difficult to break away. The continent as a whole is rich in traditions and values. Asian people are
descendents of a variety of races. You find one kind of people dominating one region in Asia. For
example, the Indian subcontinent is home to the Aryans. The East of India is mostly home to the

yellow races which include the Mongols. These people have very typical features and can be
identified very easily. The West of India is mostly populated with Iranian and Arab features.
More towards the West you find western mix in the mosaic of population that lives in Asia. Asian
people are different from the people of the other continents as these people are still close to their
roots and in most of the countries you find agro based economies. The economies are not very
well developed and you find tat the pressure on land is great. Still, being blessed with the most
fertile plains of the world, Asia is feeding the rest of the world as a granary. In Asia, you still find
that generations after generations of people are bound with the traditional values. The West of
Asia is mostly dominated by the Muslim values as a chain of Muslim countries is located in this
part of the world. In general here Islamic values are followed and family unit is appreciated.
Families are the basic structural unit in making up the societies here. Even in the technically
advanced and developed countries like Japan, you still find that family ties are important to
them. People from more developed parts of the world sometimes consider Asian people to be
backward and superstitious, but I believe the Asians are happy and at home with their family
units still intact. Asian traditions are most of the times really colorful and in some cases difficult
to understand for people coming from highly developed countries. The impact of religions on the
traditions and values of the people of Asia is prominent. Most of the people living in Asia find
religion and language to be really important to them. The dress codes are specific and the
festivals are also under the religious influence. In general, you can say that Asian life is different
from the life in other parts of the world. It is still about home and family. People here are still
bound to their roots, and most of all, they are happy about it.
III. The Literature of Asia The library's very rich stocks of books, periodicals and newspapers in
Oriental languages are concentrated in the Department of the Literature of Asian and African
Countries, totalling more than two million items. The best represented language is Chinese with
almost 50,000 publications. These embrace the complete corpus of Chinese classical literature, a
very broad range of works by modern writers, as well as books on history, art, linguistics and
medicine. There are quite a number of rare, unique publications: a complete encyclopaedia of
Chinese culture the 1,360-volume Tu shu chi ch'eng (18th century), two large "universal
library" series known as Ssu pu ts'ung k'an and Ssu pu pei yao, a celebrated history of the Ch'ing
dynasty in some 900 volumes, and more. The Chinese stocks include the exceptionally valuable
sinological collection of the eminent St Petersburg scholar V.V. Petrov which the library acquired
in 1987. It consists chiefly of Chinese publications covering a broad timespan and a wide variety
of subjects: philology, history, philosophy and art. The reference section contains language,
biographical and other dictionaries, encyclopaedias, bibliographical publications and catalogues
from the end of the last century and from recent times. The collection is rich in the traditional
Chinese literature and the fiction of the 1920s and 1930s, which is often a blank spot in Russian
libraries. The great writer Lu Xun (1881-1936) accounts for 500 volumes of his own works and
literature about him. The Japanese stocks are also extensive and rich. Among them are the works
of such famous writers as Akutagawa Ryunosuke, Natsume Soseki and Ishikawa Takuboku;
splendid series Modern Japanese Literature (90 volumes) and Literature of the Showa Era (60
volumes); major works on linguistics, philosophy and economics; numerous reference
publications, such as the 15-volume Historical Encyclopaedia or the 20-volume Complete
Dictionary of the Japanese Language; catalogues of the largest libraries in Japan; and periodicals
(1,700 titles) covering various fields of learning. The Indian stocks contain books, periodicals
and newspapers in the numerous languages of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and Nepal.
Most of the publications are in the areas of fiction and philology, with complete sets of works by

great Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore and other writers. The library possesses almost the entire
oeuvre of Premchand, a major figure in Hindi literature. The Sanskrit section is valuable and
varied, embracing copies of the Vedas, Upanishads, Mahabharata, Ramayana and other ancient
Indian classics, as well as the first printed books in Indian languages. The Arabic stocks contain
printed material from the Arabic-speaking world. Mainly they are books on philosophy, history
and art, works of mediaeval Arabic literature, and also publications by modern and contemporary
authors. There are some unique sixteenth- and seventeenth-century editions here, including the
Vita Timuri (1636) by Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn Arabshah. Notable too is The Book of Songs
(1868) a 20-volume collection of verse by Abu'l-Faradj al-Isfahani. The National Library's
Jewish stocks are some of the largest in the world: 45,000 books, more than 900 different
periodicals and a large quantity of newspapers. The main sections Hebrew and Yiddish
contain literature published in this country and abroad from the fifteenth century to the present
day. The most complete category of works are Hebrew books produced in Russia, from the first
early-nineteenth-century examples onwards. Especially precious are the early printed works,
which include incunabula and palaeotypes. The Yiddish section also consists chiefly of Russian
publications. It includes, apart from books, the first Russian "jargon" magazines and newspapers,
and also early Soviet periodicals. In the Jewish stocks too one can find rare material in Ladino,
Judaeo-Persian and Judaeo-Tadjik, as well as Samaritan, Syriac and other Semitic languages. The
library can boast an extremely rich collection of "Orientalia" books and periodicals in the
field of Oriental studies in Western European languages. Rare printed works have been
accumulating here since the early nineteenth century: scholarly editions of classic works of
Eastern literature, linguistic researches, dictionaries, catalogues of the largest manuscript
repositories. Quite a number of them date from the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.