CENTRAL ASIA

Unlike most regions of the world, there is no universally accepted definition of what constitutes "Central Asia." The region will be defined in this entry as constituting the network of oasis towns comprising the ancient Silk Road, stretching from Afghanistan to Dunhuang. The grasslands inhabited by nomadic peoples to the north, and the Tibetan highlands to the south—together commonly referred to as Inner Asia—have separate histories and will be treated elsewhere in entries on Tibet and Mongolia.

A natural dividing point between western and eastern Central Asia is Kashgar, the westernmost city in the Tarim basin. Located at the western edge of what is today the People's Republic of China, this city serves as a logical boundary for discussions of this region in both ancient and modern times.

Western Central Asia

The earliest evidence of a Buddhist presence in this region dates from the time of King A?oka (mid-third century b.c.e.), who left inscriptions in Greek and Aramaic at Qandahar and Laghman (both in modern Afghanistan). Though not specifically Buddhist in content—As?oka's explicit discussions of Buddhism are restricted to a relatively small area in and around the territory of ancient Magadha—they do provide concrete evidence that Afghanistan had come under the control of a Buddhist ruler.

In the territory of Gandh?ra (northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan) and Bactria (northern Afghanistan and southern Uzbekistan), Buddhist temple complexes excavated at Airtam, Kara-tepe, Fayaz-tepe, and Dalverzin-tepe (in some cases accompanied by inscriptions by their donors) offer testimony to the importance of Buddhism in the region during the Kushan period (ca. late first to third centuries c.e.) and possibly before (Rhie). Even farther to the west, excavations in the Merv oasis (the easternmost part of ancient Parthia in modern Turkmenistan) have yielded archaeological remains of Buddhist temples, as well as Buddhist scriptures in Sanskrit dating from the fourth to the sixth centuries, including a vinaya text belonging to the Sarv?stivada school (Utz). Monasteries excavated at Adzhina-tepe and other sites in southern Tadjikistan provide evidence of the survival of Buddhism in the region down to at least the eighth century (Stavisky).

Afghanistan has also been the site of two spectacular manuscript finds in recent years (though the precise spots of the discoveries are not known): the British Library collection, dating from the first century c.e. (Salomon 1999 and 2000), and the Schøyen Collection, containing texts from the second to seventh centuries c.e. (Braarvig et al. 2000 and 2002). The British Library manuscripts include both canonical scriptures (possibly associated with the Dharmaguptaka school) and local compositions; the Schøyen collection includes a number of well-known Mah?y?na scriptures. The fact that all of these texts are written in Prakrit or Sanskrit rather than translated into local vernaculars (with the exception of a fragmentary text in Bactrian, whose precise nature is uncertain) is typical of those few Buddhist texts found throughout the region, where Buddhists seem to have been content to read and transmit their scriptures in the "church languages" of India (Nattier).

In contrast to the territories of Gandh?ra, Bactria, and eastern Parthia, where Buddhism flourished for many centuries, in the territory of ancient Sogdiana (northern Uzbekistan) Buddhist motifs appear only as minor elements in non-Buddhist artistic productions, confirming the reports of Chinese travelers that attest to almost no Buddhist presence in the region. Though several figures of Sogdian ancestry played key roles as missionaries and translators during the formative period of Chinese Buddhism (if the Chinese ethnikon Kang does indeed correspond to Sogdian, about which there is some controversy), and though one Buddhist site may now have been identified in Sogdiana (Stavisky), at present it appears that Sogdian Buddhism was essentially an expatriate phenomenon. Other parts of western Central Asia, such as Ferghana and Khwarezm, seem to have had little or no Buddhist population at all.

Buddhists in Gandh?ra appear to have flourished during the first century c.e. under the patronage of the Sakas (referred to in Indian sources as ?akas), an Iranian-speaking people whose sponsorship of Buddhist donations is well attested in inscriptions, and who are mentioned in the British Library fragments by name. Under the Kushan (Sanskrit, Ku???a) dynasty (ca. late first to third centuries c.e.) Buddhism continued to receive significant support as well. Legends of the conversion of the Kushan ruler Kanishka (Sanskrit, Kani?ka) to Buddhism, however, are probably no more than that, for no inscription describes him as a Buddhist (or even as making a donation to a Buddhist community) and the justly famous images of the Buddha on his coins comprise a distinct minority in a vast sea of Iranian, Greek, and Indian deities. Recent archaeological findings, which point to a drop in trade between Bactria and Sogdiana during the Kushan period, suggest that, rather than providing a conduit for the transmission of Buddhism to East Asia, the Kushans may instead have erected a barrier on their eastern frontier (Naymark). If this is the case, it would explain the silence of Chinese sources concerning Kanishka and his successors, and it would suggest that it may have been their Saka predecessors rather than the Kushans themselves who facilitated the initial diffusion of Buddhism to eastern Central Asia and China.

It has sometimes been suggested that the invasion of the Hephthalite Huns (late fifth to early sixth centuries c.e.) dealt a serious blow to Buddhism in western Central Asia, but accounts by Chinese travelers, such as Songyun (early sixth century) and Xuanzang (ca. 600–664), report that Buddhism continued to prosper despite the damage done during the Hephthalite conquest. Xuanzang singles out the Lokottarav?da branch of the Mah?s??ghika school as being particularly influential at B?miy?n, where two colossal Buddha statues (fifty-three and thirty-five meters in height), destroyed by the Taliban in 2001, may have expressed the distinct buddhological views of this school.

A more significant threat to the fate of Buddhism in the region was the long-term expansion of Islam. Beginning in the seventh century, western Central Asia began to experience significant Arab incursions, and by the end of the tenth century, Buddhism had largely disappeared even in Gandh?ra itself (Stavisky).

Eastern Central Asia

A Buddhist presence in northern China is documented in historical and literary sources beginning in the middle of the first century c.e., and on this basis scholars have inferred that Buddhists must have passed through eastern Central Asia—that is, the territory of the Tarim basin (modern Xinjiang in the People's Republic of China)—no later than the beginning of the first millennium c.e. Despite the proximity of this area, which would later host several flourishing Buddhist city-states, records of the initial phase of Buddhist teaching and translation activity in China do not mention the presence of missionaries from eastern Central Asia (nor for that matter from India itself), but instead from western Central Asian territories such as Parthia, Sogdiana, and the Kushan realm (Zürcher).

The earliest evidence of a Buddhist presence in the Tarim basin—aside from a manuscript of the Dharmapada (in G?ndh?r? language and Kharo??h script) found near Khotan, which has been assigned to the second century c.e. but may have been imported from elsewhere—dates from approximately two centuries later. A cache of civil documents written in the G?ndh?r? language and the Kharosth script from the kingdom known to the Chinese as Shanshan (centered at Miran, in the southeastern part of this region) has been dated to the early third century c.e., and it attests to the existence of an incipient Buddhist san?gha, though apparently without any full-time and celibate clergy.

By the fourth century c.e. a significant Buddhist presence had been established in the Tokharian-speaking city-states of Kucha and Agni on the northeastern route, where the Sarv?stiv?da school was especially prominent. Buddhism flourished under royal patronage and numerous monasteries and convents were founded. A substantial number of texts in Sanskrit were imported and subsequently copied locally, most of them of Sarv?stiv?da affiliation. In contrast to the standard practice in western Central Asia, however, Buddhists in the Tarim basin began to translate scriptures into their own vernacular languages around the beginning of the sixth century c.e. The Tokharians appear to have been the first to make this move, and texts in both Agnean (Tokharian A) and Kuchean (Tokharian B) dating to around 500 to 700 c.e. have been discovered. This local literature continues to be mainly Sarv?stiv?da in content; among cultic figures, the future Buddha Maitreya appears to have been an object of special interest.

Despite the conversion to the Mah?y?na of Kumar?j?va (350–409/413 c.e., a native of Kucha and later a famous translator of Buddhist texts into Chinese), few followed his lead, and non-Mah?y?na teachings remained the norm in Kucha and Agni until at least the seventh century. In the kingdom of Khotan (in the southwestern Tarim basin), by contrast, Mah?y?na traditions found an early and fervent following. The ascendancy of the Mah?y?na is reported already in Faxian's travel report (early fifth century) and The Book of Zambasta, an anthology of Buddhist texts recast in Khotanese poetry (early eighth century), which makes it clear that Mah?y?na Buddhism was preferred.

With the fall of the Uygur kingdom in Mongolia in 842 c.e., Turkic-speaking peoples began to pour into the Tokharian territories of the northeast (though some non-Uygur Turks had preceded them). Initially they adopted local Sarv?stiv?da traditions, sometimes in combination with Manichaean traditions brought with them from Mongolia. With the growth of Chinese influence, however, the Uygurs increasingly drew on Chinese Mah?y?na scriptures and practices. Most of later Uygur literature—including such famous works as the Suvar?aprabh?sottama-s?tra, the Lotus S?tra (Saddharmapu?2?ar?ka-s?tra), and the Vimalak?rtinirdes?a—is translated from the Chinese (Elverskog).

Buddhism continued to flourish in eastern Central Asia down to the beginning of the eleventh century, when the Muslim conquest of Khotan in 1004 signaled the beginning of the end of Buddhist dominance in the region. These territories are today populated almost entirely by Turkic-speaking Muslims, who have little knowledge of the flourishing Buddhist cultures that preceded them.

See also:Central Asia, Buddhist Art in; G?ndh?r?l Buddhist Literature in; Islam and Buddhism; Mainstream Buddhist Schools; Persecutions; Sarv?stiv?da and M?lasarv?stiv?da

Bibliography

Braarvig, Jens; Hartmann, Jens-Uwe; Kazunobu Matsuda; and Sander, Lore; eds. Buddhist Manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection, Vol. 1. Oslo, Norway: Hermes, 2000.

Braarvig, Jens; Harrison, Paul; Hartmann, Jens-Uwe; Kazunobu Matsuda; and Sander, Lore; eds. Buddhist Manuscripts in the Schøyen Collection, Vol. 2. Oslo, Norway: Hermes, 2002.

Elverskog, Johan. Uygur Buddhist Literature. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 1997.

McRae, John R., and Nattier, Jan, eds. Buddhism across Boundaries: Chinese Buddhism and the Western Regions. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004.

Mémoires de la Delegation Archeologique Française en Afghanistan. Paris: De Boccard, 1928 (and subsequent volumes in the series).

Nattier, Jan. "Church Language and Vernacular Language in Central Asian Buddhism." Numen 37, no. 2 (1990): 195–219.

Naymark, Aleksandr. "Sogdiana, Its Christians and Byzantium: A Study of Artistic and Cultural Connections in Late Antiquity and Early Middle Ages." Ph.D. diss. Indiana University, 2001.

Rhie, Marylin Martin. Early Buddhist Art of China and Central Asia. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1999.

Rosenfield, John. Dynastic Arts of the Kushans. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967.

Salomon, Richard. Ancient Buddhist Scrolls from Gandh?ra: The British Library Kharo??h? Fragments. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999.

Salomon, Richard. A G?ndh?r? Version of the Rhinoceros S?tra: British Library Kharo??h? Fragment 5B. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2000.

Sims-Williams, Nicholas. New Light on Ancient Afghanistan: The Decipherment of Bactrian. London: School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1997.

Stavisky, Boris. "The Fate of Buddhism in Middle Asia." Silk Road Art and Archaeology 3 (1993–1994): 113–142.

Utz, David. "Arsak, Parthian Buddhists, and 'Iranian' Buddhism." In Buddhism across Boundaries: Chinese Buddhism and the Western Regions, ed. John R. McRae and Jan Nattier. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2004.

Zürcher, Erik. "Han Buddhism and the Western Region." In Thought and Law in Qin and Han China: Studies Dedicated to Anthony Hulsewé on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday, ed. W. L. Idema and E. Zürcher. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1990.

Jan Nattier