Silk Road

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SILK ROAD

Buddhism spread from India to Central Asia and China via an overland network of major and minor routes popularly called the Silk Road. This network connected Buddhist centers in Northwest India, western Central Asia, the Tarim basin, and China during the first millennium c.e. In the broadest sense, the silk routes extended from China to the Mediterranean, incorporating routes through Syria, Mesopotamia, and Iran. Primary routes in western Central Asia ran through Margiana and the Oxus River (Amu Darya) valley, reached Bactria in northern Afghanistan or branched northward to Sogdiana, and continued to the Tarim basin in eastern Central Asia. Capillary routes through the Karakoram mountains in northern Pakistan directly linked the silk routes of eastern Central Asia with the major arteries for trade and travel in Northwest India. Northern and southern routes around the Tarim basin rejoined at Dunhuang, the westernmost outpost of the Chinese empire, and proceeded through the Gansu corridor to central China.

The transmission of Buddhism from India to Central Asia and China corresponded with the development of the silk routes as channels for intercultural exchanges. Chinese contacts with the "Western Regions" (Xi-yu) of Central and South Asia expanded during the Han dynasty (206 b.c.e.–220 c.e.). By 111 b.c.e., the Han controlled the Gansu corridor to Dunhuang, and garrisons and irrigated agricultural oases around the Tarim basin were established in the first century b.c.e. Although Chinese control of these areas fluctuated, prosperous trade in luxury items (including silk) and dynamic cultural exchanges continued.

Chinese historical chronicles of the Han period refer to the gradual migration of Yuezhi nomads from the area around Dunhuang through the Tarim basin to Bactria in the second century b.c.e. The Kushans, a branch of the Yuezhi, advanced from Bactria across the Hindu Kush into Northwest India in the first century c.e. By the second century c.e. during the reign of Kanishka, the Kushan empire controlled the routes that connected northern India with the silk routes. Kushan control accelerated economic and cultural contacts and stimulated the movement of Buddhism beyond South Asia to Central Asia and China.

Translators of early Chinese Buddhist texts came to China from western Central Asia and Northwest India via the silk routes. An Shigao, Lokak?ema, and other Parthian, Sogdian, and Indian translators arrived in Luoyang beginning in the middle of the second century c.e. Buddhist monasteries emerged near irrigated oases at Khotan, Kucha, Turfan, and Dunhuang on the northern and southern branches of the silk routes during the third to fifth centuries c.e. Certain scholarly monks, including Dharmaraksa (ca. 233–310 c.e.) from Dunhuang and Kum?raj?va (350–409/413 c.e.) from Kucha, came directly from Buddhist centers in the Tarim basin. Many anonymous monks who traveled between India and China along the silk routes were responsible for the transmission of Buddhism outside the monastic community. Chinese pilgrims to India returned with manuscripts, relics, and stories about sacred places in the Buddhist heartland. Faxian (ca. 337–418 c.e.) and Xuanzang (ca. 600–664 c.e.) were the most famous Chinese pilgrims; their accounts contain valuable details about social political, and religious conditions in Central Asia and India.

St?pas (reliquaries), cave paintings, and manuscripts discovered by Aurel Stein and other explorers in the early twentieth century illustrate the role of the Silk Road as a path for the expansion of Buddhism. St?pas at Buddhist sites on the southern route in the Tarim basin adopted architectural features from Northwest India. A G?ndh?r? manuscript of the Dharmapada (P?li, Dhammapada) from Khotan and approximately one thousand Kharo??h documents from Niya, Endere, and Loulan show that the G?ndh?r? language continued to be used along the southern silk route until the fourth century c.e. Numerous Buddhist paintings in caves along the northern silk route display close stylistic affinities with the art of Gandh?ra, western Central Asia, and Iran, while others incorporate Chinese and Turkish elements. The distribution of Buddhist Sanskrit manuscripts from the second to sixth centuries c.e. indicates that Buddhist centers along the northern silk route were generally affiliated with mainstream Buddhist schools (particularly the Sarv?stiv?da), but the Mah?y?na tradition was prevalent in southern silk route centers such as Khotan. After the sixth century, Buddhist literature was written in Central Asian vernacular languages, including Khotanese Saka, Tocharian, Sogdian, Uighur, Tibetan, and Mongolian. Buddhist artistic and literary traditions continued to flourish in Central Asia along with Zoroastrian, Manichaean, and Nestorian Christian traditions in the middle to late first millennium c.e.

Despite this historical legacy, with the exception of the surviving Buddhist traditions in Tibet and Mongolia, Buddhism disappeared from the Silk Road regions of Central Asia as these areas gradually Islamicized in the second millennium c.e.

Bibliography

Härtel, Herbert, and Yaldiz, Marianne. Along the Ancient Silk Routes: Central Asian Art from the West Berlin State Museums. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1982.

Klimburg-Salter, Deborah. The Silk Route and the Diamond Path: Esoteric Buddhist Art on the Trans-Himalayan Trade Routes. Los Angeles: UCLA Arts Council, 1982.

Liu, Xinru. Ancient India and Ancient China: Trade and Religious Exchanges,a.d.1–600. Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1988. Reprint, 1997.

Liu, Xinru. The Silk Road: Overland Trade and Cultural Interactions in Eurasia. Washington, DC: American Historical Association, 1998.

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

Nattier, Jan. "Church Language and Vernacular Language in Central Asian Buddhism." Numen 37 (1990): 195–219.

Rhie, Marylin Martin. Early Buddhist Art of China and Central Asia, Vol. 1: Later Han, Three Kingdoms, and Western Chin in China and Bactria to Shan-shan in Central Asia. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1999.

Sander, Lore. "Buddhist Literature in Central Asia." In Encyclopaedia of Buddhism, ed. G. P. Malalasekera, Vol. 4, fascicle 1. Colombo, Sri Lanka: Government of Ceylon, 1981.

Zürcher, Erik. The Buddhist Conquest of China: The Spread and Adaptation of Buddhism in Early Medieval China, 2 vols. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill, 1959.

Jason Neelis

Encyclopedia of Buddhism