Question

Explain how trade routes and other factors helped to spread Buddhism throughout Asia from 100 to 1000 C.E.

Answer 1

It had a significant impact on the spread of Buddhism through Central Asia. The Silk Road has a significant contribution in this. It was important not only for physical importance but for intellectualism.

The cradle of Buddhism is to be found in Iron Age India. Around the middle of the 1st millennium BC, this region went through a sociol-cultural change known as the second urbanisation; an era marked by intellectual ferment, the composition of the Upanishads and the emergence of Sramanic traditions. Out of this, Buddhism formed between the 6th and 4th centuries BC.

The spread of Buddhism was slow until the time of the time of Emperor Ashoka the Great, who rules most of the Indian subcontinent from circa 268 to 232 BC. He supported the spread of Buddhism, as did his descendants, and mighty efforts were put into the construction of religious memorials and the spread of Buddhism throughout Central Asia and south into Sri Lanka. The Central Asia effort is what eventually brought Buddhism to China, while the Sri Lankan mission helped spread the religion to the coastal lands of Southeast Asia.

Ashoka sent out emissaries to many of the lands west of India, reaching Hellenistic countries in Central and West Asia, and even the Meditteranean and some evidence indicate that these emissaries were accompanied by Buddhist missionaries.

Buddhism spread across Asia through networks of overland and maritime routes between India, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and China. The transmission of Buddhism to Central Asia and China corresponded with the development of the silk routes as channels for intercultural exchanges.

After a Buddhist community was established in the Chinese capital at Loyang by 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.

The earliest waves of Parthian, Sogdian and Indian translators of early Chinese Buddhist texts came to Loyang via the silk routes. Dhamaraksa (ca. 233-311 C.E.) and Kumarajiva (344-413 C.E.) came directly from Buddhist centers in the Tarim Basin. Anonymous foreign monks who traveled between India and China along the silk routes were responsible for the transmission of Buddhism at sub-elite levels. Faxian (between 399-414 C.E.) and Xuanzang (between 627-645 C.E.), the most famous Chinese pilgrims to India, reported valuable details about social, political, and religious conditions along the silk routes.

Stupas, cave paintings, and manuscripts reflect the movement of Buddhism across Central Asia on the silk routs. Stupas at Buddhist sites on the southern route in the Tarim Basin adopted northwestern Indian architectural features. A Gandhari manuscript of the Dharmapada from Khotan and about one thousand Kharosthi documents show that the Gandhari language of northwestern India, Pakistan and Afghanistan continued to be used along the southern silk route until the 4th century C.E. Numerous Buddhist paintings in caves on the northern silk route display close stylistic affinities with the art of Gandhara, western Central Asia, and Iran, while others incorporate more Chinese and Turkish elements.

Buddhist Sanskrit manuscripts from the 2nd-6th centuries C.E. found at northern silk route Buddhist centers generally belonged to Shravakayana (Hinayana) schools (particularly the Sarvastivadins), but Mahayana manuscripts were prevalent in southern silk route centers such as Khotan. Buddhist literature was written in Central Asian vernacular languages, including Khotanese Saka, Tocharian, Sogdian, Uighur, Tibetan, and Mongolian, after the 6th century. Buddhist artistic and literary traditions continued to flourish in Central Asia along with Zoroastrian, Manichaean, and Nestorian Christian traditions in the middle to late 1st millennium C.E. With the exceptions of the surviving Buddhist traditions in Tibet and Mongolia, Buddhism disappeared from the Silk Road regions of Central Asia in the 2nd millennium C.E.