Encyclopedia of Buddhism Volume One A -L Robert E. Buswell

C ENTRAL
A SIA
Kaniska) 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 Lokottaravada branch
of the MAHASAM GHIKA SCHOOL as being particularly
influential at BAMIYAN, 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 Gandhara 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 citystates,
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 Gandhar language and Kharosth 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 Gandhar
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 SAṄGHA, 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 Sarvastivada 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 Sarvastivada 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
Sarvastivada in content; among cultic figures, the future
Buddha MAITREYA appears to have been an object
of special interest.
Despite the conversion to the Mahayana of KUMARA-
JIVA (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-Mahayana 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, Mahayana
traditions found an early and fervent following. The
ascendancy of the Mahayana 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 Mahayana Buddhism was preferred.
With the fall of the Uygur kingdom in Mongolia in
842 C.E., Turkic-speaking peoples began to pour into
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