Buddhism in Central Asia mainly existed in Mahayana forms and was historically especially prevalent along the Silk Road. The history of Buddhism in Central Asia is closely related to the Silk Road transmission of Buddhism during the first millennium of the common era.
A number of Early Buddhist schools were historically prevalent throughout Central Asia. A number of scholars identify three distinct major phases of missionary activities seen in the history of Buddhism in Central Asia, which are associated with the following sects (chronologically): [4]
The Dharmaguptaka made more efforts than any other sect to spread Buddhism outside India, to areas such as Afghanistan, Central Asia, and China, and they had great success in doing so. [5] Therefore, most countries which adopted Buddhism from China, also adopted the Dharmaguptaka vinaya and ordination lineage for bhikṣus and bhikṣuṇīs. According to A.K. Warder, in some ways in those East Asian countries, the Dharmaguptaka sect can be considered to have survived to the present. [6] Warder further writes: [7]
It was the Dharmaguptakas who were the first Buddhists to establish themselves in Central Asia. They appear to have carried out a vast circling movement along the trade routes from Aparānta north-west into Iran and at the same time into Oḍḍiyāna (the Suvastu valley, north of Gandhāra, which became one of their main centres). After establishing themselves as far west as Parthia they followed the "silk route", the east-west axis of Asia, eastwards across Central Asia and on into China, where they effectively established Buddhism in the second and third centuries A.D. The Mahīśāsakas and Kāśyapīyas appear to have followed them across Asia into China. [...] For the earlier period of Chinese Buddhism it was the Dharmaguptakas who constituted the main and most influential school, and even later their Vinaya remained the basis of the discipline there.
In the 7th century CE, Yijing grouped the Mahīśāsaka, Dharmaguptaka, and Kāśyapīya together as sub-sects of the Sarvāstivāda, and stated that these three were not prevalent in the "five parts of India," but were located in some parts of Oḍḍiyāna, Khotan, and Kucha. [8]
Buddhism in Central Asia began with the syncretism between Western Classical Greek philosophy and Indian Buddhism in the Hellenistic successor kingdoms to Alexander the Great's empire (Greco-Bactrian Kingdom 250 BCE-125 BCE and Indo-Greek Kingdom 180 BCE - 10 CE), spanning modern Afghanistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan. See Greco-Buddhism and Dayuan (Ta-yuan; Chinese :大宛; literarily "Great Ionians"). The later Kushan empire would adopt the Greek alphabet (Bactrian language), Greco-Buddhist art forms and coinage, and Greco-Buddhist religion of these Hellenistic kingdoms. [9]
The first anthropomorphic representations of the Buddha himself are often considered a result of the Greco-Buddhist interaction. Before this innovation, Buddhist art was "aniconic": the Buddha was only represented through his symbols (an empty throne, the Bodhi tree, the Buddha's footprints, the Dharma wheel). This reluctance towards anthropomorphic representations of the Buddha, and the sophisticated development of aniconic symbols to avoid it (even in narrative scenes where other human figures would appear), seem to be connected to one of the Buddha's sayings, reported in the Digha Nikaya, that discouraged representations of himself after the extinction of his body. [10]
Probably not feeling bound by these restrictions, and because of "their cult of form, the Greeks were the first to attempt a sculptural representation of the Buddha". In many parts of the Ancient World, the Greeks did develop syncretic divinities, that could become a common religious focus for populations with different traditions: a well-known example is the syncretic God Sarapis, introduced by Ptolemy I in Egypt, which combined aspects of Greek and Egyptian Gods. In India as well, it was only natural for the Greeks to create a single common divinity by combining the image of a Greek God-King (The Sun-God Apollo, or possibly the deified founder of the Indo-Greek Kingdom, Demetrius), with the traditional attributes of the Buddha.
Many of the stylistic elements in these first representations of the Buddha point to Greek influence: the Greek himation (a light toga-like wavy robe covering both shoulders: Buddhist characters are always represented with a dhoti loincloth before this innovation), the halo, the contrapposto stance of the upright figures (see: 1st–2nd century Gandhara standing Buddhas [11] and [12] ), the stylized Mediterranean curly hair and top-knot apparently derived from the style of the Belvedere Apollo (330 BCE), [13] and the measured quality of the faces, all rendered with strong artistic realism (See: Greek art). Some of the standing Buddhas (as the one pictured) were sculpted using the specific Greek technique of making the hands and sometimes the feet in marble to increase the realistic effect, and the rest of the body in another material. Foucher especially considered Hellenistic free-standing Buddhas as "the most beautiful, and probably the most ancient of the Buddhas", assigning them to the 1st century BCE, and making them the starting point of the anthropomorphic representations of the Buddha ("The Buddhist art of Gandhara", Marshall, p101).
At the beginning of the Kushan dynasty (circa 30 AD), various religious systems were widespread in Central Asia. These included the cult of Anahit (originating in Armenia); Zoroastrianism, including the cults of Mithra/Mitra, Ormuzd, Verethragna and (especially in Khorezm and Sogd) Siyâvash; as well as the Greek pantheon, including Zeus, and Helios.
According to Chinese chronicles, Buddhism arrived in China in 147 from the Kushans (who were known in China by an older, Chinese exonym: the Great Yuezhi) and the work of Kushan missionaries resulted in Buddhism being adopted as the official religion of the court of the Chinese emperor, Emperor Huan of Han (reigned 146–168).
In the middle of the 2nd century, the Kushan empire under Kanishka I expanded into Central Asia and went as far as taking control of Kashgar, Khotan and Yarkand, in the Tarim Basin, modern Xinjiang. As a consequence, cultural exchanges greatly increased, and Central Asian Buddhist missionaries became active shortly after in the Chinese capital cities of Luoyang and sometimes Nanjing, where they particularly distinguished themselves by their translation work. They promoted both Hīnayāna and Mahāyāna scriptures.
The followers of Buddhism had been banished from Iran in the 2nd and 3rd centuries and found support in Central Asia, where Buddhism became widely practiced.
During modern archeological excavations in Khorezm (including Bazaar-Kala, Gyaur-Kala, Gyaz-Kala), Sogd (Tali-barzu, Zohak-i-Maron, Er-Kurgan and others) and Old Termez it was found that many settlements and forts dated back to the Kushan period. However, the largest number of traces of Buddhist culture during the Kushan period were found in Takhar previously Tukhara or Tokharistan, in modern Afghanistan. [14] [15]
The ancient Kingdom of Khotan was one of the earliest Buddhist states in the world and a cultural bridge across which Buddhist culture and learning were transmitted from India to China. [16] Its capital was located to the west of the modern city of Hotan. The inhabitants of the Kingdom of Khotan, like those of early Kashgar and Yarkand, spoke the Iranian Saka language.
Available evidence indicates that the first Buddhist missions to Khotan were carried out by the Dharmaguptaka sect: [17]
... the Khotan Dharmapada , some orthographical devices of Khotanese and the not yet systematically plotted Gāndhārī loan words in Khotanese betray indisputably that the first missions in Khotan included Dharmaguptakas and used a Kharoṣṭhī-written Gāndhārī. Now all other manuscripts from Khotan, and especially all manuscripts written in Khotanese, belong to the Mahāyāna, are written in the Brāhmī script, and were translated from Sanskrit.
By the 3rd century CE, it appears that some Mahāyāna texts were known in Khotan, as reported by the Chinese monk Zhu Shixing 朱士行 (d. after 282): [18]
When in 260 AD, the Chinese monk Zhu Shixing chose to go to Khotan in an attempt to find original Sanskrit sūtras, he succeeded in locating the Sanskrit Prajñāpāramitā in 25,000 verses, and tried to send it to China. In Khotan, however, there were numerous Hīnayānists who attempted to prevent it because they regarded the text as heterodox. Eventually, Zhu Shixing stayed in Khotan, but sent the manuscript to Luoyang where it was translated by a Khotanese monk named Mokṣala. In 296, the Khotanese monk Gītamitra came to Chang'an with another copy of the same text. [19]
When the Chinese monk Faxian traveled through Khotan, he recorded that everyone there was Buddhist. According to his accounts, there were fourteen main monasteries, and he stayed at the most important of these, the monastery of Gomatī, which housed 3000 Mahāyāna monks. [20] When Xuanzang was later traveling through Khotan in the 7th century, he wrote that the king came out to personally greet him at the border of Khotan. He was escorted to the capital, and lodged at a monastery of the Sarvāstivāda sect. [20] Xuanzang records there being about 100 monasteries in Khotan, housing a total of 5000 monastics who all studied the Mahāyāna. [20]
A manuscript in Tibetan called The Religious Annals of Khotan was found at Dunhuang, and may date to sometime in the 8th century CE. [21] It describes the initial appearance of Buddhism in Khotan, including the eight major tutelary deities of Khotan, the "self-originated bodhisattvas" of the country, and a description of the major principles of the Śrāvakayāna and the Mahāyāna, though the Mahāyāna is given preeminence. The śrāvakas are depicted as entering the Dharma through the Four Noble Truths, while the Mahāyāna bodhisattvas are depicted as entering through non-conceptualization and the Śūraṅgama Samādhi. [21]
After the Tang dynasty, Khotan formed an alliance with the rulers of Dunhuang. Khotan enjoyed close relations with the Buddhist center at Dunhuang: the Khotanese royal family intermarried with Dunhuang élites, visited and patronized Dunhuang's Buddhist temple complex, and donated money to have their portraits painted on the walls of the Mogao grottoes. Through the 10th century, Khotanese royal portraits were painted in association with an increasing number of deities in the caves.
Khotan's indigenous dynasty (all of whose royal names are Indian in origin) governed a fervently Buddhist city-state boasting some 400 temples in the late 9th / early 10th century—four times the number recorded by Xuanzang around the year 630 CE. The Buddhist kingdom was independent but was intermittently under Chinese control during the Han and Tang dynasty.
Buddhism was known to be prevalent in the kingdom of Shanshan. An inscription in the Kharoṣṭhī script was found at Endere, originally written around in the middle of the 3rd century CE. The inscription describes the king of Shanshan as a follower of Mahāyāna Buddhism — one who has "set forth in the Great Vehicle." [22] The king who this refers to was probably Aṃgoka, who was the most powerful king of Shanshan. According to Richard Salomon, there is every reason to believe that Mahāyāna Buddhism was prominent in Shanshan at this time and enjoyed royal patronage. [22]
More evidence of official adoption of Mahāyāna Buddhism in Shanshan is seen in a letter inscribed in wood which dates to several decades later. The letter describes the Great Cozbo Ṣamasena as one who is, "beloved of men and gods, honoured by men and gods, blessed with a good name, who has set forth in the Mahāyāna." [23]
Parts of the Buddhist Indo-Greek Kingdom (180 BC - 10AD) and its successor, the Buddhist Kushan Empire (30AD - 375AD), in particular Balkh, were and still remain, Iranian speaking. The famous Buddhist monastery in Balkh, known as Nava Vihara ("New Monastery"), functioned as the center of Central Asia Buddhist learning for centuries. Soon after the Sassanian Persian dynasty fell to the Muslims (in 651), Balkh came under Muslim rule (in 663), but the monastery continued to function for at least another century. In 715, after an insurrection in Balkh was crushed by the Abbasid Caliphate, many Persian Buddhist monks fled east along the Silk Road to the Buddhist Kingdom of Khotan, which spoke a related Eastern Iranian language, and onward into China. Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī, a Persian scholar and writer in service to the Ghaznavids, reported that around the start of the 10th century, the monasteries in Bactria, including Nava Vihāra, were still functioning and decorated with Buddha frescoes.
Several Iranian Buddhist monks, including An Shigao and Bodhidharma, played key roles in the Silk Road transmission of Buddhism and the introduction of Buddhism in China. An Shigao (Chinese :安世高) (fl. c. 148-180 CE) [24] was the earliest known translator of Indian Buddhist texts into Chinese. According to legend, he was a prince of Parthia, nicknamed the "Parthian Marquess", who renounced his claim to the royal throne of Parthia in order to serve as a Buddhist missionary monk in China. [25] Bodhidharma, the founder of Chán-Buddhism, which later became Zen and the legendary originator of the physical training of the Shaolin monks that led to the creation of Shaolin Kung Fu, is described as a Buddhist monk of Iranian descent in the first Chinese reference to him (Yan Xuan-Zhi, 547 CE). [26] Throughout Buddhist art, Bodhidharma is depicted as a profusely bearded and wide-eyed barbarian, and he is referred as "The Blue-Eyed Barbarian" (碧眼胡, Bìyǎn hú) in Chinese Chan texts. [27]
Nava Vihara's hereditary administrators, the Iranian Barmakids, converted from Buddhism to Islam after the monastery's conquest and became powerful viziers under the Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad. The last of the family's line of viziers, Ja'far ibn Yahya, is a protagonist in many tales from the Arabian Nights. In folktales and popular culture Ja'far has been associated with a knowledge of mysticism, sorcery, and traditions lying outside the realm of Islam. Such traditions of mysticism and syncretism continued in Balkh, which was the birthplace of the medieval Persian poet Rumi, founder of the Mevlevi Sufi Order.
The many Buddhist references in Persian literature of the period also provide evidence of Islamic–Buddhist cultural contact. Persian poetry often used the simile for palaces that they were "as beautiful as a Nowbahar [Nava Vihāra]." Further, at Nava Vihāra and Bamiyan, Buddha images, particularly of Maitreya, the future Buddha, had 'moon discs' or halo iconographically represented behind or around their heads. This led to the poetic depiction of pure beauty as someone having "the moon-shaped face of a Buddha." Thus, 11th-century Persian poems, such as Varqe and Golshah by Ayyuqi, use the word budh with a positive connotation for "Buddha," not with its second, derogatory meaning as "idol." This positive connotation implies the ideal of asexual beauty in both men and women. Such references indicate that either Buddhist monasteries and images were present in these Iranian cultural areas at least through the early Mongol period in the 13th century or, at minimum, that a Buddhist legacy remained for centuries among the Buddhist converts to Islam.
Other religious kings, such as the 16th century Mongol potentate Altan Khan , invited Buddhist teachers to their realm and proclaimed Buddhism as the official creed of the land in order to help unify their people and consolidate their rule. In the process they may have prohibited certain practices of non-Buddhist, indigenous religions and even persecuted those who followed them, but these heavy-handed moves were primarily politically motivated.
Buddhism in Uzbekistan is currently practised by 0.11 per cent [28] of the population. The only functioning Buddhist temple in Uzbekistan is called “Jaeunsa” (“Compassion”), which belong to the Korean Buddhist Jogye Order and is located on the outskirts of Tashkent. [29]
Buddhism in Kazakhstan at present consists of Korean Buddhists, whom embraced Won Buddhism. There are also Buddhists with diverse ethnicity who consider themselves the disciples of Dalai Lama or Lama Namkhai Norbu, and other belonging to the Karma Kagyu school of Tibetan Buddhism. [30]
Buddhism in Kyrgyzstan has only one registered Buddhist community called “Chamsen”, which exists since 1996 and their membership consist of mainly Koreans, Russians and Kyrgyz. There are also practitioners of other Buddhist denominations like Nipponzan Myohoji and Karma Kagyu in the country. [31]
The Afghan Taliban destroyed the Buddhist statues and other relics in Bamyan province in 2001. They also clamped down on other religions.
Below are the percentages of Buddhists in some of the Central Asian countries from many different sources:
| National flag | Country | Population(2007E) | % of Buddhists | Buddhist total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
 | Kazakhstan | 15,422,000 | 0.50% [32] | 81,843 |
 | Kyrgyzstan | 5,317,000 | 0.35% [33] | 18,610 |
 | Tajikistan | 7,076,598 | 0.1% [34] | 7,076 |
 | Turkmenistan | 5,097,028 | 0.1% [35] | 5,097 |
 | Uzbekistan | 27,780,059 | 0.1% [36] | 5,300 |
The Sarvāstivāda was one of the early Buddhist schools established around the reign of Ashoka. It was particularly known as an Abhidharma tradition, with a unique set of seven Abhidharma works.
Kanishka I, Kanishka or Kanishka the Great, was an emperor of the Kushan dynasty, under whose reign the empire reached its zenith. He is famous for his military, political, and spiritual achievements. A descendant of Kujula Kadphises, founder of the Kushan empire, Kanishka came to rule an empire extending from Central Asia and Gandhara to Pataliputra on the Gangetic plain. The main capital of his empire was located at Puruṣapura (Peshawar) in Gandhara, with another major capital at Mathura. Coins of Kanishka were found in Tripuri.
Buddhist texts are religious texts that belong to, or are associated with, Buddhism and its traditions. There is no single textual collection for all of Buddhism. Instead, there are three main Buddhist Canons: the Pāli Canon of the Theravāda tradition, the Chinese Buddhist Canon used in East Asian Buddhist tradition, and the Tibetan Buddhist Canon used in Indo-Tibetan Buddhism.
The early Buddhist schools are those schools into which the Buddhist monastic saṅgha split early in the history of Buddhism. The divisions were originally due to differences in Vinaya and later also due to doctrinal differences and geographical separation of groups of monks. The original saṅgha split into the first early schools during or after the reign of Aśoka. Later, these first early schools were further divided into schools such as the Sarvāstivādins, the Dharmaguptakas, and the Vibhajyavāda, and ended up numbering 18 or 20 schools according to traditional accounts.
The Kingdom of Khotan was an ancient Buddhist Saka kingdom located on the branch of the Silk Road that ran along the southern edge of the Taklamakan Desert in the Tarim Basin. The ancient capital was originally sited to the west of modern-day Hotan at Yotkan. From the Han dynasty until at least the Tang dynasty it was known in Chinese as Yutian. This largely Buddhist kingdom existed for over a thousand years until it was conquered by the Muslim Kara-Khanid Khanate in 1006, during the Islamization and Turkicization of Xinjiang.
The history of Buddhism can be traced back to the 5th century BCE. Buddhism arose in Ancient Nepal, in the modern day Lumbini, and is based on the teachings of the renunciate Siddhārtha Gautama. The religion evolved as it spread from the northeastern region of the Indian subcontinent throughout Central, East, and Southeast Asia. At one time or another, it influenced most of Asia.
The Dharmaguptaka are one of the eighteen or twenty early Buddhist schools, depending on the source. They are said to have originated from another sect, the Mahīśāsakas. The Dharmaguptakas had a prominent role in early Central Asian and Chinese Buddhism, and their Prātimokṣa are still in effect in East Asian countries to this day, including China, Vietnam, Korea, and Japan as well as the Philippines. They are one of three surviving Vinaya lineages, along with that of the Theravāda and the Mūlasarvāstivāda.
The Anuradhapura Maha Viharaya was an important mahavihara or large Buddhist monastery for Theravada Buddhism in Sri Lanka. King Devanampiya Tissa of Anuradhapura founded it in his capital city of Anuradhapura. Monks such as Buddhaghosa and Dhammapala, who wrote commentaries on the Tipitaka and texts such as the Visuddhimagga, which are central to Theravada Buddhist doctrine, established Theravada Mahaviharan orthodoxy here. Monks living at the Mahavihara were referred to as Mahaviharavasins.
Shanshan was a kingdom located at the north-eastern end of the Taklamakan Desert near the great, but now mostly dry, salt lake known as Lop Nur.
Buddhism entered Han China via the Silk Road, beginning in the 1st or 2nd century CE. The first documented translation efforts by Buddhist monks in China were in the 2nd century CE via the Kushan Empire into the Chinese territory bordering the Tarim Basin under Kanishka. These contacts transmitted strands of Sarvastivadan and Tamrashatiya Buddhism throughout the Eastern world.
Buddhism, a religion founded by Gautama Buddha, first arrived in modern-day Afghanistan through the conquests of Ashoka, the third emperor of the Maurya Empire. Among the earliest notable sites of Buddhist influence in the country is a bilingual mountainside inscription in Greek and Aramaic that dates back to 260 BCE and was found on the rocky outcrop of Chil Zena near Kandahar.
Mahīśāsaka is one of the early Buddhist schools according to some records. Its origins may go back to the dispute in the Second Buddhist council. The Dharmaguptaka sect is thought to have branched out from the Mahīśāsaka sect toward the end of the 2nd or the beginning of the 1st century BCE.
The Nava Vihāra were two Buddhist monasteries close to the ancient city of Balkh in northern Afghanistan. Historical accounts report it as flourishing as an important centre of Buddhism between the seventh and eleventh centuries CE. It may have been founded considerably earlier, perhaps in or after the reign of the Kushan emperor Kaniṣka, in the second century CE.
Buddhism is an ancient Indian religion, which arose in and around the ancient Kingdom of Magadha, and is based on the teachings of Gautama Buddha who was deemed a "Buddha", although Buddhist doctrine holds that there were other Buddhas before him. Buddhism spread outside of Magadha starting in the Buddha's lifetime.
Buddhism in Pakistan took root in the third century BCE under the Mauryan king Ashoka. The Major Rock Edicts of Ashoka inscribed on rock boulders in Mansehra and Shahbaz Garhi written in the Kharosthi script recording aspects of the emperor's dharma or righteous law represent some of the earliest evidence of deciphered writing in South Asia, dating to middle of the third century BCE. The Indo-Greek king Menander embraced Buddhism as attested in the Milinda Panha, which dates from sometime between 100 BC and 200 AD, following a dialogue with the monk Nāgasena in Sagala, present-day Sialkot.
The Mūlasarvāstivāda was one of the early Buddhist schools of India. The origins of the Mūlasarvāstivāda school and their relationship to the Sarvāstivāda remain largely unknown, although various theories exist.
Tipiṭaka or Tripiṭaka, meaning "Triple Basket", is the traditional term for ancient collections of Buddhist sacred scriptures. The Tripiṭaka is composed of three main categories of texts that collectively constitute the Buddhist canon: the Sutra Piṭaka, the Vinaya Piṭaka, and the Abhidhamma Piṭaka.
Buddhism in Khotan comprised bodies of Buddhist religious doctrine and institutions characteristic of the Iranic Kingdom of Khotan as well as much of Western China and Tajikistan. It was the state religion of the Kingdom of Khotan until its collapse in 1000. The dominant school of Buddhism in Khotan was the Mahāsāṃghika school - from which the Mahayana and Vajrayana schools would develop. The kingdom's vast collection of texts, which included the indigenous Book of Zambasta and a Khotanese translation of the Sanghata Sutra, helped Khotan influence the Buddhist practices of its neighbors, most notably Tibet.
Gandhāran Buddhism refers to the Buddhist culture of ancient Gandhāra which was a major center of Buddhism in northwestern Pakistan from the 3rd century BCE to approximately 1200 CE. Ancient Gandhāra corresponds to modern day north Pakistan, mainly the Peshawar valley and Potohar plateau as well as Afghanistan's Jalalabad. The region has yielded the Gandhāran Buddhist texts written in Gāndhārī Prakrit the oldest Buddhist manuscripts yet discovered. Gandhāra was also home to a unique Buddhist artistic and architectural culture which blended elements from Indian, Hellenistic, Roman and Parthian art. Buddhist Gandhāra was also influential as the gateway through which Buddhism spread to Central Asia and China.
The history of Chinese Buddhism begins in the Han dynasty, when Buddhism first began to arrive via the Silk Road networks. The early period of Chinese Buddhist history saw efforts to propagate Buddhism, establish institutions and translate Buddhist texts into Chinese. The effort was led by non-Chinese missionaries from India and Central Asia like Kumarajiva and Paramartha well as by great Chinese pilgrims and translators like Xuanzang.
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