The Lotus in the Sands

Xinjiang, otherwise known as Eastern or Chinese Turkestan, has seen frequent shifts of population, language and religion across its long human history, all of them leaving their mark among its yellow sands and red cliffs. Being one of the only viable routes linking China proper with the western lands, it was an important cultural junction between the two regions from a fairly early stage.

The establishment of the first direct contacts between the Chinese Han court, the kingdoms of Transoxiana and the later Kushan Empire, around the first century AD, fostered what is now known as the Great Silk Road, stretching from China's agricultural heartland through the mountains, river valleys and arid plains of Central Asia and the ancient cities of Iran, eventually linking to the Mediterranean trade centres of the Roman Empire.

What actually moved

A false image of the Silk Road would be a huge camel train departing Xi'an, pressing across the gigantic Eurasian landmass and halting in some Roman town to unload heavy burdens of silk, jade, tea and rare spices, while exotic maidens in transparent garments sprinkle the camels with rose water and feed them peacock-meat kebabs.

The Silk Road — more properly, the silk routes — is an abstract term for a complex and often changing network of paths linking different cultural and ecological zones, usually carrying a far more trivial selection of commodities. Grain, simple textiles, herbs and medicines, dyes and dried fruit moved from agricultural centres over relatively short distances, while typical steppe products such as furs, honey, fish glue and slaves were carried in what we might call trans-ecological transmission, from the grasslands of the north to the arable lands in the south. This is not to say that luxury items such as silk, jade, precious metals and rare exotica had no place, only that they held the lesser share of overall trade volume.

Material products were not the only thing shifted through these trans-cultural networks. People carry not only their belongings but their thoughts, concepts, ideas and knowledge, so technologies and religions found their way along the Eurasian highway no less than rolls of silk or loads of barley. One of the religions whose history is tightly bound to the silk routes is Buddhism.

Kings and merchants

Buddhism was founded by the Shakya prince Siddhartha Gautama around the fifth or sixth century BC. The Buddhist path, the Dharma, emphasised the cultivation of moral and mental qualities indispensable to the ultimate goal, nirvana: a state of full awareness of the true nature of things and a consequent release from the endless chain of birth, death and rebirth.

Beginning as an integral part of the local Indic-Dharmic fabric of religions and practices, Buddhism went through a transformation unprecedented in the Indic world: it became universal, offering a remedy for the omnipresent maladies of human existence. That universal turn is linked to two factors that proved crucial through most of Buddhist history — royal patronage and commerce — and both found their fullest expression during the reign of the great Mauryan emperor Ashoka (r. 268–233 BC).

In Ashoka's time the Indian subcontinent underwent tremendous economic growth, which brought widespread support from merchant communities and guilds for Buddhist monasteries and institutions, while those merchants in return benefited from the hospitality the monasteries offered. Ashoka, a devoted Buddhist himself, converted after witnessing the absolute horrors of his own infamous Kalinga campaign, personally supported the early Buddhist community, whether by direct sponsorship or by improving road infrastructure and safety.

With the combined movement of merchants and monks along the trade routes, Buddhism gradually struck roots in the kingdoms and chiefdoms of Central Asia. By the second century BC it was already flourishing in Hellenistic Bactria, which produced the first anthropomorphic images of the Buddha. These masterpieces can be regarded as one of the peaks of human artistic achievement, a graceful blend of Indic spiritual symbolism with Greek naturalism.

By the first centuries before and after the Common Era, Buddhism was well established in the still-Iranian domains of Central Asia, and archaeological finds confirm a Buddhist presence as far west as modern Turkmenistan, deep in Parthian territory.

At the other end of the Iranian world, Buddhism made its first penetration into what would become the most important centre of Buddhism outside India at that time: the oasis city-states of the Tarim basin, in today's Xinjiang.

Kucha, Khotan and the translators

Tibetan sources date the arrival of Buddhism in Khotan to 84 AD, but the Tarim basin did not become a major Buddhist centre until the second century, when the Han dynasty established its chain of military garrisons. The introduction of Chinese agricultural technology allowed the Tarim oases to support much larger communities than before, which in turn could host permanent religious institutions. This enabled Buddhist monks to settle and to build monasteries, temples, stupas and other establishments along the trade routes.

The most important city in the northern Tarim was Kucha, at its peak between the sixth and ninth centuries, when it was the most populous city in the region. It was fairly cosmopolitan, inhabited mostly by Iranian, Tocharian and Indian communities. Xuanzang, our most beloved Chinese Buddhist pilgrim-traveller of the seventh century, described Kucha as a tremendously rich and fertile city, favourably located on the trade routes. He notes that in and around it stood more than a hundred monasteries occupied by more than five thousand monks of the Sarvastivada school, who “read the scriptures in the original” — that is, in Sanskrit.

The Sarvastivada school is one of the earliest schools of Buddhism, belonging to the branch known as Nikaya Buddhism. Early Buddhism described life as a burden, caused by the suffering inherent in the overflowing manifestation of the aspects of reality through human consciousness, resulting in desire. The desire to hold on to what gives us pleasure and to reject what causes us discomfort results in pain, in suffering. This does not mean that life is an unbearable torment, but that our mental interaction with the world produces ever-flowing reactions that can never give full and lasting satisfaction.

The early Buddhist movement was therefore based on close monastic communities whose members sought individual salvation through meditation and a strict moral code. The Sarvastivadins and other early schools such as the Mahasanghika, Dharmaguptaka and Mulasarvastivada continued this approach but eventually disappeared or merged with later schools of Buddhist thought. The contemporary Theravada school, common in Sri Lanka and South East Asia, descends from this monastic tradition. It should be stressed that these early schools parted mostly over their monastic code, the Vinaya, rather than over crucial doctrinal matters.

From around the second century BC a new movement sprouted inside the early Buddhist monasteries. It gradually developed a literature stressing somewhat different aspects than earlier schools: the correct path to enlightenment, the nature of consciousness, and further development of the Buddhist logical tradition.

The best-known aspect of this movement, eventually dubbed the Mahayana, or great vehicle, is the bodhisattva: a being so immersed in compassion that it postpones its own full enlightenment in order to help all sentient beings reach the same goal.

The Mahayana movement most probably began in India itself but continued to develop and mature far to the north, in Gandhara, Bactria and the Tarim basin, which by the second century had become a major hub for Dharma teachers, translators and monks from India, Iran and China, all sitting together in monasteries in Khotan, Turfan, Kucha and elsewhere, translating and copying sutras and other scriptures from various Indian and Iranian languages into Chinese, preparing the way for the propagation of Buddhist seeds into fertile Chinese soil.

The question of Iranian influence on early Buddhist ideas is still debated, but it has been suggested that Mahayana concepts such as the future Buddha Maitreya, and the idea of a post-mortem “Pure Land” that gained immense popularity in later East Asian Buddhism, came from the Iranian world. Considering the numerous monks, translators and missionaries of Iranian stock active in the formative years of Chinese Buddhism — one of them, An Shigao (安世高), was actually a Parthian royal before heading east as a monk — this would not be surprising, though the influence remains questionable.

One of the important figures of this vibrant era was Kumarajiva (344–413), a Kuchean monk and translator. His early education followed the Nikaya Sarvastivada school, but later in life he inclined towards Mahayana ideas. His colossal body of Chinese translation includes Nagarjuna's Root Verses on the Middle Way (Mulamadhyamakakarika), a selection of Perfection of Wisdom (Prajnaparamita) sutras such as the Diamond Sutra, and other major Mahayana sutras such as the Lotus, the Amitabha and the Vimalakirti.

These details may seem trivial or even dull, but for anyone with the slightest interest in Buddhist culture and philosophy it must be stressed that the Tarim basin was the gateway that made Chinese — and subsequently all East Asian — Buddhist culture possible. Everything that tends to arouse the Western appetite for Buddhist exotica, the Shaolin monks, the impressive Tang dynasty pagodas of Xi'an, the Japanese Zen gardens and the one-hand clap, might never have come into being without the establishment of the Tarim basin's centres of learning and translation. More than that: given the eventual extinction of Buddhism in Central Asia as well as in its Indian cradle, the Chinese translations of the Mahayana sutras are the only channel — along with the Tibetan traditions — through which they were preserved as a living tradition.

In recent generations, with the discovery of ancient manuscripts in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Central Asian China, modern scholarship can reassess the Buddhist transmission along the silk roads, and even question certain choices made by early translators into Chinese, and with them our own understanding of these materials.

The library cave

At the turn of the twentieth century a Daoist monk named Wang Yuanlu made a discovery that would eventually be recognised as one of the most important in the history of Buddhist research.

Wang, a native of Hubei and a former recruit of the Qing imperial army, arrived at Dunhuang in Gansu province sometime around the 1890s. Self-appointed guardian of the Buddhist Mogao grottoes outside the town, he took upon himself the task of cleaning, maintaining and “restoring” the ancient monastic complex after decades of neglect.

On a hot summer's day in 1900, Wang's hired labourers were clearing sand and sediment from one of the caves when one of them spotted a crack in a mural. Suggestively outlining a doorway, the plastered and painted wall drew Wang's attention, and he ordered it broken down. As the wall came away piece by piece it revealed something that had been sealed for a millennium: scrolls — thousands upon thousands of scrolls.

The Dunhuang collection represents the Central Asian world in which it was created. It contains manuscripts in several languages, including Chinese, Tibetan, Sanskrit, Old Uyghur, Sogdian, Khotanese and even Hebrew. Their content ranges from Buddhist sutras to Tibetan administrative reports, Daoist commentaries on the Daodejing, and scriptures of the now-extinct Nestorian Christianity and the dualistic Manichaean faith. One Buddhist sutra was even touchingly dedicated to a deceased ox by its loving owner, imploring that it not be reincarnated again in animal form, to suffer under human hands.

The most celebrated item in the collection is probably the Diamond (Vajracchedika) Sutra of 868 AD, the earliest known dated printed text, press-copied centuries before Gutenberg ever laid a hand on a block-printed letter. The printed scroll, composed of five sections, was most probably produced as an act of merit. In Buddhist tradition the copying and distribution of a sutra, itself an embodiment of the Buddha, is a blissful act that benefits scribe and commissioner alike with immeasurable karmic advantage. Many of the painted grottoes themselves are the outcome of vast donations by groups, individuals and entire families, many of them traders, giving alms to the local monastic community while contributing to their own karmic balance — and to the Buddhist artistic legacy along the way. This patronage system reaffirms the direct connection between trade and the spread of Buddhism, and its ability to thrive in a Central Asian network of isolated oases.

The collection is therefore indispensable to our understanding of many fascinating matters: early Tibetan imperial history, the vast Sogdian trade network across Eurasia, and above all the manner in which Buddhism was transmitted overland from India, through greater Iran and eastwards into China proper — revealing part of this important link between China and a now completely lost world of Central Asian Buddhism.

Who kept it

As we know today, Wang's library cave was sealed sometime in the late eleventh century. Why, no one knows for certain. One claim is that the manuscripts were hidden in the face of an approaching Muslim invasion. Another theory suggests the texts had fallen out of use and were sealed away because of their sanctity, not unlike the famous Jewish Geniza of Cairo. After the cave was found, Wang's hoard lay in the dark for some years while the Chinese authorities repeatedly declined to pay it appropriate attention. Eventually word of the hidden stash reached several Western explorers, researchers, treasure hunters — and all of these combined. At that time, clues of mysterious lost Buddhist kingdoms lying silently in the sands beneath the Muslim upper layers of Central Asia had captured Western imaginations and dispatched rival expeditions: British, German, French and Japanese, all racing for fame, glory and knowledge.

The first to reach the caves, and to obtain the lion's share of the catch, was the British-Hungarian Jewish explorer Sir Aurel Stein. Stein and his faithful Turki crew — what we today call Uyghurs — accompanied by his legendary fox terrier Dash II, persuaded Wang to sell a large portion of the collection, which was sent to London along with other manuscripts and artefacts from Khotan, Miran and other lost strongholds of the Dharma.

Others followed, buying up most of what remained of Wang's manuscripts and stripping — sometimes brutally removing — some of the finer murals of Dunhuang, Kizil, Bezeklik and other Buddhist grottoes of the eastern silk road. Some of the finest were sent to Berlin by a German expedition, where they were permanently attached to the museum wall, only to be destroyed completely by Allied bombardment of the German capital during the Second World War.

The modern Chinese view of these Western expeditions sees them as no more than tomb raiders and thieves, clawing at Chinese historical heritage in the twilight of the crumbling Qing dynasty. Despite the fact that these early archaeological expeditions were indeed inseparable from the European colonial legacy, and formed part of an open arms race to fill Europe's museums with artefacts considered Western property by divine providence itself, the question of what would have happened to the Dunhuang collection had it stayed in China remains open. Given the international recognition the scrolls have received while being preserved, studied and recently digitised and published online, and on the other hand the sheer destruction of Chinese historical heritage during the upheavals of the civil war and especially during the ridiculously destructive Cultural Revolution, we can only guess at the fate of this irreplaceable collection had it not been taken west.

Either way, the information gathered from textual and archaeological finds — from Xinjiang and Gansu as well as from other Central Asian locations in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Transoxiana — allows us to reconstruct a long-lost world of flourishing Buddhist monastic and lay communities.

These communities were firmly connected to the Central Asian and Iranian cultural worlds, and their members wrote sutras and commentaries in their own native tongues while impressing their own imprint on a then-living Buddhist culture. Perhaps future research will give us a fuller understanding of this lost world of Central Asian Buddhism.