6 Meinert
specifically, the growth of heterogeneous and local Buddhisms—in many ways
related to the ‘Tibetan Renaissance’,6 which eventually dominated Central Asia
during the 11th to 13th centuries.
Central Asia was located at the intersection of three major vectors, i.e. the
spread of Indian Buddhist traditions eastward, of Chinese Buddhist influences
to the Western reaches of the empire and beyond and of Tibetan Buddhism’s
gradual flow to the West, North and East. These influences reached Central
Asia partly at different times, partly overlapping in time and for a variety of
reasons. Each of the areas to be investigated was engaged in a complex network
of relationships both between each other and involving the three major Asian
cultural traditions and Buddhist influences. In this respect, the set research
agenda intends to study the process of the interchange between these three
centres of influence and cultures, interregional contacts as well as the ability
to develop intermediate, local forms.
While the three cases of Buddhism’s fundamental transformation (i.e.
Tibetan, Chinese and Japanese appropriations) are relatively well known, the
changes which occurred in Buddhism in the pivotal zone of Central Asia as a
whole are less understood, due to:
• the multilinguistic and multicultural complexity of the region;
• the variety of its dominions (by larger empires as well as by local rulers)
with varying territorial sizes;
• the diversity of historical processes, which resist any straightforward
analysis;
• the limitations on research imposed by nationalist perspectives of history
writing (e.g. Sino-centric, Indo-centric etc.);
• the lack of research funding in general and from Buddhist institutions in
particular.7
The foregoing assessment hints to the fact that the transfer and transformation
of Buddhism in Central Asia, seen as part of movements in the larger Buddhist
world in premodern Asia—that is, as an entangled history—is so far only
beginning to be understood. Hemmed in by modern intellectual and disciplin-
ary boundaries, the complexities in the dynamics of cultural encounter and
6 Davidson, Ronald, Tibetan Renaissance: Tantric Buddhism in the Rebirth of Tibetan Culture
(New York: Columbia University Press, 2005).
7 Research on Tibetan, Chinese and Japanese Buddhism is strongly supported by Buddhist
organisations still alive in the respective regions whereas Central Asian Buddhism did not
survive up to the present and therefore has no public stakeholders.