Introduction 7
religious transfer in premodern Central Asia remain specialist subjects, little
mentioned outside the small sub-disciplines and other disciplinary frame-
works. Thus this research agenda’s objective is to move beyond these bound-
aries and to create a new transregional and transcultural vision for religious
transfer processes in Central Asian history.
2 A Network Approach
How to tackle the above-sketched research agenda? The transdisciplinary
research in Religious Studies at Ruhr University Bochum links the perspective
of religious semantics with the perspective on social structures and “focuses
on relational aspects as constituents of religious formation processes enabling
the characterisation of geographically-extensive networks of cultural and reli-
gious traditions as protracted processes of orientation and exchange.”8 With
regard to this perspective of relational religion,9 the research agenda envi-
sioned here aims to decode patterns of spatial organisation and the influence of
Buddhism in complex Central Asian premodern societies on both the macro-
level of interregional and intercultural exchanges as well as the micro-level of
local interactions and contacts. A network approach is helpful here in order to
move away from territorial assumptions towards more relational, multiscale
8 Quotation from the website of the research consortium Käte Hamburger Kolleg Dynamics in
the History of Religions between Asia and Europe at the Center for Religious Studies (CERES)
at Ruhr University Bochum: http://khk.ceres.rub.de/en/research/, last accessed June 7th,
- For the research programme of the consortium see also Krech, Volkhard, “Religious
Contacts in Past and Present Times: Aspects of a Research Programme,” Religion 42 (2012):
191–213. CERES is the home institution of the author.
9 The use of the term ‘relational religion’ as it is applied in CERES is defined as follows:
“ ‘Relational Religion’ forms the theoretical framework for a perception according to which
the characteristics of single components within the religious field are defined not only by the
point of view of the observer, but also in relation to other religious constituents as well as to
other past and present social and cultural facts. The concept of ‘Relational Religion’ does not
imply an a priori given notion of religion that is then applied to empirical findings; rather,
religion emerges and is defined by relations. The perspective of ‘Relational Religion’ does not
seek to relativize its subject. Instead, stressing relationality should allow for a scientifically
verifiable access to observable phenomena. [.. .] From the perspective of ‘Relational Religion’,
the religious field is understood as a complex system whose components generate them-
selves in multilayered emergence processes.” For the quotation see http://www.ceres.rub.de/
en/research/research-program/, last accessed June 30th, 2015.