tuis.
(Tuis.)
#1
16 Meinert
(OU Ark/Karašahr) and later at Beš Balık (Chin. Beiting 北庭)—Kočo, which
is usually referred to as the winter capital. Manichean patronage was gradually
replaced by Buddhist patronage, which began to flourish at the turn of the first
millennium. As already mentioned above, the cult of Maitreya becomes very
important; inscriptions from Kočo (e.g. stake inscription I dated to 1008) men-
tion the establishment of a monastery in order to meet Buddha Maitreya in the
future. The Uyghurs gradually extended their political and religious influence
as far as Dunhuang around the first half of the 11th century so that inter-node
exchanges were intensified and contributed to the development of a Uyghur
dominion in the region.
In the final chapter Henrik H. Sørensen addresses the peculiar nature of
Dunhuang as a crossroad or, to use the abovementioned terminology, a gate-
way between cultures in a Buddhist network. This oasis was exposed to major
Chinese as well as Tibetan Buddhist influences—depending on its respective
political rule. Henrik H. Sørensen’s case study traces, on the basis of an enor-
mous variety of materials, religious art and texts, the development of Esoteric
Buddhism in Dunhuang between the 9th and 11th centuries. He demonstrates
how a Chinese import was transformed locally and intertwined with several
different Buddhist trends including a Tibetan-style Buddhism, which came
to dominate large parts of Central Asia from the 11th century onwards. The
materials presented demonstrate very well how a location, formerly peripheral
to the centres of the major (Tibetan and Chinese) empires, was for centuries
the home of a thriving Buddhist community, one which integrated the reli-
gious knowledge from neighbouring cultures for the needs of a local multi-
cultural society.
