The Spread of Buddhism

96 xavier tremblay

in Chinese than vice versa.^96 Human contacts between Sogdiana and

China did thus not necessarily result in a Chinese in uence on the

Sogdian culture.

(iii) Sassanians never invaded Sogdiana: there is no archaeological

evidence of such an invasion and the so-called Res Gestae Divi Saporis

I^97 (242–279) even explicitly exclude Sogdiana from his conquests.^98

Thus Naymark’s hypothesis that the Northern road was opened by

Sassanians looses any basis.

(iv) Sogdian immigrants did not only settle for trade, but—various

Chinese sources insist—they were also farmers.^99 Naturally, a Sogdian

agricultural colony could subsequently offer and mute to a resting place,

or an embryo of market for western merchants.

Positive refutations

(v) Chinese biographies of Sogdians mention numerous immigration

cases already in the second century, as for instance Kang Mengxiang

(see above).

(vi) Archaeological and historical traces of early Sogdian trade are

actually present, even though they cannot be called spectacular.^100 The

oldest Sogdian graf ti (engraved by traders) in Shatial, on the Upper

Indus, seem to be older than the Ancient Letters,^101 thus dating from the

third century. Sogdian merchants seem to have actually wandered across

India at that time.^102

To sum up, one must never leave out of consideration the dichotomy

between Sogdians in Sogdiana and Sogdians abroad, who partly adopted

the customs of the local population but clung to their vernacular tongue.

We can thus distinguish four kinds of Sogdian Buddhisms, all dependent

on the countries where the colonies had settled:

(^96) Laufer 1919; Schafer 1963.
(^97) An inscription of the Sassanian ruler Sapor I on an ancient tower traditionally
considered as a shrine of Zoroaster.
(^98) Huyse 1999, vol. 2, p. 36.
(^99) Pulleyblank 1952; Liu Mau-Tsai 1958, pp. 164, 218f. and 255; Sims-Williams
1996, p. 60; Tremblay 2001, pp. 19, 20 n. 30, p. 99; Trombert 2002, pp. 550–554
(pointing to the role played by Sogdians in the speculative culture of wine—something
intermediate between trade and peasantry). 100
La Vaissière 2002, pp. 43–47. See also Menander, fragment no. 18 in Müller.
(^101) Sims-Williams 1997, p. 67.
(^102) On Sogdian trade with India, see now Fussman 1997, pp. 76ff., refuting Jettmar’s
hypothesis that Sogdians were forbidden to enter India (1991; 1997, pp. 94ff.).
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