The Spread of Buddhism

the spread of buddhism in serindia 97

(1) an Indian one in India, upon which we are informed merely

through monks’ biographies.

(2) a Chinese one in China and later in the Tarim Basin, beginning in

the second century AD, to which we owe the great majority of the texts

(translated from Chinese from approximately the  fth century onwards).

Thus, even if Buddhism generally spread westwards (from India to

China), it reached most Sogdians the other way around, from China.

(3) a Tocharian one in Sogdian trading centres in the Tarim oases,

to which two texts are due and which seems to have remained rather

limited. As a matter of fact, Sogdians had a greater in uence upon

Tocharians than the other way around.^103

(4) an Indo-Bactrian one in Sogdiana proper, which did not develop

before the Hephthalites and proved abortive. The earliest Indian (scil.

Gndhr ) loan-words entered Sogdian through Parthian, not through

Bactrian. This tradition might be re ected in the Sogdian Vessantara

Jtaka (found in the Chinese town of Dunhuang).

3. Buddhism in the Tarim Basin: Khotan, Loulan, Kucha,
   Turfan, Agni, Kashgar (100 BC–850 AD)

The now dominant hypothesis on the propagation of Buddhism in

Central Asia goes back to 1932 when E. Waldschmidt remarked

that the names quoted in the Chinese Drghgama (T.1),^104 which had

been translated by the avowedly Dharmaguptaka monk Buddhaya as

(who also translated the Dharmaguptakavinaya), were not rendered from

Sanskrit, but from a then still undetermined Prkrit also found in the

Khotan Dharmapada.^105 In 1946, Bailey identi ed this Prkrit, which he

named Gndhr , as corresponding to the language of most Kharo

h

inscriptions from Northwestern India. Since then, a consensus has

grown, which at least practically identi es the earliest Buddhist wave

with Kharo

h , Kharo

h with Gndhr , and, which concerns us

more directly, with the Dharmaguptaka school.^106 Even the scholars

(^103) Tremblay 2001, pp. 69–71, with more details.
(^104) I.e., the “Long Discourses”, one of the major sections of the strapi aka.
(^105) The Dharmapada is a sort of anthology of verses from various, mostly Buddhist,
books. Salomon 1999a, p. 170, adduces a solid proof in favour of the use of the
Dharmapada amongst Dharmaguptakas, but this does not exclude the possibility that other
schools (such as the Kyap yas, cf. Brough 1962, p. 45) followed the same tradition.
(^106) E.g., Brough 1962, pp. 44f.; Waldschmidt 1980, pp. 162–169.
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