102 xavier tremblaycontent are sparse. Yet, they display a variety of sectarian af liations
and languages.^129 The art of Loulan (as found in the nearby ancient city
of Miran) is closely tied with Kua art. Also the fact that Loulan’s
Kharo
h syllabary is borrowed from Gndhra, and that its chancellery
language contains numerous Iranian (especially Bactrian and Sakan, i.e.
cognate with Khotanese) loan words, clearly shows Iranian in uence.
Most of the Chinese laissez-passer (ca. 270 AD) found in Loulan con-
cern “Yuezhi”.^130 Unfortunately, the meaning of this term is unclear.
Most of the concerned people were mercenaries, and Brough (1965, pp.
605f.) surmised that the ethnonym Yuezhi designated the local people.
In any case, it betokens a Kua in uence.3.3. Kucha
The introduction of Buddhism in Kucha (Ku), the mightiest city-state
on the Northern Silk Road, is still more obscure than in Khotan. A
water-jug sent in 109 AD by the city of Kucha to China is known to
have been conserved by a well-known antiquity-collector named Liu
Zhilin in the sixth century.^131 Since it was designated by the
same Chinese characters as water-jugs used for the ritual hand-lustra-
tion, Liu Mau-Tsai surmised that this water-jug was Buddhist. Even if
the object is no counterfeit, the weakness of the argument is obvious:
the reported inscription on the water-jug does not say anything on its
purpose. Moreover, it is rather curious that in 109 AD a Kuchean king
would have sent a Buddhist water-jug to Buddhist communities in China,
and even if the characters are really used in a precise, technical sense,
they may simply re ect the interpretation of the sixth century owner
or reporter who thought that it resembled Buddhist water-jugs.
Indian king names appear in Chinese sources from the rst century
onwards. The earliest manuscripts with Buddhist contents, on palm-leaf,(^129) The Kharo
h inscription KI 510, quoting the Dharmapada, is written in Buddhist
Sanskrit and probably belongs to the Dharmaguptaka tradition, while KI 390 tributes
the chief (cojhbo) amasena with the epithet mahynasaprastitasa “who has set forth the
Great Vehicle”, just as the newly discovered Endere inscription in Gndhr (Salomon,
MSC III, p. 261; 1999b) does with the Loulan king Ajaka. An abhidharma commen-
tary in Sanskrit is of the Sarvstivda tradition (Salomon & Cox 1988, pp. 141ff.).
Bodhisattvas are represented as early as the third century AD (Rhie 1999–2002, vol. 1,
pp. 412f., 424), and in Miran (abandoned by ca. 450 AD) the paintings in monasteries
are H 130 naynic, as well as probably Mahynic (Rhie 1999–2002, vol. 1, p. 391).
Chavannes apud Stein 1907, vol. 1, pp. 521–547.
(^131) Liu Mau-Tsai 1969, pp. 21, 168 with n. 496.
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