The Spread of Buddhism

the spread of buddhism in serindia 115

what earlier for Tocharian. The idiom of Loulan (deserted ca. 450) was

never written. Apparently, the necessity to have Buddhist texts translated

did not appear at once, and missions resorted only to predication.

It has often been surmised that Gndhr preceded Sanskrit as sacred

language. This assumption is not supported by the evidence. To be true,

Gndhr and the Kharo

h script documents represent as a whole the

older layer, and fell into disuse centuries before Sanskrit. But the oldest

Kucha manuscripts, of Kua date, are in Sanskrit, and a great part

of Indian literacy introduced to Central Asia (such as medical texts or

grammars) probably never existed in Gndhr. Between ca. 150 to ca.

650 AD, Serindian Buddhism in Bactria and in the Tarim Basin used a

duality or plurality of Indian languages: Gndhr (in some texts with

other underlying Prkrits), Sanskrit, and probably intermediate stages

between Gndhr and Sanskrit. In the Tarim Basin, Gndhr outlived

by three centuries its demise in Gandhra (4th century).^185 That is the

result of the fact that it was the chancellery language, and chancelleries

are notoriously conservative.

In any case, the languages of Serindian Buddhism were at  rst Indian

ones, and manuscripts came from India. The missionaries, whether

they went to Bactria or to the Tarim Basin and further to China,

departed from India. Nevertheless, one cannot explain how Buddhism

could develop a local literacy and eventually become a gentry and

court religion by ascribing its propagation to the sole persuasive power

of heroic Indian or Indianised monks, a view that J. Brough (1965,

p. 587) denounced as “romantic”. Christianity could not root in China,

although missionaries did not fail to try.

Buddhism, and more generally the Indian culture, was in the Tarim

Basin and in Sogdiana but one of the features of the adoption of a

Bactrian political in uence. As a matter of fact, the map of Buddhism

was co extensive with Bactrian in uence up to Bactria’s political collapse

(560 AD). The Tarim Basin kingdoms adopted Buddhism, Kharo

h

and Brhm during the Kua epoch (1st–3rd centuries AD). At

the same time they borrowed Bactrian and aka loan words.^186 Bud-

dhism and Hinduism entered Sogdiana only in the  fth century, when

(^185) See Fussman 1989a.
(^186) Cf. Burrow 1935; Bailey 1946; Tremblay 2001, pp. 24f. n. 37. More loan words
(at times uncertain) in Weber 1997.
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