introduction 7
only a minor role. While from the fth to the early second century
BC, there were frequent military and political contacts between the
East and the West, trade was mainly carried out by intermediaries,
and direct trade routes were only scarcely developed. In the rst two
centuries AD, commercial contacts intensi ed, and the maritime trade
between India and the Roman Empire was a growing phenomenon.
Political contacts, however, were limited to occasional Indian embassies
to Rome, and Buddhism never gained state sponsorship in the West.
Still, Buddhist communities might have existed in cosmopolitan cities
such as Alexandria in Egypt. They are, however, likely to have suffered
from the political and economic crises that hit the western world from
the third century on. In addition, the collapse of the international
trade and the growing popularity of Christianity probably added to
their disappearance. From the seventh century onwards, an expanding
Islam nally pushed Buddhism back, further to the east, and out of
Central Asia.
* * *The largest region in the east to come into contact with Buddhism,
was certainly China. The rst attestations of a Buddhist presence
date from the rst century AD. New ideas appeared and a new style
of community life was introduced. For the rst time, men and later
also women, lived together in monasteries organised on the basis of
monastic disciplinary texts (vinaya texts). As shown by Ann Heirman in
her contribution on the spread of the vinaya from India to China, the
establishment of Chinese monastic life regulated by disciplinary rules
was not an easy thing to accomplish. While in the rst centuries of our
era, there was a serious lack of monastic rules, the extensive translation
activities at the end of the fourth and the beginning of the fth century
suddenly caused an overwhelming richness of available material. It
confronted the Chinese with as many as four similar, but still different,
vinayas, all belonging to the northern Buddhist schools. Consequently,
for about three centuries, the Chinese monasteries made use of several
vinayas, often without making a clear distinction between them. In the
seventh century, protest against this eclectic use of the vinayas arose in
monastic as well as in political circles. Finally, at the beginning of the
eighth century, one single vinaya, the Dharmaguptakavinaya, was imposed
by imperial decree on the whole of China, which is a clear example
of how the monastic community and the state worked hand in hand
in their striving for unity.