EARLY BUDDHISM IN CHINA: DAOIST REACTIONS
Stephan Peter Bumbacher (Tübingen and Zürich)- Introduction
There seems to be a general agreement among scholars that Buddhism
entered China by way of the “Silk Road”, through western merchants
as intermediaries. The “of cial” China, however, only late became aware
of the trade between its own territory and the West—it was Zhang
Qian who reported to Han Emperor Wu (r. 140–87 BC)
that on his mission to the west (140–134 BC) he had seen in Bactria
products of Sichuan which had been brought there by way of India.^1
Trade between China and the West, especially the silk trade, by then,
had already had a history of at least several hundred years. Chinese
silk was found, together with the remnants of another Asian product,
the domestic chicken, in the tomb of a Celtic prince in Heuneburg,
southern Germany, dated to the fth century BC.^2 Silk was also found
in somewhat later layers of the Kerameikos in Athens.^3
The Greek historiographer Herodotus in ca. 430 BC described with
some precision the northern route of the Silk Road from its western
“terminal” Cherson (extreme western part of the Crimean peninsula)
to the land of the Argyppaioi in Central Asia, situated some 3,000 km
south-east of Cherson (probably in the Ili valley west of the Ferghana
valley). From here it was the Issedones or the Seres as they were called
on the southern route of the Silk Road who, assisted by Scythian inter-
preters, took over and controlled the trade well into Chinese territory,
another 3,000 km to the east.^4
In 97 AD a Chinese expedition, led by Gan Ying , was even
sent to Da Qin (the Roman Empire). Having reached Tiaozhi
(Characene and Susiana) next to the Persian Gulf, however , he
(^1) Hanshu, Xiyu zhuan , translated by A. Wylie in the Journal of the Anthro-
pological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, Vols. III (1874), pp. 401–452, V (1876), pp.
41–80, and X (1881), pp. 20–73, and XI (1882), pp. 83–115.
(^2) Champion et al. 1994, p. 287; Spindler 1996, p. 71.
(^3) Haussig 1983, p. 16.
(^4) Herodotus, History, as summarised in Haussig 1983, pp. 17–19.