the spread of chan (zen) buddhism 435
meanwhile, suggest a mercantile model: the transportation of a product
from one place to another for pro t. Buddhism is thus viewed as one
of the many valuable commodities traded along the Silk Road that
linked India and China in ancient times.
Whatever metaphors we choose to employ in speaking about the
transmission of Buddhism around the world, there will be certain pros
and cons to their use. To the extent that “spread” implies the distribu-
tion of a homogeneous substance (e.g., butter or water) over a widening
area, it is not a very apt gure of speech, for the various forms of Bud-
dhism that we recognise as existing in different parts of the world (and
in different historical periods) are not homogeneous, but rather diverse
in character and content. The spread of a re may be a more tting
metaphor in this respect, for the process of combustion varies greatly
depending on the fuel being consumed and other environmental factors.
The biological disease model suggests that all Buddhists everywhere
should display the same recognizable symptoms of religious practices
and beliefs, which is hardly the case, but it does have the advantage
of allowing for evolution on the part of the pathogen over time as it
spreads to new hosts and adapts to new ecological niches.
The key issue in any discussion of the spread of Buddhism is: how
do we want to conceive of “Buddhism” itself, and what signs or marks
do we want to take as evidence of its existence at any given place and
time? In the other chapters that appear in this volume, there is much
written about various types of linguistic, textual, art historical, and
archeological evidence for the presence of Buddhism in Gandhra,
Bactria, Greece, and early China at various periods. There is nothing
wrong with this kind of reasoning, but the basic question still remains:
what criteria do we employ when we attach the label “Buddhism”
to particular ideas, texts, images, institutions, and behaviors, or any
combination of those? In point of fact, there is no single, uniform set
of criteria that everyone agrees on, so it is up to individual scholars to
question their own assumptions, establish a consistent pattern of usage,
and make that usage as transparent as possible to their readership.
It should also be cautioned that the appearance in a given place of
texts or icons that we conventionally call “Buddhist” does not necessar-
ily mean we would want to say that “Buddhism” also exists or existed
there. For example, the British Museum in London is lled with hun-
dreds of artifacts identi ed as Buddhist, none of which we would take
as evidence for the spread of Buddhism to England. Their presence in
that alien land is, rather, a vestige of the age of colonial domination,