The Spread of Buddhism

the spread of buddhism in serindia 77

Sogdiana (the main cities were Samarkand, Tashkent/Takent and

Kesh/Ke), Bukhara and Ferghana were divided into numerous princi-

palities. Sogdiana remained outside the Kua Empire, but stood under

Bactria’s dominion from 402 to 560. Its dynasties survived, however,

until the Muslim conquest in the 740’s.

Bactrian and Sogdian (closely related to Bukharan and Ferghanian)

were Eastern Iranian languages. The former was written from the  rst

century AD onwards in the Greek alphabet, while the latter was written

in a national alphabet derived from Aramaean. In all of the afore men-

tio ned Iranian countries, the national religion was Mazdeism. However,

in the Eastern Iranian region, it assumed a form deeply divergent from

that of the Sassanian Empire.^2

3. The Tarim Basin is a desert where permanent dwellings were
   only possible at the fringes: Kashgar (Kar) and Khotan, where Saka
   dialects of Iranian were spoken; Aqsu and Kucha (Ku) in the West,
   Agni and Turfan in the East, with two closely cognate Indo-European
   (but not Iranian) languages, Tocharian A and Tocharian B; and Loulan,
   the vernacular of which remains unknown. Each oasis constituted a
   separate kingdom.


4. The northern steppe (Mongolia, Kazakhstan), periodically sub-
   jugated under various tribal confederations, the best known of which
   are the Xiongnu (from the third century BC onwards), the Ruanruan
   (ca. 390–563), the Türks (552–766 and the Uighurs (763–844 in
   Mongolia, 857–1450 in the Tarim Basin), the Qitans (ca. 907–1125
   in Mongolia, 1137–1218 in Khorasan) and the Tungusic-, and more
   precisely Manchu-speaking Jurchen (1115–1234).
   Before the second half of the twentieth century it was physically
   impossible to travel quickly carrying large quantities of merchandise
   along these enormous distances which had the most inhospitable

the third century AD is unambiguously proven by Sassanian inscriptions (KZ, Paikuli,

see Huyse 1999). I do not believe that the Chionites and the Kidarites were distinct

clans (Tremblay 2001, p. 188). 2

On Eastern Mazdeism, see Boyce, A History of Zoroastrianism, vol. 3, pp. 152ff.;

Tremblay, forthcoming. All forms of Mazdeism have in common the usage of a sacred

prayer-book called the Avesta, the devotion to a pantheon including the gods Ahura

Mazd (who at least in the Avesta was supreme), the Am$a Spntas, Mithra and

Vrrana, the reverence of a (probably  ctitious) founder Zarathutra, an eschatology

and the “intercommunion”, i.e., the mutual acceptance among all Mazdeans of the

sacri ces. Due to thorough changes in the interpretation of Mazdean texts, handbooks

older than Stausberg 2002 should be consulted with caution.

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