Reunified Empires 55
The Tang was the most cosmopolitan of all Chinese dynasties. The
Li family founders (like the Yang family founders of the Sui) had long
intermarried with the Xianbei and other nomadic tribes of the north
and west. The peace and prosperity of the Tang, the foreign roots of its
court, and the security its forces provided through Central Asia made
the Tang a period of unprecedented international trade. The Silk Roads
fl ourished in the Tang as never before or since, and so did a fl ourishing
trade on the east coast with Arab merchant seamen from south and
Southeast Asia. The Tang capital, Chang’an, was one of the world’s
great global crossroads. All types of religious groups were to be found
there, including Indian, Japanese, Korean, and Tibetan Buddhists, Per-
sian priests, Nestorian Christians, Zoroastrians, and merchants from
many parts of the globe, especially Turks, Uighurs, and Sogdians, as
well as Jews, Arabs, and Indians. There were dance troupes from Tash-
kent and musicians from Korea and Southeast Asia, and the most popu-
lar music in Chang’an was Central Asian.^1
Inspired by an intense enthusiasm for all things Buddhist, Sino-In-
dian trade thrived in the early Tang as never before. In the seventh and
eighth centuries, forty Indian tribute missions visited the Tang court,
carrying gifts to the emperor and thereby securing the right to trade
such items as pearls, turmeric, precious Buddhist relics (bones of Bud-
dhist saints believed to have special curative powers), incense, incense
burners, and other Buddhist paraphernalia, all in exchange for Chinese
silks, porcelains, and other products, including hides, peaches, and cam-
phor. Chinese pilgrims and merchants in turn went to India to propa-
gate Daoist doctrines among the Indians or to seek Buddhist scriptures,
Ayurvedic medical information, or Indian longevity drugs.
The Tang is known as the greatest age of Buddhism in Chinese his-
tory. The Sui and Tang ruling houses both claimed their leaders were
bodhisattvas devoted to the spread of the religion, and both dynasties
patronized Buddhism with lavish gifts of land and tax exemptions for
temples and monasteries. Both ruling houses continued the monumental
Buddhist sculptures on the limestone cliffs and in the caves of Longmen
outside of Luoyang. Because it had become popular, albeit in different
forms, among both the highly educated elite and the illiterate masses,
Buddhism was very useful to the Sui and Tang rulers in appealing to all
social classes.
During Tang Taizong’s reign, one of the great Chinese Buddhist pil-
grims of all time, the monk Xuanzang, made a seventeen-year trip across
the Central Asian deserts and Himalayan mountain range to India and
back, securing precious Buddhist scriptures and giving the Chinese their