the Tokharian territories of the northeast (though
some non-Uygur Turks had preceded them). Initially
they adopted local Sarvastivada traditions, sometimes
in combination with Manichaean traditions brought
with them from Mongolia. With the growth of Chi-
nese influence, however, the Uygurs increasingly drew
on Chinese Mahayana scriptures and practices. Most
of later Uygur literature—including such famous
works as the SUVARNAPRABHASOTTAMA-SUTRA, the
LOTUSSUTRA(SADDHARMAPUNDARIKA-SUTRA), and
the Vimalaklrtinirdes ́a—is translated from the Chinese
(Elverskog).
Buddhism continued to flourish in eastern Central
Asia down to the beginning of the eleventh century,
when the Muslim conquest of Khotan in 1004 signaled
the beginning of the end of Buddhist dominance in the
region. These territories are today populated almost
entirely by Turkic-speaking Muslims, who have little
knowledge of the flourishing Buddhist cultures that
preceded them.
See also:Central Asia, Buddhist Art in; Gandharl,
Buddhist Literature in; Islam and Buddhism; Main-
stream Buddhist Schools; Persecutions; Sarvastivada
and Mulasarvastivada
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Brill, 1990.JANNATTIERCENTRAL ASIA, BUDDHIST ART INMore than half a million years ago, plate movements
of the earth’s crust, by thrusting up the Himalayas and
the Tibetan plateau, prevented monsoons from reach-
ing the interior and desertified the area to the north;
yet glacial melt streams from the Kunlun mountains
and the Tianshan range created extensive fertile oases
along the edges of the Taklamakan desert. In De la
Grèce à la Chine(1948), René Grousset memorably de-
scribed the SILKROADas a chaplet or rosary of oasis
towns strung around this great desert. Even today, the
Keriya river supports well-spaced pastoral households
over 250 kilometers into the desert, but at one time,
the ease of growing fruit and grains led to the existence
of settled and prosperous kingdoms, where Buddhism
flourished from the third century C.E. onward. Side-
by-side with translations of the scriptures, the arts of
architecture, sculpture, and painting had their own
contribution to make to this exchange of ideas.Architecture
The practice of Buddhism by communities of monks
required places remote enough for undisturbed med-
itation, yet close enough to centers of population
whose devotional activities could support them. Cells
for the monks, undecorated save perhaps for a single
image of the Buddha in meditation, and larger shrinesCENTRALASIA, BUDDHISTART IN