90 Part II: Outsiders
The book itself is an odd combination of extremely repetitive and mundane
accounts of Polo’s work as a functionary traveling across the empire at the
khan’s orders and of outrageous stories of animal-human hybrids, bizarre cul-
tural practices, and hair-raising adventures. Of course, it was these colorful
adventures that made the book an enduring classic, still in print and read today,
in spite of its many dubious details. A lively and popular debate has developed
among historians about whether Polo ever reached the Yuan imperial court of
Kublai Khan, let alone served there. Frances Wood (1998) has led this camp,
pointing to the exclusion in Polo’s account of chopsticks, tea, or the Great Wall
of China. Rustichello’s dramatic flair and conventions of historical romances
lead some scholars to question much of the narrative. While Wood is a highly
regarded scholar, equally prominent voices have countered her claims, includ-
ing Morris Rossabi (2011, 2012) and Igor de Rachewiltz (1997), who challenge,
point by point, Wood’s debunking of Polo. But this recent debate aside, the
book certainly had a profound impact on Western views of exotic Asia.
Regardless of Polo’s reliability as a narrator, he was not the first European to
visit China, or the first traveler on the Silk Roads. While his Travels became one
of the first and most thrilling accounts of Asia for a Western audience, there
would have existed, among some merchants and scholars at least, a rich and
detailed mutual awareness of the peoples at either extreme of the Eurasian
landmass, and all in between.Religions along the Silk Road
As merchants transported goods across Central Asia, they brought with
them a profusion of ideas, languages, customs, and beliefs. While pilgrims also
walked these roads, merchant caravans were the most common travelers of the
Silk Roads. The faiths and cultures that moved through the region and some-
times took root were often explained and interpreted through the worldviews
of merchants and nomads more than through the devotions and teachings of
pilgrims. The kind of Buddhism, for example, that made its way from India to
China in the first and second centuries C.E. was Mahayana Buddhism, a branch
of the faith that would flourish and diversify in China, Japan, and Korea and
was based on the principle of maximum outreach to bring the wider lay com-
munity into the practice and belief of Buddhism. This inclusive Buddhism
incorporated talismans, icons, alms, and the sponsorship of sutra inscriptions
by wealthy patrons. In some branches of Buddhism, a single earnest invocation
at the moment of death could wipe clean a life of sin and bring one to the
promised land. In Mahayana Buddhism, a pantheon of bodhisattvas worked
tirelessly to achieve enlightenment for all sentient beings, aspiring to bring
them into awakening through their selfless acts (see chapter 6).
Buddhism brought a revolutionary egalitarianism to a strictly hierarchical
and patriarchal India, but some of its more severe austerities and devotions
were not for everyone. Mahayana Buddhism developed in part as an appeal to
lay people, such as merchants, who could not possibly be successful while liv-