Almost every oasis had a Buddhist presence, al-
though chronologies of the sites and their architecture
are sketchy. It is similarly difficult to trace the move-
ment of Buddhist sects from one to another. Datable
materials suggest Buddhist monasteries propagated in
Central Asia by the third century C.E. and survived un-
til other religions, such as Islam, or invasions of peo-
ples, such as the Mongols, destroyed them. Like most
construction in Central Asia, monastery buildings were
almost without exception mud brick. Some of the ear-
liest Buddhist monasteries in Central Asia are in Mi-
ran on the southern SILKROADin eastern Xinjiang
province. An inscription and paintings date Buddhism
in Miran to the second century C.E. Both freestanding
temples and stupas survive.
Buddhism was present in China by the first cen-
tury C.E., and a growing number of sites such as the
rock-carved elephant at Lianyun’gang in Jiangsu
province attest to this fact. By the fourth century, Bud-
dhist CAVE SANCTUARIESinspired by Indian models
were carved in several regions of Xinjiang, in China
proper, and at oases in China’s westernmost territory.
Most famous among the cave monasteries are, from
west to east, Kizil, Kumtura, and Bezeklik in Xinjiang;
the Mogao and other cave-temple groups in the
DUNHUANGregion and Maijishan in Gansu province
of Western China; and YUN’GANG, Tianlongshan,
Xiangtangshan, LONGMEN, and Gongxian in the north
central Chinese provinces of Shanxi, Hebei, and
Henan. Additional cave sanctuaries have been stud-
ied in China in the last two decades of the twentieth
century, in particular in Gansu, the Ningxia Hui
Autonomous Region, and southeastern China, giving
way to redating and refinement of chronologies. Still,
it is not possible to suggest a clear path of transmis-
sion of Buddhism and its monasteries. Rather, mon-
astery remains suggest that, from the third or fourth
centuries through the ninth or tenth centuries, monks
traveled and dwelt in Buddhist sites from Afghan-
istan, Persia, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan in the
West to Central China in the East, alongside practi-
tioners of other faiths; their monasteries consisted
of rock-cut caitya halls, freestanding temples, and
stupas. The earliest monastery remains in China date
to the fifth century. As far as can be determined, the
dominant structures in early Chinese monasteries
were a stupa and Buddhist worship hall, with the
stupa often towering as a major monument in a town
or city.
Monastic architecture in China
By this time, the stupa had become four-sided in plan,
closer in appearance to multistory Chinese towers of
the late B.C.E. and early C.E. centuries than to circular
stupas of India or Central Asia. The Northern Wei
(386–534) capital at Luoyang in Henan province con-
tained 1,367 Buddhist structures or building com-
plexes. Its two most important monasteries were
Jimingsi, which had a seven-story pagoda, and Yong-
ningsi, whose wooden pagoda rose 161 meters in nine
stories. Each side of each story had three doors and six
windows and was supported by ten pillars. The doors
were vermilion lacquer, held in place with golden nails.
Golden bells hung from each corner of each level. The
great Buddha hall directly to its north was fashioned
after the main hall of audience of the Luoyang palace.
It contained a three-meter golden Buddha. Also fol-
lowing imperial architecture, Yongningsi was enclosed
by a 212-by-301 meter mud-earth wall, 3.3 meters
thick, with a gate on each side; its main gate, seven bays
across the front, was sixty-six meters high and rose
three stories. Yongning Monastery is said to have con-
tained a thousand bays of rooms, among which were
monks’ quarters, towers, pavilions, and the main Bud-
dha hall and pagoda behind one another at the center.
The oldest wooden architecture in China survives
at four monasteries in Shanxi province of the late
eighth and ninth centuries of the Tang dynasty (618–
907). Still resembling palace architecture, Buddhist
halls also became models for sarcophagi in the Tang
period. The most important monasteries were com-
missioned by the emperor or empress, usually for na-
tional capitals or sacred Buddhist peaks.
It was still common in the Tang dynasty for impe-
rial residential architecture to be transformed into a
Buddhist monastery. The residence of the Prince of
Wei, son of the second Tang emperor, was transformed
in 658 into a monastery of more than four thousand
bays of rooms with thirteen major Buddhist halls
arranged around ten courtyards. One hall measured
51.5 by 33 meters at the base. It was not the main hall,
which was considerably larger. By the Tang dynasty, it
is possible to associate building plans with Buddhist
ceremonies. Halls used for ordination of Zhenyan
(Shingon in Japan) monks were divided into front and
back areas, the private back space for the initiation rite
in which the Womb and Diamond World MANDALAS
were removed from the wall and placed on a low cen-
tral table or the floor. Other halls had a central inner
space for the altar and images and an enclosingMONASTICARCHITECTURE