by Chris Wilkinson

The Centrality of Buddhism

By the seventh century CE, the tradition of Buddhism was well established on all the caravan routes in Central Asia. The transmission of Buddhism to Persia is said to have begun even during the Buddha's life. The tradition is already being translated into Chinese by the second century CE. It was recorded that the tradition entered Tibet as early as the fifth century. All the smaller nations on the silk route, such as Sogdiana and Kashgar, felt the influence of Buddhism from the earliest period. Ashoka, the Great Buddhist King of India, had Buddhist emissaries at the Court of the Roman Empire in the third century BCE. The Shri Vijaya Empire, where Marco Polo stopped on his way back from China, was a great commercial empire based on shipping and centered in Indonesia, and was at it's height during the twelfth century. Buddhism was the state religion in Burma, Thailand, Laos, Malaysia, Viet Nam, Korea, Japan, and its influence had spread throughout the Eastern World. It is no surprise, therefore, that the many religions and cultural traditions that met on the Silk Route found grounds for discourse on topics related to Buddhism and the Buddhist understanding of life. Indeed, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, Muslims, Taoists, Hebrews, Hindus, Animists and Shamans were among those traveling the roads of commerce, seeking to profit both materially and spiritually. Successful trading requires some basic agreement. and from such agreement a language of mutual understanding can arise. The fact that such a discourse did arise is evident in the imagery of the art that comes from this area and period, for in Central Asian Art, particularly Tibetan Art, we find what are primarily "Buddhist" images. These images, however, were very often combined with imagery of the practical and mystical transmissions of Enlightenment that were the province of travelers on those routes. Each image is a window into a certain vision of reality, and each object in the image has both common and symbolic levels of meaning.