Buddhism and the Silk Road by XINRU LIU

When the Buddha taught his doctrines and organized monastic orders (sanghas) during the sixth and fifth centuries B.C.E., northern India was experiencing a second period of urbanization. Its first period of urbanization had taken place along the Indus River, where the cities of the Harappan civilization (named after one of its major urban sites) flourished during the third and second millennia B.C.E. Most of the cities during the second period of urbanization were located around the middle or lower Ganges plain. Buddha, the muni or sage of the Shakya Republic, often traveled to and gave his sermons in cities such as Rajagriha, Sravasti, and Vaisali. Except for metropolitan Taxila, the northwestern region was quite rustic in comparison with the Ganges plain, and the Buddha himself never set foot in the northwestern area. By the time the Kushans ruled northern India, however, the northwest had become the political and economic core of South Asia. Buddhist institutions flourished in the northwest, Kushan kings patronized Buddhism, and as a result many legends about and relics of the Buddha in this area appeared there.

During the early centuries of the common era, Buddhist monasteries developed into institutions far larger, more affluent, and much more complex than the earlier sanghas. Buddhist theology also became far more complicated than the pristine teachings of the Buddha had been. Among the many Buddhist schools of that time, Mahayana Buddhism became the most prevalent. Two mutually dependent features that distinguished it from earlier Buddhism should be mentioned. First, nihilism, the concept of "emptiness" (that is, the objects people see or feel do not exist; rather, they are only illusions of the subject), was embodied in earlier forms of Buddhism. The Mahayana school of thought pushed this concept even further. Mahayana texts tended to treat everything as meaningless or nonexisting. Not only did the objects of observation not exist, but the observers themselves did not exist either. Second, ironically, this philosophy that absolutely denied the material world emerged at a time when Buddhist institutions were unprecedentedly wealthy, just like the surrounding society. So far there have been only a few pieces of evidence suggesting that Buddhist monasteries actively participated in trade, but abundant evidence shows that they did receive large amounts of material, patronage from traders, artisans, and other urban dwellers. The numerous votive inscriptions dated to the Kushan period attest to the material patronage to Buddhist monasteries! In the time of the Buddha, monks had to beg for food on a daily basis, but during the Kushan period most monasteries set out a large symbolic begging bowl to receive donations in the form of coins and precious items.

The wealth that flowed into the monasteries not only produced marvelous art works in and on cave temples, on monumental stupas (giant mounts containing relics of the Buddha) and their surrounding railings, I and on monastic walls and buildings, but this wealth also changed monasteries into economic entities. Monasteries had to trade the donated valuables for provisions in order to maintain the monks. Monastic establishments also took the lead in large construction projects, including monasteries and stupas. They had to coordinate the individual donations of single pieces of art into a much larger design. Buddhist sculptures were often the donations of individuals, as shown by inscriptions revealing the inames and titles of the donors and indicating what blessings they hoped to receive in return. Nevertheless, the sculptures became inseparable constituent parts of a much larger complex of monumental structures.

BUDDHISM AND MATERIAL CULTURE

In contrast to the asceticism that Buddhist monks were supposed to observe, Buddhist art at this time depicted lively urban life. From Central Asia to northern India, sculptures and murals in monastic settings depicted multilevel buildings, musicians and acrobats, women holding mirrors for applying makeup, people peeking out of windows or balconies to observe activities on the streets, and drinking, even many bacchanalian drinking parties.

There were two major schools of Buddhist art during the Kushan period. Gandharan art developed in northwestern India and reflected the influence of Persian and Hellenistic rule in that region: The Mathuran school was more indigenous to India. Themes and details of both schools show the obvious impact of the Roman trade, however. One interesting example is that in most of the drinking scenes, the vessels are Roman- style, high-footed goblets. No matter how Buddhologists explain this interesting phenomenon, such art works testify to the proximity, perhaps even involvement, of Buddhist institutions in urban, commercial life.

Sculptures were not the only expressions of devotion in Buddhist monastic art. In those days stupas may not have been the bare stone structures that are evident today. Rather, they were probably heavily decorated with valuables. The famous Dharmarajika stupa in Taxila was surrounded by a pavement of glass tiles. Excavations around the stupas also reveal scattered piles or hoards of glass beads, pearls, corals, or precious stones. These same stupas were perhaps also decorated with silk festoons, as indicated by the draping decorations carved on miniature stupas or in relief depicting stupas. The Buddhist sanghas were no longer congregations of modest mendicants but institutions unabashedly displaying their material wealth.

The seeming incompatibility between metaphysical discussions of the nonexistence of things and the indulgence in mundane material life is fully displayed in some Buddhist Sanskrit texts, a new genre of Buddhist literature that developed along with Mahayana thought. A typical exam- ple was the Mahayana text Saddharmapundarika (The Lotus Sutra). The early part of the text develops the idea that the wisdom of the Buddha is hard to obtain, that only the Buddha himself knows all.' The text claims the emptiness of all dharmas (doctrines), including Buddhist ones, and that the true dharma is beyond understanding. Because most Buddhist devotees would not be able to obtain the supreme knowledge, the Lotus Sutra recommended conversion through supernatural power, including that of talismanic charms.

Building and worshipping stupas for relics of the Buddha and making donations to the Buddha became the most effective means to achieving enlightenment. In the text of the Lotus Sutra, the Buddha demanded that his devotees make 84,000 stupas for him, and inside the stupas there should be reliquaries (receptacles for displaying or housing sacred relics) decorated with the "seven treasures." The stupas should be decorated with silk bands and bells, canopies or banners, and devotees should worship the Buddhas and bodhisattvas routinely with gifts of flowers, incense, garlands, ointments, clothes, necklaces, gems and jewels, canopies, flags, and banners. Those items together with the seven treasures and silks were not only common urban consumption goods at that time, but they were also the most common commodities found in the long-distance trade on the Silk Road. The seven treasures-interpreted variously as gold, silver, lapis lazuli, red coral, crystal, pearls, agate or some other precious stones - along with silk decorations are frequently mentioned in many Mahayana Buddhist texts of this period. They were seen in representations of the Buddha lands and heavens, and they were required for all kinds of ritual occasions, as they were the very symbols of Buddhist sacredness and purity. Since then, the concept of the seven treasures has permeated Buddhist literature and their colors are frequently displayed in Buddhist art. Even the hair of the Buddha was described and depicted with the sky blue of lapis lazuli.

A close examination of those ritual items serves as a reminder to us that some of them came from afar, while others were what India was famous for. Red coral came from the eastern Mediterranean, which is the major supplier of this jewel even today. It was a commodity much in demand in both South Asia and China. Crystal, lapis lazuli, and pearls were products that South Asian countries exported both westerly to the Mediterranean world and easterly to China. Silk, of course, was China's most demanded commodity.

The essential role of the seven treasures and silks in Buddhist rituals made those luxuries not only expensive but also sacred, thus necessary. Buddhist devotees, whether rich or poor- be they monks, nuns, or lay people-would exhaust their means to purchase some of these treasures to express their devotion so that they might reach enlightenment. Archaeological finds in Central Asia, China, and India verify this expression of devotion by Buddhists. On the site of the Dharmarajika stupa and monastery in Taxila, excavators found many of these precious items. Chinese literature records coral as a product of the Roman Empire, and coral beads were found at later Buddhist sites in China, as were pearls and glass vessels and beads, a substitute for lapis lazuli or crystal.

BUDDHISM AND TRADE

Although the Kushan Empire was one of the major beneficiaries of the Silk Road, it did not last very long. By the mid-third century C.E. it had shrunk to a small kingdom attached to Persia's rising Sassanian Empire (ca. 224-651 C.E.). Soon the many prosperous urban centers in northwestern India became desolate. The decline of the Kushan Empire, however, was not the only cause (nor even the main cause) of the decline of this section of the Silk Road. With China's fall into political chaos after the demise of the Han Empire in the early third century, with the crises and disintegration of the Roman Empire that started in the fourth century, coupled with the rise of Christianity as a religious institution, the dimensions and directions of trade along the Silk Road underwent a series of changes.

Despite the demise of the Han and the Kushans, the traffic of silk and other luxuries through Central Asia continued. Now traders not only had to undertake the physically difficult journey through Central Asia, but they also had to deal with perilous political situations such as the post- Han warfare in China. Kharoshthi letters dated to the third century C.E. from Shanshan on the Silk Road noted that traders were arriving from China.9 Travels of Sogdian merchants and Buddhist preachers and pilgrims indicate that the Central Asian routes were viable in the following centuries! O Persistence of the trade in luxuries along the Central Asian, routes indicates that the demand of ruling elites in both China and India did not diminish, despite the fact that political regimes changed frequently. More important, perhaps, was that Buddhist theology and proselytizing stimulated the demand for the luxuries.

As mentioned above, scholars have learned that the luxuries traded along the Silk Road had been codified as sacred symbols of devotion in Mahayana Buddhist texts. The sacredness attached to those originally mundane goods actually stimulated and, to a certain extent, sustained the trade in luxuries in a period not suitable for long-distance trade. It was during the Kushan period, when Buddhist institutions flourished and became affluent, that Buddhist theology developed along lines that proved to be a stimulus to missionary activities outside India. In the pantheon of Mahayana Buddhism, numerous bodhisattvas (who could reach the state of bliss imminently) chose instead to stay outside the threshold in order to help others across the darkness. With the material strength of monasteries and missionary zeal, Buddhism reached China around the mid-first century C.E. But for a long time Buddhism remained a religion important only within communities of foreign traders, mostly those from Kushan territory, who had some lay Chinese followers. After the fall of the Han, during a period of warfare and political disintegration, how- ever, Buddhism gained influence in China and became the predominant religion there.

Among the various Buddhist schools taught in China, Mahayana was the most successful. Many important Mahayana texts, including the Lotus Sutra, had been translated into Chinese in the post-Han period. During the third and fourth centuries, the construction of Buddhist cave temples, statues, and stupas gained momentum. The process reached its apex during the Northern Dynasties period (439-581 C.E.). There were 6,478 officially registered monasteries in northern China in 477 C.E., and more than thirty thousand in 534 C.E. In the Northern Wei capital of Pingcheng, there were about one hundred monasteries in 477 C.E., and the number reached 1,376 in its new capital of Loyang in 534 C.E!2 The rulers of northern China during those centuries had been mostly nomadic in the recent past. They patronized Buddhism, a foreign religion, rather than indigenous Confucianism or Taoism, since they themselves were foreign. Under the patronage of both state and commercial communities, Chinese Buddhist institutions became extremely rich in a relatively short period. Monasteries lavishly decorated stupas with luxuries obtained locally or from afar. At least in their religious practices Chinese Buddhists strictly followed the instructions of the Lotus Sutra and other Mahayana texts. Contemporary descriptions of Buddhist stupas and festival occasions, as well as archaeological finds, suggest that Buddhist monasteries were probably the largest consumers of such luxuries in China.

Meanwhile, Chinese silks continued to be in demand in India despite the disintegration of the Kushan Empire and a decline of urban centers in northwestern India. In the fourth century the kings of the Gupta dynasty (ca. 320-550 C.E.) reorganized the political structure of northern India by bringing many small kingdoms and tribes under their control or suzerainty. The center of political power in northern India, however, shifted back to the middle and lower Ganges valley. While trading activities and urban culture, including Buddhist institutions, withered in northwestern regions, Buddhist monasteries and commercial economy in the middle and lower Ganges valley continued to flourish for several centuries thereafter.

Chinese silks are mentioned in the Sanskrit literature of this period. Silk banners and hangings were indispensable for Buddhist ceremonies, as witnessed by the Chinese pilgrim Faxian, who was in India from 405 to 411 C.E. Buddhist devotees donated silk decorations to monasteries and used them in parades. A century later, on a pilgrimage to India, the Chinese pilgrims Songyun and Huisheng saw a stupa near Khotan in Central Asia decorated with several tens of thousands of silk banners, and more than half were from their homeland, the kingdom of the Northern Wei in China. The two pilgrims, envoys of the Northern Wei royalty, carried with them one thousand banners of colored silk about thirty meters long, and five hundred silk incense bags, plus two thousand small banners. Songyun and Huisheng donated these silk textiles to Buddhist institutions along the way to India. As the monasteries on the routes often provided lodging and provisions for missionaries and pilgrims, their donations could be considered as a form of exchange. Silk II was indeed the most prevalent currency and an important form of property in Central Asia. Until the Tang dynasty (618-906 C.E.) unified China in the seventh century, the trade route between India and China via Central Asia was probably the Silk Road's most active section.

Contributions of Religious Activities

In late Antiquity and early medieval times religious functions were the most prominent activities, and religious piety was the most respected feeling in many societies of Eurasia. Commercial activities such as trading and money lending were often considered to be unrespectable professions. Religious activities and material transactions, however, were often intrinsically mixed together. Religious beliefs frequently affected or even decided the pattern of social behavior, including the ways of acquiring, accumulating, and spending wealth. Because religious beliefs and functions were often shared by all social levels - both by rulers and the ruled, the poor and the rich - religious institutions and ideology could channel the surplus of a society in a certain direction.

In the context of Buddhism, as previously discussed, proselytizing in Central Asia and China and the designation of certain commodities in the long-distance trade as sacred had helped to sustain the transactions between India and China when the overall environment was not favorable to trade. Over the centuries, as Buddhist institutions and theology continued to evolve in India, their influence on Chinese and other Asian peoples became increasingly profound, and they created a totally different vision of the cosmos and the afterlife. Although Confucius did not provide a clear picture of the afterlife, Chinese rulers and even commoners sought to bring as much worldly wealth as possible with them to their graves. Evidence of this practice is the large-scale human sacrifices of the bronze age and the terracotta troops of Shi Huangdi (ruled 221-210 B.C.E.), known as the First Emperor, whose tomb was filled with thousands of life-size terracotta horses and soldiers. The Buddhist concepts of the transmigration of souls and of karma - that after death the soul of one creature would be born into another, and that one's behavior in former lives would determine the conditions of the new life-changed the popular beliefs about the world, heaven, and hell. The crucial point is that the wealth one could carry into one's future lives was not material but meritorious, evidence of good deeds done in former lives. This concept penetrated into every level of Chinese society and into the theology of other religions. By the time of the Tang dynasty, whether rulers or commoners, whether Buddhists or not, Chinese shared a fear of hell and a hope for a better future life. And because Mahayana Buddhism encouraged devotion and donation as a way to gain merits,. the material wealth of this life could be transformed into the wealth of future lives through the mediation of Buddhist institutions.

Both literary evidence and archaeological finds demonstrate that more and more wealth flowed into Buddhist institutions in Central Asia, China, and India. Many of the donations, including silk textiles and clothing, were major components of the wealth stored under stupas, along with relics of the Buddha. But there were also many silks that became transactional goods for monks and monasteries, and thus were introduced into circulation by religious institutions. Tang rulers and high officials often donated wealth to support Buddhist monastic construction and maintenance, often in the form of silk textiles and clothing, and often of the forbidden types (according to sumptuary laws). They rewarded Buddhist priests-Chinese or foreign, often Indian-with thousands of bolts and pieces of silk textiles and honorary robes for their religious services. The ranking of the honorary robes was similar to that of the bureaucracy, excluding the imperial yellow. Therefore the highest rank of ritual robes was purple, perhaps with golden embroidery.

More Buddhist pilgrims continued the tradition of carrying silks donated by their patrons to India, on an even larger scale. The famous Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang, who went to India in 630, received a large quantity of silks and other wealth from one of his patrons, the king of Gaochang, en route to Central Asia in modern-day Turpan (in the north- western part of the Tarim basin). Xuanzang needed thirty horses and twenty-five laborers to carry all the treasures: And one Tang ruler sent an envoy to Kapisa in 661 to purchase a piece of the Buddha's bone with four thousand bolts of silk. Tang emperors continuously sent envoys carrying precious honorary robes to spread on the Buddha's throne in the Mahabodhi monastery in Bodh Gaya, where the Buddha reached enlightenment. Carrying silk textiles and robes to India, pilgrims earned merits for both their patrons and themselves.

CHRISTIANITY AND THE CULT OF SAINTS

In the western part of Eurasia a similar demand for silk textiles evolved because of developments in the Christian religion. More specifically, Christian eschatology and the cult of saints sustained the demand for silks. In Roman times funerals had been a showcase of family wealth and fame. The Franks also buried their precious items with the dead. A clear vision of the structure of the world beyond emerged in the late fourth century.' The Christian concept of the afterlife-hell, purgatory, heaven, and the last judgment- gradually changed the custom of burying wealth with the dead. Early Christian priests tried to convince people that no matter how well the dead were dressed, they would still meet their maker naked. Although such efforts to carry material wealth to the after- world were futile, according to Christian clergy, donating wealth to the churches and to cover tombs or reliquaries of saints would be fruitful. In time, burials of commoners became simpler, and more and more treasures went to the tombs of saints, priests, and kings, as priests and kings were considered to be potential saints. From the sixth century silk covers on tombs became the indicator of canonized saints.

The cult of saints soon reached a new height. In the early centuries of Christianity, saints were rarely disturbed in their tombs, neither the martyrs in Rome nor local saints in western Europe. By the seventh century or perhaps earlier, however, Christians began to dig up relics of saints and transfer them to various churches in Europe. Although many early churches had been built on the tombs of saints, possession of a saint's relic now became the necessary condition for building new churches. Reliquaries became the very treasuries of the churches, because the saints attracted donations from the devotees. At that time, kings, bishops, and Christian commoners all wanted to be buried close to the saints for their own salvation. Usually, ordinary Christians had to stay in the church- yards, whereas kings and high priests might be able to squeeze into the church itself. Their bodies and tombs were covered with the most exquisite silks, similar to those used for saints.

Thus many beautiful silk samples found their way to all parts of Europe from the Byzantine Empire, Persia, and even Central Asia. More than a thousand silk samples dated from the seventh to the twelfth centuries that were preserved in western European churches have been cataloged. Most of them are Byzantine, and there are a few Persian-Islamic silks, but only one is a noticeably Chinese-patterned silk sample.6 In the sphere of Christendom the movement of exquisite silks was closely associated with pilgrimage and was often in response to demand caused by religious functions. Thus most silks circulated basically within this religious sphere.

Byzantine authorities were loathe to let some of their good silk textiles leave their territory. As late as the tenth century, when Liudprand, the bishop of Cremona, went to Constantinople as an envoy of Otto I, Byzantine custom officers arrogantly confiscated his purchase of purple silks. In vain, Liudprand protested that the silks were for his church, and that they could be purchased from Venetian and Amalfian traders in the market of Pavia anyway. Christians in western Europe had to resort to other sources to meet the demand of their religious functions

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