Sanskrit was once the language of intellectuals and scholars along the ancient Silk Road connecting East and West. In Eusebia, we present a series of articles exploring several Sanskrit corridors along the Silk Road, each encompassing ancient kingdoms, practices, traditions, scholars, and Buddhist masters remembered in history for their spiritual merit as meditators and their contributions to Buddhist traditions and Sanskrit literature.
The first corridor I’m delving into is the mountainous corridor of Inner Asia looping through Kashmir, Khotan, Kucha, and Dunhuang. While India — or what was the “Western Heaven” (西天) in Xuanzang’s Journey to the West — remained the central axis and origin of Sanskrit thought and intellectualism, Sanskrit-based traditions, literature, knowledge, and technology travelled between ancient India and ancient China through Khotan, Kucha (in what is today Xinjiang), and Dunhuang (in what is today China’s northwestern Gansu Province).
I call it a Sanskrit-based knowledge-transfer corridor because monks, translators, teachers, students, and Buddhist ritual adepts traversed it, carrying with them manuscripts, philosophical concepts, Sanskrit terminology, artistic models, scripts, stories, and legends—all of which constituted powerful and transformative systems of civilizational knowledge.
The legacy of Sanskrit in Kucha and Khotan
Prof. Dr. Shashibala, a specialist in Buddhist iconography and cross cultural connection among Asian countries said in her book “Sanskrit on the Silk Route” that out of the 101 schools (Sakhas) of Yajurveda, two schools were from “Svetadvipa”, the ancient Sanskrit name of Kucha, the modern day Kuqa in Xinjiang. It’s remembered in Chinese history as Guizi or Qiuci.
Yajurveda is a 2,800–3,200-year-old Sanskrit Vedic text dating to between 2,800 and 3,200 years ago, and consists of prose passages and mantras used in worship rituals. It continues to be preserved and transmitted within certain Brahmin communities even today.
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“Kucha was a leading city on the northern route, corresponding to Khotan on the southern route. Sanskrit was methodologically taught at its monasteries. Its kings bore Sanskrit names, such as Haripuspa, Suvarnapuspa, Haradeva, Suvarnadeva etc. The kingdom of Kucha had 1000 Buddhist stupas and temples and numerous monasteries and nunneries in the fourth century. Hsuan-tsang [Xuanzang] has mentioned that there were five thousand monks in a hundred monasteries,” said Shashibala, adding that Khotanese kings continued to hold Indian names until the 10th century and Sanskrit played the same role in Kotanese as Latin did in European.
According to the Indian expert, most of the manuscripts discovered by archeologists and western expeditions in Kucha were Buddhist — however there were also some non-Buddhist ones like a Ramayana text and other texts related to medicine — Jivaka Pustaka and Siddhasara. There are other texts including bilinguals like Sanskrit-Khotanese, Chinese-Khotanese and Turkish-Khotanese, said Shashibala.
Lokesh Chandra, a world renowned scholar on how Indian Sanskrit texts reached Tibet, Central Asia, China, and the wider Buddhist world from India writes in the anthology edited by Shahsibala that Chinese monks and intellectuals undertook arduous treks to Khotan to obtain Sanskrit manuscripts.
Chu shih-hsing (朱士行, Zhū Shìxíng), a 3rd century Chinese Buddhist monk was one of the earliest Chinese pilgrims to travel westward in search of the scriptures–in 260 AC he trekked to Khotan to get the “Pancavinsati-sahasrika Prajnaparamita” copied on birch bark. The monk died in Khotan itself but before that he arranged for the scripture to be taken to Luoyang, where it was translated into Chinese by another monk Dharmarakṣa (竺法護, Zhu Fahu) and his peers.
Pancavinsati-sahasrika Prajnaparamita (पञ्चविंशतिसाहस्रिका प्रज्ञापारमिता) means The Perfection of Wisdom in 25,000 [lines/verses]–it’s one of the most important Sanskrit Mahayana text that travelled through the Silk route.
Chandra says that it was preserved inside a Chinese monastery until the sixth century.
According to the book, “Sanskrit on the Silk Route”, there are about 10,000 Sanskrit fragments from the Khotan region on the southern leg of the Silk route in the British Library in the Hoernle and in Marc Auriele Stiene’s collections. Stiene, a colonial period explorer and archeologist is best known for his discoveries of the Silk route sites in Xinjiang and Dunhuang from where he collected a large number of ancient manuscripts. Stiene actually retraced a part of Xuanzang’s journey from Kashmir to Khotan in 1900 along with the Southern route of the Silk Road.
Because of such discoveries like that of Stiene, Chandra says that the “so called Silk route was really the Path of Sutras over the centuries.”
Emperor Ashoka’s son begins a the royal lineage of Khotanese kings
Xuanzang had called Khotan as K’iu-sa-tan-na (Breast of the earth) — the same was known as Ho-tan to the Iranians, Kiu-tan by Indians, and Gostana or Gaustana in poetic and literary styles in the Tang period. Sashibala says that the 7th Chinese Tang monk and his students, Hui-li and Yen-Tsun, wrote that the kingdom of Khotan was established by Emperor Ashoka’s son, “Sa-nu” in the 3rd century BC and it ran continuously until AD 1010 under the reign of 57 kings.
Sa-nu’s Indian name was Kustana/Gostana, and it is believed that its phonetic derivatives formed the name Khotan. Gostana (गोस्तन) even today is a word in Hindi and Sanskrit meaning the same. In Vedic culture, and even in the larger Hindu culture today, Gostana metaphorically means more than the animal itself — the cow symbolizes the sustaining principle of life, while the cow’s udder stands for nourishment, or the source that sustains life. This means that Khotan was a place between ancient India and ancient China that nourished those with a quest to understand the deeper principles of life.
Thus, Chandra writes that Emperor Ashoka, who sent Buddhist missionaries around the world, also “initiated the presence of Sanskrit and Indian influence on what was to become the Silk Route.” Chandra’s father, Prof. Raghu Vira, also a renowned historian and Sanskritist, was part of a major multidisciplinary expedition to the Dunhuang caves in 1955, bringing back 300 large boxes of manuscripts and antiquities to India.
“A collection of coins bearing Prakrit legends on the reverse and Chinese legends on the obverse from Yotkan, the ancient capital of Khotan, belong to the first centuries AC,” said Chandra in the anthology “Sanskrit on Silk Route.” Prakrit was a group of common people’s languages that existed alongside intellectual Sanskrit—Buddha Sakyamuni’s language also came under this group.
There is an amazing story linked with King Ashoka in Chinese Buddhist sources about the discovery of an extraordinary Buddha image created by Emperor Ashoka in the northern suburb of Jingzhou. Chandra describes it as a statue that “appeared near the city wall of Chiang-ling with a Sanskrit inscription.”
This statue was discovered by Tanyi, from the Changsha Monastery, who was a disciple of a noted Buddhist master called Daoan.
Hong Kong–Canadian scholar of Chinese Buddhism and Asian Studies, Tak Pui Sze (施德佩), writes in her PhD thesis (pdf), submitted to the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, in April 2012, that Daoan was already an enthusiast “of Aśokan legends,” and the discovery reinforced Tanyi’s faith manifold.
According to Chandra, upon its discovery, the Chinese disciples could not read the inscription, which was finally read by Sanghananda, a Buddhist master from Kashmir, who shared that it was made by Ashoka.
Sze writes that the Chinese elite, inspired by such stories, were motivated to develop a reverence for the objects of worship that were “reminiscent of the Buddha and were associated with Aśoka.”
Chandra also writes that Ashoka became a legend on the Silk Routes, and that this is archaeologically proved by several recent discoveries.
“The king of the Sogdians in the Tonyukuk epitaph near the capital of Mongolia is named Asoqa. The Turks have the name Asuq. The Russian chronicles mention the Prince of Voguls in Northern Siberia under the name Asyka. The epic folk songs of the Voguls sing Osx even today. The beloved of the Gods is immortal among the farthest people (Journal de la Societe Finno-Ougrienne 1958:60. 59f.),” wrote Chandra.
A Kashmiri monk in Kucha taken as spoils of war
Kucha also became particularly renowned in history for its connection with Kumarajiva, a Buddhist monk born in Kucha whose father was a Brahmin called Kumarayana from Kashmir and whose mother was a princess from Kucha, called Jivaka. In China, where he is known as Jiumoluoshi (鳩摩羅什), he played a profound in the early transmission of Buddhist scriptures, as he became fluent in Chinese and translated the texts to the local language.
Kumarajiva’s entire life bears some of the most recorded and renowned testimony to the Sanskrit corridor between India and China through the Silk Route territories of today’s Xinjiang. Before taking up Buddhist cultivation, Kumarajiva practiced Vedic spiritualism. It is not clear for how long he studied the Vedas, but according to multiple sources, he went on a pilgrimage westward with his mother at nine years of age, and they stayed in Kashmir, which was then an important center of Buddhism. A year later, he arrived in Kashgar, where he studied Vedic sciences, and from about 12 to 20 years of age, he studied Buddhism in Kucha. After that, he focused specifically on Mahayana traditions.
Chandra mentions the presence of a Brahmanical temple for Vedic studies in Kucha which he terms as a “Hindu temple” as per contemporary identification.
Kumarajiva, who knew Sanskrit, Tocharian, and Chinese during his lifetime, studied the Vedas and six auxiliary disciplines in Kashgar. The six auxiliary disciplines, called the six Vedāṅgas, are Śikṣā (phonetics and pronunciation), Chandas (prosody/metre of the Vedic verses), Vyākaraṇa (grammar), Nirukta (etymology and interpretation), Kalpa (ritualistic practice), and Jyotiṣa (astronomy/ritual calendrics). These six sciences collectively support Vedic interpretation in traditional Sanskrit studies.
It is not clear what level of proficiency he had in these disciplines, but any initiation into Vedic studies would have required a strong foundation in the Sanskrit language, which was traditionally transmitted from a very early age through a highly structured and disciplined classical system. This speaks volumes about Kumarajiva’s parentage and about Kucha and its royal family, into which he was born.
Kumarajiva’s intensive and elaborate study of Vedic Sanskrit in Kashgar also suggests that masters of Sanskrit scholarship were available not only in Kashgar but throughout the Kashmir–Khotan–Kucha corridor.
Kumarajiva’s story becomes even more interesting as he was taken from Kucha to Chang’an, the capital of ancient China, as a war trophy. It started in AD 382, when Fu Jian (苻堅), ruler of the ill-fated Former Qin regime, sent his general Lü Guang (吕光) to Kucha with a huge army to exert influence over the western regions. Fu Jian was a member of the Xianbei, a non-Chinese nomadic ethnicity of which various tribes had occupied northern China starting in the early 300s and were now vying for influence in that region.
Fu Jian wanted Lü to bring Kumarajiva along with him back to China. Lü entered Kucha through the Gansu region and the Tarim basin in 383-384 and after defeating Kucha captured Kumarajiva. By then the Former Qin had collapsed following its disastrous attempt to unify China, so instead of returning to Chang’an, Lü set up a kingdom in Liangzhou, in what is now Gansu Province, founding the Later Liang. Kumarajiva lived as his captive for 17 years, where he was treated harshly, but became inculcated in Chinese language and culture.
So Kumarajiva became essentially a political captive of Lü Guang. Meanwhile, in another twist of the chaotic times, Yao Xing (姚興), who launched a military attack against Lü’s state in 400–401, founded the Later Qin empire. He released Kumarajiva, who was finally escorted to Chang’an in 401.
Thus, Kumarajiva became a rarity in the scholarly world of those days: someone who knew the Sanskrit language, Vedic Sanskrit traditions, Buddhist Sanskrit literature, and was adept in Mahayana Buddhist traditions of meditation.
Yao Xing promoted Kumarajiva by setting up a translation bureau at Chang’an, and the Buddhist monk with Kashmiri paternity and Kucha maternal lineage went on to transform Chinese Buddhism through his translations.
Kashmir
Kashmir
It is apparent that Kashmir was an important east-west connection on the Silk Route. During the 19th-century Great Game, Kashmir was the camping place for many Western expeditions and explorers who aimed to discover the unknown world beyond in Central Asia, Tibet, or the Oxus Valley in Central Asia.
This was also the case in different eras of human history because geography determined that Kashmir and its picturesque valleys became home to spiritual seekers, traders, Sanskrit scholars, as well as conquerors and the most barbaric invaders — all because there were mountain passes leading into the valleys of Kashmir from multiple worlds beyond.
One route led from Bactria (Afghanistan) through Gandhara and Gilgit to Kashmir; another from Punjab or the lower Indus River basins to Kashmir; another from Khotan through Ladakh to Kashmir; and yet another from Tibet through Ladakh to Kashmir.
Xuanzang reached Kashmir from Kucha and spent almost two years there mastering the Sanskrit language under the Sarvāstivāda school of Buddhism, one of the major Buddhist traditions of ancient northwestern India and Central Asia.
Makoto Yoshimura, a Japanese scholar of Buddhism, writes in his research paper, “The Sectarian Buddhism Transmitted by Xuanzang” that Xunazang studied Sarvāstivādin Abhidharma or the systematic philosophical and psychological analysis developed by the Sarvāstivāda school and after his return to China he translated (異部宗輪論) Yibu zonglun lun (Cycle of the Formation of the Schismatic Doctrines) written by Vasumitra (世友, Shiyou), a Sarvāstivādin of Kashmir.
Sashibala writes that Vairochana, the monk who was the first Buddhist to travel to Khotan to propagate the Dhamma, was from Kashmir. Ancient Chinese society held Kashmiri masters of meditation in high esteem, and the book “Sanskrit on Silk Route” mentions the Chinese meditator Chih Yen having studied in Kashmir for several years.
Bart Dessein writes in his article “Sarvāstivāda,” published on Oxford Academic, that the famous Buddhist council organized in Kashmir under the reign of the Kushan king Kanishka in the 2nd century CE was actually a gathering of a subgroup within the Sarvāstivāda community. He mentions other subgroups in the Gandhara and Bactria regions under the same community.
“The Sarvāstivādins have been of major importance in the development of Śrāvakayāna (Hinayana) Buddhism, as well as for the origin of the Mahayana. For the latter, the contacts of the Sarvāstivādins with the Hellenistic world have been of great importance,” Dessein said.
“As the famous Silk Route went through Central Asian Sarvāstivāda territory, their philosophical ideas became very influential in China. The Sarvāstivādins remained influential to about the 7th century CE.”
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Despite being born into an Indian family, I bear a Greek name. Until recently, that was my only connection to Greece. Then I began exploring the history of my region, a history that spans centuries across the Indus River basin—from Ladakh, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, and Himachal Pradesh to present-day Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan.
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