Buddhist monastic groups A number of
Early Buddhist schools were historically prevalent throughout Central Asia. A number of scholars identify three distinct major phases of missionary activities seen in the history of Buddhism in Central Asia, which are associated with the following sects (chronologically): •
Dharmaguptaka •
Sarvāstivāda •
Mūlasarvāstivāda The Dharmaguptaka made more efforts than any other sect to spread Buddhism outside India, to areas such as
Afghanistan, Central Asia, and China, and they had great success in doing so. Therefore, most countries which adopted Buddhism from China, also adopted the Dharmaguptaka vinaya and ordination
lineage for
bhikṣus and
bhikṣuṇīs. According to
A.K. Warder, in some ways in those East Asian countries, the Dharmaguptaka sect can be considered to have survived to the present. Warder further writes: In the 7th century CE,
Yijing grouped the Mahīśāsaka, Dharmaguptaka, and Kāśyapīya together as sub-sects of the Sarvāstivāda, and stated that these three were not prevalent in the "five parts of India," but were located in some parts of Oḍḍiyāna,
Khotan, and
Kucha.
Greco-Buddhism , 1st-2nd century AD,
Gandhara:
Standing Buddha (Tokyo National Museum). Buddhism in Central Asia began with the
syncretism between Western
Classical Greek philosophy and Indian Buddhism in the Hellenistic successor kingdoms to
Alexander the Great's empire (
Greco-Bactrian Kingdom 250 BCE-125 BCE and
Indo-Greek Kingdom 180 BCE - 10 CE), spanning modern
Afghanistan,
Uzbekistan, and
Tajikistan. See
Greco-Buddhism and
Dayuan (
Ta-yuan; ; literarily "Great
Ionians"). The later Kushan empire would adopt the Greek alphabet (
Bactrian language),
Greco-Buddhist art forms and coinage, and Greco-Buddhist religion of these Hellenistic kingdoms. The first
anthropomorphic representations of the
Buddha himself are often considered a result of the Greco-Buddhist interaction. Before this innovation, Buddhist art was "
aniconic": the Buddha was only represented through his symbols (an empty
throne, the
Bodhi tree, the
Buddha's footprints, the
Dharma wheel). This reluctance towards anthropomorphic representations of the Buddha, and the sophisticated development of aniconic symbols to avoid it (even in narrative scenes where other human figures would appear), seem to be connected to one of the Buddha's sayings, reported in the
Digha Nikaya, that discouraged representations of himself after the extinction of his body. Probably not feeling bound by these restrictions, and because of "their cult of form, the Greeks were the first to attempt a sculptural representation of the Buddha". In many parts of the Ancient World, the Greeks did develop
syncretic divinities, that could become a common religious focus for populations with different traditions: a well-known example is the syncretic God
Sarapis, introduced by
Ptolemy I in
Egypt, which combined aspects of Greek and Egyptian Gods. In India as well, it was only natural for the Greeks to create a single common divinity by combining the image of a Greek God-King (The Sun-God
Apollo, or possibly the deified founder of the
Indo-Greek Kingdom,
Demetrius), with the traditional
attributes of the Buddha. Many of the stylistic elements in these first representations of the Buddha point to Greek influence: the Greek
himation (a light
toga-like wavy robe covering both shoulders), the
halo, the
contrapposto stance of the upright figures (see: 1st–2nd century Gandhara standing Buddhas and ), the stylized
Mediterranean curly hair and top-knot apparently derived from the style of the
Belvedere Apollo (330 BCE), and the measured quality of the faces, all rendered with strong artistic
realism (See:
Greek art). Some of the standing Buddhas (as the one pictured) were sculpted using the specific Greek technique of making the hands and sometimes the feet in marble to increase the realistic effect, and the rest of the body in another material. Foucher especially considered Hellenistic free-standing Buddhas as "the most beautiful, and probably the most ancient of the Buddhas", assigning them to the 1st century BCE, and making them the starting point of the anthropomorphic representations of the Buddha ("The Buddhist art of Gandhara", Marshall, p101).
Kushan Empire At the beginning of the Kushan dynasty (), various religious systems were widespread in Central Asia. These included the cult of
Anahit (originating in
Armenia);
Zoroastrianism, including the cults of
Mithra/Mitra,
Ormuzd,
Verethragna and (especially in
Khorezm and
Sogd)
Siyâvash; as well as the
Greek pantheon, including
Zeus, and
Helios. According to Chinese chronicles, Buddhism arrived in China in 147 from the Kushans (who were known in China by an older, Chinese
exonym: the
Great Yuezhi) and the work of Kushan missionaries resulted in Buddhism being adopted as the official religion of the court of the Chinese emperor,
Emperor Huan of Han (reigned 146–168). In the middle of the 2nd century, the Kushan empire under
Kanishka I expanded into Central Asia and went as far as taking control of
Kashgar,
Khotan and
Yarkand, in the
Tarim Basin, modern
Xinjiang. As a consequence, cultural exchanges greatly increased, and Central Asian Buddhist missionaries became active shortly after in the Chinese capital cities of
Luoyang and sometimes
Nanjing, where they particularly distinguished themselves by their translation work. They promoted both
Hīnayāna and
Mahāyāna scriptures. The followers of Buddhism had been banished from Iran in the 2nd and 3rd centuries and found support in Central Asia, where Buddhism became widely practiced. During modern archeological excavations in
Khorezm (including Bazaar-Kala, Gyaur-Kala, Gyaz-Kala),
Sogd (Tali-barzu, Zohak-i-Maron, Er-Kurgan and others) and
Old Termez it was found that many settlements and forts dated back to the Kushan period. However, the largest number of traces of Buddhist culture during the Kushan period were found in
Takhar previously Tukhara or
Tokharistan, in modern
Afghanistan.
Khotan The ancient
Kingdom of Khotan was one of the earliest Buddhist states in the world and a cultural bridge across which Buddhist culture and learning were transmitted from India to China. Its capital was located to the west of the modern city of
Hotan. The inhabitants of the Kingdom of Khotan, like those of early Kashgar and Yarkand, spoke the Iranian
Saka language. Available evidence indicates that the first Buddhist missions to Khotan were carried out by the Dharmaguptaka sect: By the 3rd century CE, it appears that some Mahāyāna texts were known in Khotan, as reported by the Chinese monk Zhu Shixing 朱士行 (d. after 282): When the Chinese monk
Faxian traveled through Khotan, he recorded that everyone there was Buddhist. According to his accounts, there were fourteen main monasteries, and he stayed at the most important of these, the monastery of Gomatī, which housed 3000 Mahāyāna monks. When
Xuanzang was later traveling through Khotan in the 7th century, he wrote that the king came out to personally greet him at the border of Khotan. He was escorted to the capital, and lodged at a monastery of the
Sarvāstivāda sect. It describes the initial appearance of Buddhism in Khotan, including the eight major tutelary deities of Khotan, the "self-originated
bodhisattvas" of the country, and a description of the major principles of the
Śrāvakayāna and the Mahāyāna, though the Mahāyāna is given preeminence. The
śrāvakas are depicted as entering the Dharma through the
Four Noble Truths, while the Mahāyāna bodhisattvas are depicted as entering through non-conceptualization and the Śūraṅgama
Samādhi. The king who this refers to was probably Aṃgoka, who was the most powerful king of Shanshan. According to Richard Salomon, there is every reason to believe that Mahāyāna Buddhism was prominent in Shanshan at this time and enjoyed royal patronage.
Iranian Buddhism Parts of the Buddhist
Indo-Greek Kingdom (180 BC - 10AD) and its successor, the Buddhist
Kushan Empire (30AD - 375AD), in particular
Balkh, were and still remain,
Iranian speaking. The famous Buddhist monastery in Balkh, known as
Nava Vihara ("New Monastery"), functioned as the center of Central Asia Buddhist learning for centuries. Soon after the
Sassanian Persian dynasty fell to the Muslims (in 651), Balkh came under Muslim rule (in 663), but the monastery continued to function for at least another century. In 715, after an insurrection in Balkh was crushed by the
Abbasid Caliphate, many Persian Buddhist monks fled east along the
Silk Road to the Buddhist
Kingdom of Khotan, which spoke a related
Eastern Iranian language, and onward into China.
Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī, a
Persian scholar and writer in service to the
Ghaznavids, reported that around the start of the 10th century, the monasteries in Bactria, including Nava Vihāra, were still functioning and decorated with Buddha frescoes. Several Iranian Buddhist monks, including
An Shigao and
Bodhidharma, played key roles in the
Silk Road transmission of Buddhism and the introduction of
Buddhism in China. An Shigao () (fl. c. 148-180 CE) was the earliest known translator of Indian Buddhist texts into Chinese. According to legend, he was a prince of
Parthia, nicknamed the "Parthian
Marquess", who renounced his claim to the royal throne of Parthia in order to serve as a
Buddhist missionary monk in
China.
Bodhidharma, the founder of
Chán-Buddhism, which later became
Zen and the legendary originator of the physical training of the
Shaolin monks that led to the creation of
Shaolin Kung Fu, is described as a Buddhist monk of Iranian descent in the first Chinese reference to him (Yan Xuan-Zhi, 547 CE). Throughout
Buddhist art, Bodhidharma is depicted as a profusely bearded and wide-eyed barbarian, and he is referred as "The Blue-Eyed
Barbarian" (碧眼胡, Bìyǎn hú) in Chinese Chan texts. Nava Vihara's hereditary administrators, the Iranian
Barmakids, converted from Buddhism to Islam after the monastery's conquest and became powerful viziers under the
Abbasid caliphs of Baghdad. The last of the family's line of viziers,
Ja'far ibn Yahya, is a protagonist in many tales from the
Arabian Nights. In folktales and
popular culture Ja'far has been associated with a knowledge of mysticism, sorcery, and traditions lying outside the realm of Islam. Such traditions of mysticism and
syncretism continued in Balkh, which was the birthplace of the medieval Persian poet
Rumi, founder of the
Mevlevi Sufi Order. The many Buddhist references in
Persian literature of the period also provide evidence of Islamic–Buddhist cultural contact. Persian poetry often used the simile for palaces that they were "as beautiful as a Nowbahar [Nava Vihāra]." Further, at Nava Vihāra and
Bamiyan, Buddha images, particularly of
Maitreya, the future Buddha, had 'moon discs' or halo iconographically represented behind or around their heads. This led to the poetic depiction of pure beauty as someone having "the moon-shaped face of a Buddha." Thus, 11th-century Persian poems, such as Varqe and Golshah by
Ayyuqi, use the word
budh with a positive connotation for "Buddha," not with its second, derogatory meaning as "idol." This positive connotation implies the ideal of asexual beauty in both men and women. Such references indicate that either Buddhist monasteries and images were present in these
Iranian cultural areas at least through the early
Mongol period in the 13th century or, at minimum, that a Buddhist legacy remained for centuries among the Buddhist converts to Islam.
Later history Other religious kings, such as the 16th century Mongol potentate
Altan Khan, invited Buddhist teachers to their realm and proclaimed Buddhism as the official creed of the land in order to help unify their people and consolidate their rule. In the process they may have prohibited certain practices of non-Buddhist, indigenous religions and even persecuted those who followed them, but these heavy-handed moves were primarily politically motivated. Buddhism in Uzbekistan is currently practised by 0.11 per cent of the population. The only functioning Buddhist temple in Uzbekistan is called “Jaeunsa” (“Compassion”), which belong to the Korean Buddhist
Jogye Order and is located on the outskirts of
Tashkent. Buddhism in Kazakhstan at present consists of Korean Buddhists, whom embraced
Won Buddhism. There are also Buddhists with diverse ethnicity who consider themselves the disciples of Dalai Lama or Lama Namkhai Norbu, and other belonging to the
Karma Kagyu school of
Tibetan Buddhism. Buddhism in Kyrgyzstan has only one registered Buddhist community called “Chamsen”, which exists since 1996 and their membership consist of mainly Koreans, Russians and Kyrgyz. There are also practitioners of other Buddhist denominations like
Nipponzan Myohoji and Karma Kagyu in the country. The Afghan Taliban destroyed the
Buddhist statues and other relics in
Bamyan province in 2001. They also clamped down on other religions. ==Buddhist percentage by country==