Buddhism's Journey Along the Silk Roads

Buddhism began in northern India and reached China by around the 1st century CE, carried by merchants, monks and pilgrims along Silk Road routes. Translation was the key challenge: scholars such as Kumarajiva, a monk from Kucha, rendered Sanskrit texts into Chinese and chose words that Chinese readers could understand, sometimes borrowing Daoist terms. Chinese pilgrims also travelled the other way; the monk Xuanzang journeyed to India from 629 to 645 CE and returned with hundreds of texts, a trip later retold in the novel Journey to the West.

As Buddhism moved, it adapted, blending with local art and thought, so that Buddhist sculpture in Gandhara shows Greek influence and Chinese Buddhism developed its own schools. Cave temples at Dunhuang preserved paintings and manuscripts from many cultures. This shows that cultural diffusion is not simple copying but a process of translation and transformation.