The northwestern frontier of the Indian subcontinent (including modern Kashmir, Pakistan and Afghanistan) was a dynamic center for the initial transmission of Buddhist art, architecture, and literature to the Silk Routes in Central Asia and China. Although Sakyamuni Buddha did not visit this area during his lifetime (ca. 5thcentury B.C.E.), Buddhist traditions localized several jataka stories about his previous lives in the region.

Buddhism expanded from northeastern India to the Northwest with the support of the Mauryan emperor Asoka (reigning ca. 268-232 B.C.E), who had edicts inscribed in northern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan. Foundations of large stupas near the ancient city of Taxila (Taksasila) and the sacred complex of Butkara in the Swat Valley probably belong to the Mauryan period. Menander, an Indo-Greek ruler in the Punjab in the second century B.C.E., was also a major patron of Buddhism, according to Pali and Chinese literary traditions. Saka and Parthian officials continued to support Buddhist institutions, since their names and titles appear on coins and in Buddhist inscriptions and texts of the 1st century B.C.E. and 1st century C.E.

Buddhist establishments initially spread beyond northwestern South Asia to Central Asia and China during the Kushan period (1st – 3rd centuries C.E.). For many centuries thereafter, routes through the Northwest linked older Buddhist centers in India with emerging Buddhist communities along the Silk Routes. For example, Buddhist monasteries in Gilgit in northern Pakistan maintained close ties with monasteries in Bamiyan in central Afghanistan and with Khotan in the Tarim Basin. Accounts of Chinese pilgrims who traveled to India show that various parts of the Buddhist world were closely interconnected during the first millennium C.E. Buddhism in the Northwest gradually declined concurrently with diminishing lay support and growing prevalence of Hinduism and Islam.

Relics, stupas and images played prominent roles in Buddhist devotional practices in Northwest India. Reliquaries containing physical relics were deposited within stupas, which were typically surrounded by smaller stupas and columns also containing secondary relic deposits. Buddhist stupas and monasteries were decorated with stone and stucco sculptures. Art produced by northwestern workshops incorporated Indian, Iranian, and Hellenistic elements in distinctive iconographic patterns. Buddhist art of the Northwest influenced artistic traditions of Central Asia and China, where worship of images played a prominent role in popular practice.

Mainstream Buddhist schools in Northwest India included sects that were active in the transmission of Buddhism to Central Asia and China. Inscriptions record donations of relics, images, water pots, utensils, and other gifts to teachers of various schools. A clay water jar dedicated to the Dharmaguptakas contained early Buddhist manuscripts from the 1st century C.E.. Other recently discovered Buddhist manuscripts may have come from the library of a Mahasamghika monastery in Bamiyan. A partial Sanskrit version of the Mulasarvastivadin vinaya, the set of rules still used by monks and nuns in Tibetan Buddhist traditions, was among the manuscripts from the 6th-7th centuries C.E. from Gilgit. Manuscripts from Bamiyan and Gilgit include several Mahayana texts, which are apparently absent in earlier manuscript collections. Buddhist texts, ideas and practices were transmitted through the northwestern borderlands of the Indian subcontinent to Central Asia and China.

-- Jason Neelis

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