dharan Buddhism and at one
time formed part of the Kushan Empire.

It is probably to this Gandharan Buddhism that the Chinese pilgrims
refer when they speak of the Sarvastivadin school of the Hinayana as
prevalent. It is known that this school was closely connected with the
Council of Kanishka. Its metaphysics were decidedly not Mahayanist but
there is no reason why it should have objected to the veneration of
such Bodhisattvas as are portrayed in the Gandhara sculptures. An
interesting passage in the life of Hsuan Chuang relates that he had a
dispute in Kucha with a Mahayanist doctor who maintained that the
books called Tsa-hsin, Chu-she, and P'i-sha were sufficient for
salvation, and denounced the Yogasastra as heretical, to the great
indignation of the pilgrim[523] whose practical definition of
Mahayanism seems to have been the acceptance of this work, reputed
to have been revealed by Maitreya to Asanga. Such a definition and
division might leave in the Hinayana much that we should not expect to
find there.

The Mahayanist Buddhism of Khotan was a separate stream and Hsuan
Chuang says that it came from Kashmir. Though Kashmir is not known as
a centre of Mahayanism, yet it would be a natural route for men and
ideas passing from any part of India to Khotan.

5

The Tarim basin and the lands of the Oxus[524] were a region where
different religions and cultures mingled and there is no difficulty in
supposing that Buddhism might have amalgamated there with
Zoroastrianism or Christianity. The question is whether there is any
evidence for such amalgamation. It is above all in its relations with
China that Central Asia appears as an exchange of religions. It passed
on to China the art and thought of India, perhaps adding something of
its own on the way and then received them back from China with further
additions.[525] It certainly received a great deal from Persia: the
number of manuscripts in different Iranian languages puts this beyond
doubt. Equally undoubted is its debt to India, but it would be of even
greater interest to determine whether Indian Buddhism owes a debt to
Central Asia and to define that debt. For Tibet the relation was
mutual. The Tibetans occupied the Tarim basin during a century and
according to their traditions monks went from Khotan to instruct
Tibet.

The Buddhist literature discovered in Central Asia represents, like
its architecture, several periods. We have first of all the fragments
of