Hello everyone, I'm Landry Underhill and this is my presentation over the spread of Buddhism along the Silk Road. So with this I'm just going to touch on the creation of Buddhism, a little bit about what it teaches, and then I'll get into the Silk Road and how it acted as a vehicle for the spread and also adaptation, I guess, of Buddhism. Buddhism and then I'll take a look at an example that showcases a little bit of that. You may be asking yourself why does this matter? I say this matters because Buddhism played a key role in connecting civilizations and influencing politics and economies.
In all essence this is an example of early globalization and sticking with the theme of our class It doesn't have much to do with Europe, so hopefully you'll find this interesting. The transmission of Buddhist texts and teachings helped preserve important philosophical and spiritual ideas. As I'll bring up later in this presentation, I have an example of this happening. And then the historical spread of Buddhism helps us understand how we talk about globalization, cultural identity, and the role of religion in society. So we'll get into that.
Okay so let's talk about the creation of Buddhism. Buddhism originated in present-day northern India around the mid-4th to mid-6th century BCE. It's based on the teaching of this man, the first Buddha.
Buddha meaning enlightened or awakened one. Got a picture of him over here on the right. There's not really much to be said about the first Buddha in terms of historical fact.
A lot of early texts on him contain supernatural elements, making him more of a mythological being, and some argue that to remove the supernatural elements to create a more rational Buddha would re-mythologize him. However, most scholars will agree that he lived, taught, and founded a monastic order. So what are the teachings in Buddhism?
I put it's a religion and a philosophy. It was tough for me to find a cut and dry answer on this. It's a way of life. It operates under a philosophical framework to help followers understand the nature of existence, suffering, and the mind.
It's teaching on concepts like the Four Noble Truths, which I have a little image on this slide showing that. And the Eightfold Path. provide a practical guide for ethical living and mental development but it also features um kind of religious elements uh it features beliefs and ceremonies like a religion would but it typically in buddhism you're not worshiping a deity so i think that's why some people say it's not a religion um the teachings are you centered around the belief that suffering arises alongside attachment but there's a path that can cultivate an awakened state free of unease and suffering so Buddhism is meant to guide you on that path and it helps followers towards enlightenment. Enlightenment being a state of being in which one understands the true nature of suffering and the reality of life so you're kind of just free from unease and suffering whenever you're enlightened.
Okay so here I have a map of the Silk Road which is a series of trade routes that span over 6,400 kilometers all the way from Greece to Japan. Now the Silk Road was active as early as the second century BCE and it helped to grow the economy in South and Central Asia with the rise in the merchant class. One important thing to note is that although the Silk Road stretches such a long distance, it's just a series of connected routes and most people didn't travel the entirety of it, only parts. So why is the Silk Road important? It's because people traded more than just goods along the Silk Road.
People traded ideas along the Silk Road, one of those being Buddhism. One way this was accomplished was through merchants staying at monasteries along the Silk Road. Here, monks would teach them lessons and pray for them on their journeys, and in exchange, merchants and sometimes the government, they would donate money or goods or even land.
And so this is important because... Without the Silk Road, Buddhism wouldn't have been able to spread all throughout South and Central Asia like how it did. And even though Buddhism started in Northern India, it was able to spread as far as Japan thanks to the Silk Road. Okay, so I kind of talked about how Buddhism spread along the Silk Road. Now I want to talk about the impact that this spread had on Buddhism.
So... As Buddhism spread to regions like Central Asia, China, Tibet, and Japan, it adapted to local social structures and spiritual needs. So Buddhism was exposed to many different cultures, languages, and beliefs, and this interaction led to the adaptation of Buddhist teachings and practices to local customs and traditions, resulting in unique interpretations of Buddhism that would pop up. So Buddhist texts, they were translated into a bunch of different languages.
I got Sanskrit, Chinese, Tibetan. This often led to variations in the meaning and the emphasis of the texts. So different schools of thought emerged based on these translations and the context in which they were understood. So how do we get an idea of the impact that Buddhism had along all these cultures? and that the cultures in return had on Buddhism all along South and Central Asia.
Well, one example would be the Dunhuang manuscripts. They're found in a library near Dunhuang, China, which would have been a vital resting point for merchants and pilgrims traveling throughout the region from all directions along the Silk Road. and it would have been one of the first cities that traders from the west would go through upon entering China.
So in this library cave, researchers found more than 40,000 scrolls, and they help us understand the cultural diversity of the ancient city. The scrolls refer to a large number of goods that were produced in the city and in its surrounding regions. sold to merchants including silks of many varieties cotton wool fur tea ceramics medicine all of this like records they give us a unique view of the imports and exports and illustrate Dunhuang as a vibrant city along the Silk Road But another thing about the city is Buddhist monks founded caves and they use them as centers for teaching The caves are actually filled with a lot of Buddhist imagery a bunch of wall paintings I tried to get a picture Here that you could see you could see the room and the statues and the wall paintings and looks like scrolls I think it's a little bit doctored but you get the idea So pilgrims they would come from all over and visit monasteries set up along the city. And in these caves, even though they were set up and stored by Buddhist monks, they also featured a lot of other religious texts.
There's Eastern Christian texts, Taoist texts, Jewish, and other texts from other religions in there as well. So the Buddhists were taking care of a bunch of different cultures. religions and things outside of what they would normally deal with.