According to the Tibetan account no more monasteries were built for seven reigns. The eighth king built two, one on the celebrated Gośirsha or Gośringa mountain. In the eleventh reign after Vijayasambhava, more chaityas and viharas were built in connection with the introduction of the silkworm industry. Subsequently, but without any clear indication of date, the introduction of the Mahâsanghika and Sarvâstivâdin schools is mentioned.
The Tibetan annals also mention several persecutions of Buddhism in Khotan as a result of which the monks fled to Tibet and Bruzha. Their chronology is confused but seems to make these troubles coincide with a persecution in Tibet, presumably that of Lang-dar-ma. If so, the persecution in Khotan must have been due to the early attacks of Mohammedans which preceded the final conquest in about 1000 A.D.[521]
Neither the statements of the Chinese annalists about Central Asia nor its own traditions prove that Buddhism flourished there before the Christian era. But they do not disprove it and even if the dream of the Emperor Ming-Ti and the consequent embassy are dismissed as legends, it is admitted that Buddhism penetrated to China by land not later than the early decades of that era. It must therefore have been known in Central Asia previously and perhaps Khotan was the place where it first flourished.
It is fairly certain that about 160 B.C. the Yüeh-chih moved westwards and settled in the lands of the Oxus after ejecting the Sakas, but like many warlike nomads they may have oscillated between the east and west, recoiling if they struck against a powerful adversary in either quarter. Le Coq has put forward an interesting theory of their origin. It is that they were one of the tribes known as Scythians in Europe and at an unknown period moved eastwards from southern Russia, perhaps leaving traces of their presence in the monuments still existing in the district of Minussinsk. He also identifies them with the red-haired, blue-eyed people of the Chotscho frescoes and the speakers of the Tokharian language. But these interesting hypotheses cannot be regarded as proved. It is, however, certain that the Yüeh-chih invaded India[522], founded the Kushan Empire and were intimately connected (especially in the person of their great king Kanishka) with Gandharan art and the form of Buddhism which finds expression in it. Now the Chinese pilgrim Fa-Hsien (c. 400) found the Hînayâna prevalent in Shan-shan, Kucha, Kashgar, Osh, Udyana and Gandhara. Hsüan Chuang also notes its presence in Balkh, Bamian, and Persia. Both notice that the Mahâyâna was predominant in Khotan though not to the exclusion of the other school. It would appear that in modern language the North-West Frontier province of India, Afghanistan, Badakshan (with small adjoining states), the Pamir regions and the Tarim basin all accepted Gandharan 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 Sarvâstivâdin school of the Hînayâna as prevalent. It is known that this school was closely connected with the Council of Kanishka. Its metaphysics were decidedly not Mahâyânist 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 Hsüan Chuang relates that he had a dispute in Kucha with a Mahâyânist doctor who maintained that the books called Tsa-hsin, Chü-shê, and P'i-sha were sufficient for salvation, and denounced the Yogaśâstra as heretical, to the great indignation of the pilgrim[523] whose practical definition of Mahâyânism 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 Hînayâna much that we should not expect to find there.
The Mahâyânist Buddhism of Khotan was a separate stream and Hsüan Chuang says that it came from Kashmir. Though Kashmir is not known as a centre of Mahâyânism, 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 the Sanskrit Agamas, found at Turfan, Tun-huang, and in the Khotan district: fragments of the dramas and poems of Aśvaghosha from Turfan: the Prâtimoksha of the Sarvastivâdins from Kucha and numerous versions of the anthology called Dharmapada or Udâna. The most interesting of these is the Prakrit version found in the neighbourhood of Khotan, but fragments in Tokharian and Sanskrit have also been discovered. All this literature probably represents the canon as it existed in the epoch of Kanishka and of the Gandharan sculptures, or at least the older stratum in that canon.
The newer stratum is composed of Mahâyânist sutras of which there is a great abundance, though no complete list has been published[526]. The popularity of the Prajñâ-pâramitâ, the Lotus and the Suvarṇa-prabhâsa is attested. The last was translated into both Uigur (from the Chinese) and into "Iranien Oriental." To a still later epoch[527] belong the Dhâraṇîs or magical formulæ which have been discovered in considerable quantities.