THE SPREAD OF BUDDHISM IN SERINDIA: BUDDHISM AMONG IRANIANS, TOCHARIANS AND TURKS BEFORE THE 13TH CENTURY
Xavier Tremblay (Köln)
1. Definition of the Subject
The term “Serindia”, coined by Aurel Stein, combines Northwestern Afghanistan, and the former Soviet and Chinese Turkestans. This area, though it was united by the coexistence of Iranian and Indian in uence between the beginning of the Christian era and the period of Islamicisation, in fact encompassed four geographically and ecologi- cally distinct areas: 1. The partly desertlike eastern fringe of Western Iran, with the provinces of Margiana around Merv (now in Turkmenistan, near Mary) and Aria around Herat. It is probable that Parthian, a Western Iranian language, was spoken in Margiana up to the sixth century AD when the province was persianised. 2. The mountainous Hindukush and Turkestan ranges, in which almost every valley had its own language (as it is still often the case now). Two regions were prominent: Bactria between the Hindukush and the Iron Gate, along the middle course of the Oxus (approximately from the con uence of the Panj and the Kokcha to the western boundary of Afghanistan) and along the Bactres, Xulm and Qunduz rivers in the south, and the Wax, Ka r- nigan and Surxan rivers in the north. The Bactrian dynasties, that is the KuTas (from Kun; 120 BC–233 AD), and after a period of Sassanian occupation (233–ca. 375 AD), the Chionites and Kidarites (360–480 AD) and nally the Hephthalites (480–560), whom the Türks defeated and eventually vassalised, constituted mighty empires dominating Northern India and, at least during the Hephthalite Empire, Central Asia.1
1 Brough 1965 (whose theory of a KuTa dominion upon the Tarim form rests on insuf cient evidence, but who pointed aptly to wide-ranging in uence); Kuwayama 1989; Grenet 1996. The whole Bactrian chronology is matter of dispute with datings diverg- ing sometimes more than one hundred years. I follow Enoki 1969, 1970; Grenet 1996, p. 371 n. 17; 2002, pp. 205–209; 220f. A Sassanian occupation of Bactria already in 76 xavier tremblay
Serindia in the 2nd century AD