Buddhism attested in Han China

Assembled from 51 blocks · 1 evidence · 45 related

1. Story
2. Buddhist practice and translation activity appear in Chinese sources during the first and second centuries CE, associated with Central Asian and Indian merchants, envoys and monks moving along the Hexi Corridor. Traditional Chinese accounts assign a founding vision to Emperor Ming in the first century; historians treat that story as legendary and the actual arrival as gradual and merchant-mediated rather than a single datable event.
3. Knowledge
4. Dunhuang
5. Buddhism
6. Silk Road religious corridor
7. Buddhism attested in Han China
8. Connections
9. Buddhism
10. Silk Road religious corridor
11. Dunhuang
12. Sogdian merchant networks
13. Silk Road religious corridor
14. Xuanzang
15. Mogao Caves
16. First cave cut at Mogao (traditional date)
17. Xuanzang travels to India and back
18. The Dunhuang Diamond Sutra is printed
19. Gandhara
20. Ashoka (Ashoka Maurya)
21. Ashoka's bilingual Greek-Aramaic inscription at Kandahar
22. Council at Pataliputra and the despatch of Buddhist missions (traditional account)
23. Buddhism attested in Han China
24. Anthropomorphic Buddha images appear in Gandhara and Mathura
25. Traditional founding of the first cave at Mogao
26. Xuanzang's overland journey to India and return
27. Construction of Borobudur under Shailendra patronage
28. Buddhism
29. Church of the East (Nestorian Christianity)
30. Xuanzang
31. Dunhuang
32. Indian Ocean maritime trade network
33. Ashoka's bilingual Greek-Aramaic inscription at Kandahar
34. Buddhism attested in Han China
35. Traditional founding of the first cave at Mogao
36. Xuanzang's overland journey to India and return
37. Alopen received at the Tang court
38. The Xi'an stele is erected
39. Northern Tarim route
40. Southern Tarim route
41. Mogao Caves
42. Mogao Caves
43. First cave cut at Mogao (traditional date)
44. The Sogdian Ancient Letters are abandoned west of Dunhuang
45. Mogao Cave 17 is sealed
46. Wang Yuanlu opens Mogao Cave 17
47. Silk Road religious corridor
48. Buddhism attested in Han China
49. Traditional founding of the first cave at Mogao
50. Evidence
51. The sealed library cave — Mogao Cave 17 — yielded tens of thousands of manuscripts, paintings, textiles and printed texts dating from the late fourth to the early eleventh century, written in at least seventeen languages and twenty-four scripts, Chinese and Tibetan most prominent among them, alongside Sanskrit, Sogdian, Khotanese and Old Uyghur. The corpus is Buddhist, Manichaean, Christian and secular-commercial together — direct evidence that religious and commercial texts moved through the same oasis. V55 verification basis: the IDP catalogue was retrieved in summary; individual manuscript records were not consulted, this session having no direct network access to idp.bl.uk.