Buddhism

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The first of the major religions to travel the overland routes at scale, moving from northern India through Gandhara and the Kushan realm into the Tarim oases and then into China. The mechanism was commercial before it was missionary: merchants endowed monasteries, monasteries offered lodging and credit along the routes, and translators followed the traffic. An Shigao was translating in Luoyang by 148 CE; Kumarajiva, from Kucha on the northern route, was brought to Chang'an in 401 and headed the translation bureau that shaped Chinese Buddhist vocabulary. The cave complexes at Mogao, Kizil and Bamiyan mark the corridor physically. A belief system, not a place.

A node is not a place. Drawing it on a map would assert something about the world that no stored fact supports.