This panel examines key religio-cultural expressions of Buddhism on the Silk Road in history, highlighting material religion and its relationship to pre-modern India. Addressing the locations of Kucha, Datong and Dunhuang, the papers explore cultural encounters on the Silk Routes through the topics of sexuality and monastic identities, cosmology, burial practices and meditation. Together, the papers consider how cultural practices from Northern India (e.g. Kashmir, Kashgar, Gandhāra) were exchanged on the Silk Routes, from Kumārajīva’s translations to the transmission of Sarvāstivāda cave meditation techniques. Linking material culture and beliefs, embodiment and textuality, the papers combine new research findings for discussion.
This project concerns artistic expressions of interreligious ideas and practices related to last rite rituals and teachings about the start of the afterlife—shared between Manichaean and Buddhist communities—attested in text and art from the Uygur era of Manichaean history (762-1024 CE), the Tang (618-907 CE), Liao (907-1125 CE), and Northern Song (960-1126) dynasties. It focuses on core motifs seen on relief sculpture, banners, and hanging scrolls, including traditional/old motifs, such as rebirth into the New Aeon (Manichaean) or the Pure Land (Buddhist); and innovative/new motifs, such as a divine guide for the start of the afterlife and a figure of the deceased as the guided. Through a contextualized assessment of these motifs, I aim to demonstrate that despite the separate origins of their respective doctrines, Manichaeans and Buddhists along the Silk Roads came to portray the rite of passage from life to death analogously. Starting from the 8th/10th centuries, they co-developed strikingly similar art and ritual to envelope the moment of death, aiming to inform and comfort the dying and the mourner alike.