Comments on third-century Shan-shan and the history of Buddhism,

Abstract

The early centuries of the Christian era are of crucial importance for the history of the Buddhist religion. It is customary to ascribe to this periodthe emergence and development of the Mahāyāna; and by the latter half of the second century A.D. , towards the end of the Later Han dynasty, Buddhism hadspread as far as China, where the earliest of the long succession of translatorswere beginning to produce Chinese versions of Indian Buddhist texts, both Hīayāna and Mahāyāna. A detailed and connected narrative of this remarkable expansion of the religion would form one of the most fascinating chapters in theearly history of Asia. Such a narrative, nevertheless, cannot be written: the surviving information is fragmentary, interpretation is often uncertain, theproblems numerous and intractable. Encouraged by sheer exiguity of primary historical evidence, many modern scholars have consecrated to this period whole