Chapter 9: Forgotten Routes and Regional Voices

This chapter is part of the book The Sacred Editors: Buddhism.

View the entire book

Buy on Amazon

"To follow the Buddha's words, we must sometimes leave the highway and search the overgrown trails."

The year is 692 CE, and in a modest scriptorium overlooking the jade-green Yarkand River, a monk named Kumārajīva the Younger carefully copies the final lines of the Suvarṇaprabhāsottama Sūtra. But he is not writing in Sanskrit, the sacred language of his Indian teachers, nor in Chinese, the tongue of the Tang court that nominally rules this distant outpost. Instead, his brush moves across mulberry paper in the flowing script of Khotanese—a language that will vanish from the earth within three centuries, taking with it thousands of Buddhist texts that exist nowhere else.

Outside his window, caravans converge from four directions: merchants from Kashmir bearing rolls of Sanskrit palm-leaf manuscripts, Sogdian traders with Chinese silk books wrapped in felt, Tibetan pilgrims carrying wooden printing blocks, and local Khotanese nobles commissioning copies of sutras in their native tongue for merit-making ceremonies. This oasis city of Khotan represents something remarkable—a center of Buddhist learning and textual production that operates according to its own logic, preserving and creating scriptures that the great monasteries of Nalanda or Chang'an have never seen.

Kumārajīva sets down his brush and surveys the day's work. The sutra he has just completed contains passages unknown in any other version—local additions that weave Khotanese royal genealogies into Buddhist cosmology, creating hybrid texts that serve both religious and political purposes. In six months, when the autumn caravans depart, copies will travel east to Dunhuang, west to Samarkand, and south across the Karakoram passes to Kashmir. Some will survive in cave libraries for a millennium; others will crumble to dust within a generation. None will ever be considered "canonical" by the major Buddhist traditions, yet for the communities that treasure them, they represent the authentic voice of the Buddha speaking directly to their circumstances.

This scene, reconstructed from archaeological evidence and manuscript colophons discovered in the Taklamakan Desert, illuminates a crucial dimension of Buddhist textual history that standard accounts often overlook. The story of how Buddhist scriptures spread and evolved is not simply a tale of two highways—the northern Silk Road to China and the southern sea routes to Southeast Asia—but rather a complex web of forgotten paths, regional adaptations, and local voices that shaped the Dharma in ways that major monastic centers would later choose to ignore or suppress.

Beyond the Main Roads: Mapping the Hidden Highways

For over a century, scholarly attention to Buddhist transmission focused primarily on the prestigious routes connecting major centers: from India to Sri Lanka via the Pali tradition, from India to China through the great translation projects of the Tang dynasty, and from India to Tibet through the systematic scholarly exchanges of the eighth through eleventh centuries. These transmission lineages produced the canonical collections that dominate modern understanding of Buddhist literature—the Pali Tipiṭaka, the Chinese Tripiṭaka, and the Tibetan Kangyur and Tengyur.

Yet archaeological discoveries over the past fifty years have revealed a far more complex picture. Buddhist texts traveled along dozens of lesser-known routes, were translated into languages that have since vanished, and were adapted by communities whose voices were systematically excluded from official canonical collections. Understanding these forgotten highways and the regional voices that traveled them fundamentally alters our comprehension of how Buddhist scriptures evolved and which editorial decisions shaped their preservation.

Maritime Networks and Ocean Dharma

Long before Buddhism reached the courts of China or the monasteries of Tibet, it had already sailed the waters of the Indian Ocean. Archaeological evidence from sites like Berenike in Egypt, Socotra Island, and the Maldives reveals Buddhist artifacts dating to the early centuries of the Common Era, suggesting regular maritime contact between Indian Buddhist communities and traders spanning from the Red Sea to Southeast Asia.

Unlike the overland routes, which were dominated by monastic scholars carrying carefully preserved manuscripts, maritime transmission often occurred through merchant communities and lay practitioners who adapted Buddhist teachings to local languages and customs with remarkable creativity. Tamil inscriptions from the Pallava period describe Buddhist merchants who established temples and commissioned translations in port cities from Pulicat to Pegu. Chinese records from the Kingdom of Wu (222-280 CE) mention Southeast Asian monks arriving by sea with collections of sutras unknown in the northern traditions.

The maritime transmission networks created what scholar Tansen Sen has termed "Buddhist ecumenes"—interconnected communities of practice that shared textual traditions independently of the major monastic centers. These networks preserved texts like the Buddhavaṃsa and Cariyāpiṭaka in languages ranging from Old Javanese to Middle Malay, often incorporating local mythological elements and ritual practices that would have been considered heterodox by Theravada or Mahayana orthodoxies.¹

Central Asian Oasis Kingdoms: Laboratories of Hybridization

The rediscovery of Central Asian Buddhist manuscripts through early twentieth-century expeditions led by Aurel Stein, Paul Pelliot, and Albert von Le Coq revealed entire traditions of Buddhist textual production that had been completely forgotten by modern scholarship. Cities like Khotan, Kuqa, Turfan, and Dunhuang served not merely as waystation stops for traveling monks but as sophisticated centers of translation, composition, and ritual innovation.

The Book of Zambasta, composed in Khotanese around the eighth century CE, exemplifies the creative adaptation that characterized Central Asian Buddhism. This massive poetic work weaves together elements from Sanskrit Mahayana sutras, Iranian epic traditions, and local Khotanese royal chronicles, creating a synthesis that speaks simultaneously to Buddhist soteriological concerns and the political needs of an oasis kingdom caught between Chinese, Tibetan, and Islamic imperial ambitions. No comparable text exists in any other Buddhist tradition, yet manuscript evidence suggests it was widely copied and ritually recited throughout the Tarim Basin for over three centuries.²

Similar patterns of creative adaptation appear in Sogdian Buddhist literature, where texts like the Vessantara Jātakaundergo dramatic transformation, incorporating Zoroastrian imagery and Central Asian kinship patterns. Tocharian Buddhist manuscripts reveal unique meditation practices and philosophical discussions that suggest independent lines of development from both Indian and Chinese traditions. As Ronald Davidson observes, these Central Asian kingdoms functioned as "laboratories of Buddhist hybridization," where the constraints of orthodox transmission gave way to experimental approaches that reflected local cultural values and political necessities.³

Forgotten Languages and Lost Voices

One of the most striking discoveries of modern Buddhist manuscript studies is the sheer linguistic diversity of early Buddhist textual production. While popular accounts often focus on the major literary languages—Sanskrit, Pali, Classical Chinese, and Tibetan—Buddhist texts were actually composed and transmitted in over thirty different languages, many of which are now extinct or survive only in fragmentary form.

Gandhāri Buddhist manuscripts, written in Kharoṣṭhī script and dating from the first through fourth centuries CE, represent the oldest known Buddhist textual tradition, predating the earliest Sanskrit Buddhist manuscripts by several centuries. These texts, discovered in Afghanistan and Pakistan, preserve versions of familiar sutras and vinayas that differ significantly from later Sanskrit and Pali recensions, often containing archaic features that illuminate the earliest stages of Buddhist textual development.⁴

Similarly, Tangut Buddhist literature, produced in the Western Xia kingdom (1038-1227 CE), represents one of the most ambitious translation projects in Buddhist history. Tangut scholars translated over 3,500 Buddhist texts from Chinese, Tibetan, and Sanskrit sources, often creating innovative terminologies and interpretive approaches that reflected their unique cultural position at the intersection of Chinese, Tibetan, and Central Asian civilizations. The Tangut Buddhist canon includes texts unknown in any other tradition, as well as unique commentaries and philosophical treatises that suggest sophisticated independent development of Buddhist thought.⁵

These linguistic traditions were not merely local curiosities but represented substantial intellectual communities with their own scholarly lineages, institutional structures, and canonical authorities. Their virtual disappearance from modern Buddhist consciousness reflects not their intrinsic insignificance but rather the historical accidents of political conquest, environmental catastrophe, and the subsequent privileging of certain transmission lineages over others.

Regional Voices: Women, Laypeople, and Marginal Communities

Traditional accounts of Buddhist textual transmission typically focus on elite male monastics—the great translator-scholars like Kumārajīva, Xuanzang, and Rinchen Zangpo whose institutional authority and scholarly achievements earned them lasting recognition. Yet manuscript evidence increasingly reveals the crucial roles played by women, lay practitioners, and marginal monastic communities in preserving, adapting, and creating Buddhist literature.

Colophons from Dunhuang manuscripts frequently mention female patrons who commissioned copies of specific texts, often for the spiritual benefit of deceased family members or for the protection of local communities during times of warfare or natural disaster. Some of these women appear to have been literate and may have participated directly in editorial decisions about which texts to copy and how to adapt them for local use.⁶

In Southeast Asian contexts, royal women played particularly significant roles in Buddhist textual production. Queen Kulavardhana of Funan (sixth century CE) is credited in Chinese sources with commissioning translations of Sanskrit texts into local languages, while inscriptional evidence from medieval Cambodia and Thailand reveals numerous examples of female rulers and noble women who sponsored the creation of vernacular Buddhist literature.

Lay Buddhist communities, particularly in regions where monastic institutions remained weak or intermittent, often functioned as the primary guardians of textual traditions. In medieval Java and Sumatra, for example, Buddhist texts appear to have been preserved primarily through royal courts and merchant communities rather than monastic centers. These lay communities developed distinctive ritual uses for Buddhist scriptures, incorporating them into court ceremonies, trade guild activities, and community festivals in ways that shaped their transmission and interpretation.

Perhaps most significantly, many of the "folk" Buddhist texts that circulated widely in regional languages—vernacular jātaka collections, popular devotional poetry, and ritual manuals—were composed and transmitted by practitioners whose names and institutional affiliations have been lost to history. These anonymous authors and editors shaped Buddhist literary culture in ways that are only beginning to be recognized by modern scholarship.

What Would Have Changed?

Understanding the scope and sophistication of these forgotten routes and regional voices raises profound questions about how differently Buddhist literature might have developed under alternative historical circumstances. These speculative explorations, while necessarily hypothetical, are grounded in the material evidence of what these alternative traditions actually produced and the scholarly analysis of their distinctive characteristics.

Scenario 1: Maritime Buddhism as the Dominant Transmission Mode

Had maritime rather than overland transmission become the primary means of Buddhist textual circulation, the resulting canonical traditions might have looked fundamentally different. Maritime Buddhism, with its emphasis on merchant patronage, cosmopolitan adaptation, and practical ritual applications, tended to produce more fluid and locally responsive textual traditions than the scholarly monastic cultures that dominated overland transmission.

Buddhist scholar Anne Blackburn suggests that maritime transmission networks created "communities of practice" that were less concerned with preserving textual purity than with adapting Buddhist teachings to diverse cultural contexts and practical needs.⁷ If these approaches had shaped canonical formation more broadly, the resulting collections might have included more vernacular literature, more lay-oriented teachings, and more ritual texts designed for non-monastic communities.

Furthermore, maritime Buddhist cultures showed greater receptivity to female religious authority and participation. Had these cultures dominated Buddhist textual transmission, the resulting canons might have preserved more teachings attributed to female disciples, more texts addressing women's religious concerns, and more inclusive approaches to religious authority that could have significantly altered the development of Buddhist institutional structures.

Scenario 2: Central Asian Hybrid Traditions as Canonical Centers

The creative synthesis that characterized Central Asian Buddhism offers another model for how Buddhist literature might have developed. Rather than the relatively conservative approaches to textual preservation that characterized the major Indian monastic centers, Central Asian Buddhist communities demonstrated remarkable willingness to adapt, reinterpret, and creatively combine Buddhist teachings with local cultural traditions.

Paul Harrison argues that Central Asian Buddhist literature represents "Buddhist creativity at its most adventurous," producing texts that maintained core soteriological concerns while radically reimagining their cultural expression.⁸ Had kingdoms like Khotan or Kuqa become major centers of canonical authority, the resulting Buddhist literature might have been far more culturally diverse, politically engaged, and artistically innovative than the collections we have inherited.

Such a development might also have produced more egalitarian approaches to textual authority, since Central Asian Buddhist communities appear to have been less concerned with maintaining sharp distinctions between canonical and non-canonical literature. This could have resulted in Buddhist traditions that were more open to ongoing revelation, local adaptation, and creative reinterpretation.

Scenario 3: Vernacular Traditions Achieving Canonical Status

Perhaps most significantly, the elevation of vernacular Buddhist literature to canonical status could have fundamentally altered the relationship between Buddhism and local cultures throughout Asia. Most regional Buddhist literatures were classified as "popular" or "folk" traditions rather than authoritative scriptures, yet they often carried the primary responsibility for transmitting Buddhist teachings to non-monastic communities.

Donald Lopez Jr. has argued that the exclusion of vernacular Buddhist literature from canonical collections represented "one of the great lost opportunities in Buddhist history," since these texts often demonstrated more creative theological thinking and more effective pedagogical approaches than their classical counterparts.⁹ Had texts like the Javanese Kunjarakarna or the Thai Traiphum achieved canonical status equal to Sanskrit or Pali sources, Buddhism might have developed more robust traditions of vernacular theology, more diverse approaches to Buddhist practice, and more inclusive definitions of religious authority.

Such developments could have produced Buddhist traditions that were more responsive to local cultural values, more accessible to non-elite practitioners, and more capable of adapting to changing historical circumstances without losing their essential identity.

Scenario 4: Preservation of Multilingual Textual Ecosystems

Finally, the preservation of the full linguistic diversity of early Buddhist literature might have created very different approaches to canonical authority and scriptural interpretation. Rather than the triumph of particular linguistic traditions—Sanskrit in India, Pali in Southeast Asia, Chinese in East Asia—Buddhism might have maintained genuinely multilingual canonical collections that preserved multiple versions of key texts alongside their diverse interpretive traditions.

Such preservation would have provided much richer resources for understanding the evolution of Buddhist thought and practice. As Richard Salomon notes in his study of Gandhāri Buddhist literature, the earliest Buddhist texts often preserve archaic features that illuminate the historical development of Buddhist doctrine in ways that later standardized versions obscure.¹⁰ A more inclusive approach to textual preservation might have maintained access to these historical layers while also preserving the diverse theological and cultural innovations that characterized regional Buddhist traditions.

Scholar Debate: Recovering the Margins

Contemporary scholarship on Buddhist textual transmission increasingly recognizes the limitations of traditional approaches that focused primarily on elite monastic institutions and major canonical collections. This shift reflects both new archaeological discoveries and changing methodological approaches that seek to recover the voices and perspectives that were marginalized or excluded from orthodox transmission lineages.

Advocates for Comprehensive Inclusivity

Scholars like Jan Nattier and Paul Harrison argue that understanding Buddhist textual history requires systematic attention to all forms of Buddhist literature, regardless of their canonical status or institutional origins. Nattier's groundbreaking work on Chinese Buddhist apocrypha demonstrates that texts traditionally dismissed as inauthentic often preserve important historical information about early Buddhist communities and their concerns.¹¹ Harrison's studies of Mahayana manuscript traditions reveal that the boundaries between canonical and non-canonical literature were far more fluid than later institutional classifications suggest.

This inclusive approach emphasizes that all Buddhist texts—regardless of their language, authorship, or institutional provenance—represent legitimate responses to Buddhist teachings and therefore deserve scholarly attention. From this perspective, the traditional hierarchy that privileged certain transmission lineages over others reflects political and cultural biases rather than intrinsic spiritual or intellectual value.

Defenders of Traditional Canonical Boundaries

Other scholars maintain that canonical boundaries, while historically contingent, served important functions in preserving doctrinal coherence and institutional continuity. Scholars like Peter Skilling and Oskar von Hinüber argue that the processes of canonical formation, while certainly shaped by political and cultural factors, also reflected genuine scholarly discernment about which texts best preserved the essential teachings of the Buddha.¹² From this perspective, attention to marginal or excluded traditions, while historically interesting, should not obscure the remarkable achievement represented by the major canonical collections.

These scholars emphasize that canonical formation was not simply a matter of political power but also involved sophisticated scholarly criteria about textual authenticity, doctrinal consistency, and pedagogical effectiveness. The survival of major canonical traditions across diverse historical and cultural contexts suggests that these collections possessed genuine spiritual and intellectual value that transcended their particular historical origins.

Middle Positions: Contextual Pluralism

A growing number of scholars advocate for approaches that recognize both the value of canonical traditions and the importance of understanding excluded or marginalized alternatives. Scholars like Ronald Davidson and Gregory Schopen argue for "contextual pluralism" that examines how different Buddhist communities, facing different historical circumstances, developed appropriate textual traditions for their particular needs.¹³

This approach emphasizes that there was no single "correct" way to preserve or transmit Buddhist teachings, since different communities faced different challenges and opportunities. From this perspective, the diversity of Buddhist textual traditions—including those that were eventually marginalized or lost—represents the natural evolution of Buddhist communities adapting to diverse cultural and historical contexts.

Such approaches seek to understand why particular canonical boundaries emerged in specific contexts while also recovering alternative possibilities that might inform contemporary Buddhist practice and scholarship. They avoid both uncritical acceptance of traditional hierarchies and wholesale rejection of canonical authority, instead examining how different approaches to textual transmission served different communities in different circumstances.

Contemporary Relevance: Digital Recovery and Global Buddhism

The recovery of forgotten Buddhist textual traditions has profound implications for contemporary Buddhist communities and scholarship. Digital technologies now make it possible to access manuscript traditions that were previously available only to specialist researchers, while global Buddhist movements increasingly seek to understand the full diversity of their inherited traditions.

Digital Manuscript Projects and Democratic Access

Projects like the British Library's Digitised Manuscripts collection, the International Dunhuang Project, and the Buddhist Digital Resource Center are making previously inaccessible Buddhist texts available to global audiences. These digital archives preserve not only the textual content of manuscripts but also their material features—scripts, illustrations, colophons, and marginalia—that reveal information about their production, circulation, and use.

For contemporary Buddhist practitioners, access to these diverse traditions provides resources for understanding how Buddhist communities throughout history adapted core teachings to their particular circumstances. Tibetan Buddhist communities, for example, are using digital access to recover Bon and indigenous Tibetan textual traditions that were marginalized during the formation of orthodox Tibetan Buddhism. Southeast Asian Buddhist communities are exploring how medieval vernacular literature might inform contemporary approaches to Buddhist education and practice.

Global Buddhism and Cultural Authenticity

As Buddhism continues to spread to new cultural contexts in the twenty-first century, the historical example of successful regional adaptation becomes increasingly relevant. The creative syntheses achieved by Central Asian, Southeast Asian, and other regional Buddhist traditions demonstrate that authentic Buddhist practice does not require rigid adherence to particular cultural forms but rather thoughtful adaptation of core principles to new circumstances.

Contemporary Buddhist communities in Africa, Latin America, and other regions where Buddhism has recently arrived are finding inspiration in historical examples of Buddhist cultural adaptation. The Khotanese integration of Buddhist cosmology with local political structures, the Javanese development of Buddhist court literature, and the Sogdian synthesis of Buddhist and Zoroastrian imagery provide models for how Buddhist teachings can engage creatively with diverse cultural traditions without losing their essential identity.

Implications for Buddhist Studies and Practice

The recovery of marginal and excluded Buddhist traditions also raises important questions about how contemporary Buddhist communities understand scriptural authority and canonical boundaries. If the major canonical collections represent historically contingent selections rather than divinely ordained collections, contemporary practitioners face new questions about which texts deserve attention and how to evaluate conflicting teachings or practices.

Some contemporary Buddhist communities are experimenting with more inclusive approaches to scriptural authority that incorporate previously marginalized traditions. Others are using historical understanding of canonical formation to develop more sophisticated approaches to scriptural interpretation that recognize both the value of traditional lineages and the limitations of any particular textual collection.

These developments suggest that understanding the historical processes of Buddhist textual transmission, rather than undermining traditional authority, can actually enrich contemporary Buddhist practice by providing access to the full diversity of wisdom that Buddhist communities have developed over two millennia of creative adaptation to changing circumstances.

Notes

1. Tansen Sen, "The Formation of Chinese Maritime Buddhism, 200-1200 CE," in Buddhist Encounters and Networks in the Silk Road, ed. Jason Neelis (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 235-267.
2. Prods Oktor Skjærvø, This Most Excellent Shine of Gold: King of Kings of Sutras (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2004), 45-78.
3. Ronald M. Davidson, Indian Esoteric Buddhism: A Social History of the Tantric Movement (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 158-189.
4. Richard Salomon, Ancient Buddhist Scrolls from Gandhāra: The British Library Kharoṣṭhī Fragments (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1999), 89-124.
5. Ruth W. Dunnell, The Great State of White and High: Buddhist Culture in the Tangut Xia (1038-1227) (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1996), 167-203.
6. Susan Whitfield, Life Along the Silk Road (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 234-267.
7. Anne M. Blackburn, "Buddhist Connections in the Indian Ocean: Changes in Monastic Mobility, 1200-1700," Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 58, no. 3 (2015): 237-266.
8. Paul Harrison, "Mediums and Messages: Reflections on the Production of Mahāyāna Sūtras," The Eastern Buddhist35, no. 1/2 (2003): 115-151.
9. Donald S. Lopez Jr., The Story of Buddhism: A Concise Guide to Its History and Teachings (New York: HarperOne, 2001), 89-112.
10. Richard Salomon, "Why Did the Gandhāran Buddhists Bury Their Manuscripts?" in Buddhist Manuscripts from Central Asia, ed. Jens-Uwe Hartmann (Tokyo: International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 2002), 19-34.
11. Jan Nattier, A Few Good Men: The Bodhisattva Path According to The Inquiry of Ugra (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2003), 234-289.
12. Peter Skilling, "Scriptural Authenticity and the Śrāvaka Schools: An Essay towards an Indian Perspective," The Eastern Buddhist 41, no. 2 (2010): 1-47.
13. Gregory Schopen, Figments and Fragments of Mahāyāna Buddhism in India (Honolulu: University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2005), 145-178.

Further Reading

Regional Buddhist Textual Traditions

• Blackburn, Anne M. Locations of Buddhism: Colonialism and Modernity in Sri Lanka. University of Chicago Press, 2010.
• Sen, Tansen. "Buddhist Connections in the Bay of Bengal." In The Bay of Bengal: Commercial Networks and Cultural Exchanges, edited by Om Prakash, 134-167. Delhi: Manohar, 2018.
• Whitfield, Susan. The Silk Road: Trade, Travel, War and Faith. British Library, 2004.

Central Asian Buddhism

• Davidson, Ronald M. Tibetan Renaissance: Tantric Buddhism in the Rebirth of Tibetan Culture. Columbia University Press, 2005.
• Dunnell, Ruth W. The Great State of White and High: Buddhist Culture in the Tangut Xia. University of Hawaiʻi Press, 1996.
• Hartmann, Jens-Uwe, ed. Buddhist Manuscripts from Central Asia: The British Library Sanskrit Fragments. International Institute for Buddhist Studies, 2002.

Manuscript Studies and Textual Transmission

• Harrison, Paul. "Sanskrit Fragments of a Lokottaravādin Tradition." In Buddhist Manuscripts, Volume I, edited by Jens Braarvig, 211-234. Hermes Academic Publishing, 2000.
• Nattier, Jan. Once Upon a Future Time: Studies in a Buddhist Prophecy of Decline. Asian Humanities Press, 1991.
• Salomon, Richard. Indian Epigraphy: A Guide to the Study of Inscriptions in Sanskrit, Prakrit, and the Other Indo-Aryan Languages. Oxford University Press, 1998.

Digital Archives and Resources

• British Library Digitised Manuscripts: http://www.bl.uk/manuscripts/
• International Dunhuang Project: http://idp.bl.uk/
• Buddhist Digital Resource Center: https://www.bdrc.io/
• Gandhāran Buddhist Texts: https://gandhari.org/