Early Buddhist Transmission and Trade Networks: Mobility and Exchange within and beyond the Northwestern Borderlands of South Asia

摘要

As will be evident from the title, the main focus of this book is the transmission of Buddhism. One might expect such a book to give an account of pilgrim records, inscriptions and Buddhist sites in northern Pakistan, Afghanistan and neighbouring areas, a discussion of the old routes through the upper Indus that can be documented as a result, and a few thoughts on where Buddhism was coming from (India) and where it was going (Central Asia and China). This book contains all that, and deals with the material in a very competent manner. But it is also substantially more. The idea of 'transmission' brings with it a number of problems of a theoretical and historical nature.