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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Non-Christian religions > Religions of Indic & Oriental origin > Buddhism
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Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade - The Realignment of India-China Relations, 600-1400 (Paperback)
Loot Price: R1,191
Discovery Miles 11 910
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Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade - The Realignment of India-China Relations, 600-1400 (Paperback)
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Relations between China and India underwent a dramatic
transformation from Buddhist-dominated to commerce-centered
exchanges in the seventh to fifteenth centuries. The unfolding of
this transformation, its causes, and wider ramifications are
examined in this masterful analysis of the changing patterns of the
interaction between the two most important cultural spheres in
Asia. Tansen Sen offers a new perspective on Sino-Indian relations
during the Tang dynasty (618-907), arguing that the period is
notable not only for religious and diplomatic exchanges but also
for the process through which China emerged as a center of Buddhist
learning, practice, and pilgrimage. Before the seventh century, the
Chinese clergy-given the spatial gap between the sacred Buddhist
world of India and the peripheral China-suffered from a "borderland
complex." A close look at the evolving practice of relic veneration
in China (at Famen Monastery in particular), the exposition of
Mount Wutai as an abode of the bodhisattva Manjusri, and the
propagation of the idea of Maitreya's descent in China, however,
reveals that by the eighth century China had overcome its complex
and successfully established a Buddhist realm within its borders.
The emergence of China as a center of Buddhism had profound
implications on religious interactions between the two countries
and is cited by Sen as one of the main causes for the weakening of
China's spiritual attraction toward India. At the same time, the
growth of indigenous Chinese Buddhist schools and teachings
retrenched the need for doctrinal input from India. A detailed
examination of the failure of Buddhist translations produced during
the Song dynasty (960-1279), demonstrates that these developments
were responsible for the unraveling of religious bonds between the
two countries and the termination of the Buddhist phase of
Sino-Indian relations. Sen proposes that changes in religious
interactions were paralleled by changes in commercial exchanges.
For most of the first millennium, trading activities between India
and China were closely connected with and sustained through the
transmission of Buddhist doctrines. The eleventh and twelfth
centuries, however, witnessed dramatic changes in the patterns and
structure of mercantile activity between the two countries. Secular
bulk and luxury goods replaced Buddhist ritual items, maritime
channels replaced the overland Silk Road as the most profitable
conduits of commercial exchange, and many of the merchants involved
were followers of Islam rather than Buddhism. Moreover, policies to
encourage foreign trade instituted by the Chinese government and
the Indian kingdoms contributed to the intensification of
commercial activity between the two countries and transformed the
China-India trading circuit into a key segment of cross-continental
commerce.
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