Book Review: "Early Buddhist Transmission and Trade Networks: Mobility and Exchange Within and Beyond the Northwestern Borderlands of South Asia,"By Jason Neelis
EARLY BUDDHIST TRANSMISSION AND TRADE NETWORKS: MOBILITY AND EXCHANGE WITHIN AND BEYOND THE NORTHWESTERN BORDERLANDS OF SOUTH ASIA . By Jason Neelis . Dynamics in the History of Religion, Vol . 2 . Leiden : Brill , 2011 . Pp . xviii + 372 ; tables, maps, figures. Cloth, $160 .
摘要
This major contribution to the growing body of work contextualizing the spread of Buddhism traces the pathways of the first millennium‐and‐a‐half of its northward transmission. In the introductory chapter, Neelis outlines his sources (literary and epigraphic records, devotional images, and archaeological artifacts) and methods (models of religious mobility and network dynamics), and situates his work within an ongoing discussion of the Buddhist economies of merit and pious enterprise. The substantial second chapter provides a diachronic overview of royal patronage and the establishment of Buddhist monasteries and stūpas along the trade routes linking northern India, Iran, and Central Asia. Chapter three follows Buddhism “following the money” along northern, southern, and maritime trade routes, while chapter four centers on the archaeological and literary remains of the influential Buddhist culture of Gandhāra. Chapter five is perhaps the most intriguing and original: we get a rare glimpse of Buddhist traces in the austere high‐altitude environment of Northern Pakistan, where graffiti and petroglyphs preserve signs of the pilgrims who passed through these places‐in‐between. Chapter six follows long‐distance transmission along the Silk Route into Central Asia and China. In a final chapter, having assembled an impressive cartography of the diversity that Buddhism traversed and engendered, Neelis links material and literary features in an assessment of Buddhism's shape‐shifting capabilities. Overall, Neelis has managed the impressive feat of maintaining an ant's‐eye focus on the cultural, economic, and political idiosyncrasies of Buddhist peregrination, while at the same time giving us a bird's‐eye view of its many streams, pools, and deserted pathways.
