Lands of Asia layouts (Eng) 26.11.21

part iii | cultural and spiritual development
correct, and at the time of the Sassanian campaign against Buddhism, this monastery
must have been undergoing major decline.
All the Buddhist teachers mentioned in Chinese textual sources were directly or
indirectly connected with Merv and Margiana – first a Parthian and later Sassanian
region, which had Buddhist structures.
Sogdia
This region of Central Asia played a prominent role in the establishment of trade
and cultural ties with China. Sogdians were also instrumental in the dissemination
of Buddhism in China. Chinese textual sources name about 20 Sogdian Buddhist
monks, among whom the more well-known are Kang Ju, Kang Mengxiang, Kang
Senghui, Kang Sengkai (E. Zürcher gives his Indian name as Sanghavarman, while
according to P.C. Bagchi it is Sanghamar) and Baoyi or Pao-i (Ratnamati). Kang Ju
was a contemporary of the famous Yuezhi monk Lokakshema and was active in China
after AD 190. He was born in Luoyang and later moved to Chang’an, which had a large
Buddhist community with a group of translators working on translating Mahayana
texts into Chinese. Another Sogdian, Kang Mengxiang, who worked on translations
of works from the life of the Buddha, is mentioned in the same group of translators.
The ancestors of Kang Senghui (he died in AD 280) migrated from Sogdia to
India and then moved to Chiao-chou, on the Gulf of Tonkin (present-day Hanoi,
Vietnam), where Senghui was born in the first quarter of the 3rd century AD.
After his father’s death he renounced the world and became a monk. In AD 247 he
moved to Chien-yeh (modern Nanjing), where he built a monastery and founded a
Buddhist school. Kang Seng-hui was the first Buddhist teacher in southern China.
He is credited with converting the emperor Sun Hao to Buddhism, building many
monasteries and stupas and translating several Buddhist texts and commentaries into
Chinese, some of which have survived to this day.
Another Sogdian monk, Baoyi (family name Kang, Indian name Ratnamati), whose
ancestors migrated from Sogdia to India, arrived in China between 454 and 456 ad,
where he stayed in the Waguan temple in the southern capital. He was an accomplished
connoisseur of Buddhist sutras and the vinaya, and various kinds of incantations and
divinations, and was known by his contemporaries as the ‘Mentor in Tripitaka’.
Additionally, Chinese textual sources mention another two individuals from the 4th
century AD who were directly associated with the propagation of Buddhist teachings in
China. The first is K’ang Fa-shih, who was not only an exegete, but also the first known
calligrapher-monk of Buddhist texts in Chinese history. He worked closely with the
greatest calligrapher of this time, K’ang Hsin, who, judging by his name, was also a
Sogdian. The Buddhist sutras produced by these two men were highly prized.
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