Culture Swapping:

Religion
The permeation of Buddhism, birthed in northern India, is a direct effect of the increased ability and feasibility of making contact with other cultures. Buddhism is a non-theistic religion, with roots reaching as far back as the 5th century BC. From the north, the belief system spread throughout the Indian Subcontinent and both east and west via the Silk Road. Buddhism’s eastward expansion was halted with the conquest of the Persian Empire by Arab Muslim rulers, but didn’t cease to flourish – as eveidence by the fact that it is still the dominant religion in central Asia; More specifically, Buddhism is the predominantly practiced religion of Nepal, South Vietnam, Cambodia, and one of the three major religions in China.

While this road enabled the shaping and molding of other cultures, it was not an easy path to travel. Faxian, the monk, traveled the route at the end of the fourth century, gave some insight into its peril when he said, “The only road-signs are the skeletons of the dead. Wherever they lie, there lies the road to India.”

The Arts
From the fusion of art and religion so characteristic of India and Buddhism spun off Greco-Buddhist art and Buddhist architecture and sculpture. The deity of Buddha arrived in China, Korea, and finally Japan during the 6th century. The Shôsôin1 collection is probably the best illustration of a cultural hodgepodge enabled by the Silk Road. Among many others, this collection includes a five-stringed lute originating in India.

The Birth of New Cultures
The Persian Royal Road was about 2,857 km, and ran from the city of Susa, on the lower Tigris River, to the port of Smyrna, located in Turkey on the Aegean Sea. This road was primarily kept and protected by the Achaemenid Empire (c.700-330 BC). Among various other conveniences, the road had postal stations at regular intervals: These postal stations allowed royal soldiers to transfer messages in a relay structured fashion. Having fresh soldiers and horses to break up the journey allowed messages to move through the entire route in a matter of nine days - a distance that would’ve taken the average traveler approximately three months. This Royal Road did not stand in solitude, but instead linked to many other routes: Some of which included routes to India and Central Asia. These links provided regular contact between India, Mesopotamia and the Mediterranean. Accounts in Esther tell of journeys from Susa to provinces as far away as India and Cush.

Interchanges between singular cultures like those mentioned above led to the formation of hybrid cultures. In northwestern India, near what is now Afghanistan and Pakistan, these hybrids were primarily found along the silk route, where trade and culture from India, China and Persia met. While the concepts of Hinduism and Buddhism were adopted by rulers from China and Persia, north India was equally influenced by their cultures in exchange.

Join us next month as we make another stop on the silk route next month!
 

1 During the 7th and 8th centuries, Chinese, Korean and Japanese ships crossing the East China Sea and the Sea of Japan brought continental goods to Japan. The 8th-century Shôsôin collection of objects, which originally belonged to a Japanese emperor, is the single most important group of Silk Road-related luxury items still in existence.