The Silk Roads: A New History of the World
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As the Romans looked on nervously, a mighty storm cloud was gathering. It was the Emperor Constantine who took action. The son of one of the leading men in the empire, he was ambitious and capable, with a knack for finding himself in the right place at the right time. He had a vision of what was needed for Rome that was as clear as it was startling. The empire needed strong leadership – that much was obvious to everyone. But he had a more radical plan than simply concentrating power in his own hands: to build a new city, a new pearl on the string linking the Mediterranean with the east. The location he chose, fittingly, was the point where Europe and Asia meet.
There had long been rumours of rulers of Rome contemplating moving the seat of imperial power. According to one Roman author, Julius Caesar considered making either Alexandria or the site of ancient Troy in Asia Minor the capital as they were better located to govern where Rome’s interests lay.117 At the start of the fourth century, this finally happened, with a magnificent city established at the crossroads of Europe and Asia that was a statement of where the empire’s focus was fixed.
A splendid new metropolis was built on the site of the old town of Byzantion, on the banks of the Bosporus, which in time came not only to rival Rome but to surpass it. Huge palaces were built, as was a Hippodrome for chariot racing. In the centre of the city an enormous column was set up, carved from a single massive porphyry block, with a statue of the Emperor on the top looking down. The new city was called New Rome, although it quickly came to be known as the city of its founder Constantine – Constantinople. Parallel institutions were set up to mirror those of the mother city, including a senate, whose members were sneered at by some as nouveaux riches – the sons of coppersmiths, bath attendants, sausage-makers and the like.118
Constantinople was to become the largest and most important city in the Mediterranean, far eclipsing its peers in size, influence and importance. Although many modern scholars strongly repudiate the idea that Constantine intended the city to be a new imperial capital, the lavish resources spent on its construction tell their own story.119 Constantinople was situated in a commanding position for other sensitive routes, not least maritime traffic in and out of the Black Sea, and also as a listening point for developments to the east and also the north – in the Balkans and towards the plains of Pannonia, where trouble was brewing.
For the vast majority of the population in antiquity, horizons were decidedly local – with trade and interaction between people being carried out over short distances. Nevertheless, the webs of communities wove into each other to create a world that was complex, where tastes and ideas were shaped by products, artistic principles and influences thousands of miles apart.
Two millennia ago, silks made by hand in China were being worn by the rich and powerful in Carthage and other cities in the Mediterranean, while pottery manufactured in southern France could be found in England and in the Persian Gulf. Spices and condiments grown in India were being used in the kitchens of Xinjiang, as they were in those of Rome. Buildings in northern Afghanistan carried inscriptions in Greek, while horses from Central Asia were being ridden proudly thousands of miles away to the east.
We can imagine the life of a gold coin two millennia ago, struck perhaps in a provincial mint and used by a young soldier as part of his pay to buy goods on the northern frontier in England and finding its way back to Rome in the coffers of an imperial official sent to collect taxes, before passing into the hands of a trader heading east, and then being used to pay for produce bought from traders who had come to sell their provisions at Barygaza. There it was admired and presented to leaders in the Hindu Kush, who marvelled at its design, shape and size and then gave it over to be copied by an engraver – himself perhaps from Rome, perhaps from Persia, or from India or China, or perhaps even someone local who had been taught the skills of striking. This was a world that was connected, complex and hungry for exchange.
It is easy to mould the past into a shape that we find convenient and accessible. But the ancient world was much more sophisticated and interlinked than we sometimes like to think. Seeing Rome as the progenitor of western Europe overlooks the fact that it consistently looked to and in many ways was shaped by influences from the east. The world of antiquity was very much a precursor of the world as we see it today – vibrant, competitive, efficient and energetic. A belt of towns formed a chain spanning Asia. The west had begun to look east, and the east had begun to look west. Together with increasing traffic connecting India with the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, the ancient Silk Roads of antiquity were coursing with life.
Rome’s eyes had been fixed on Asia from the moment it transformed itself from a republic into an empire. And so too, it turned out, had its soul. For Constantine – and the Roman Empire – had found God; and the new faith was from the east too. Surprisingly, it came not from Persia or from India, but from an unpromising province where three centuries earlier Pontius Pilate had found infamy as governor. Christianity was about to fan out in all directions.
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The Road of Faiths
It was not only goods that flowed along the arteries that linked the Pacific, Central Asia, India, the Persian Gulf and the Mediterranean in antiquity; so did ideas. And among the most powerful ideas were those that concerned the divine. Intellectual and religious exchange had always been animated across this region; now it became more complex and more competitive. Local cults and belief systems came into contact with well-established cosmologies. It made for a rich melting pot where ideas were borrowed, refined and repackaged.
After Alexander the Great’s campaigns had dragged Greek ideas east, it was not long before ideas flowed in the other direction. Buddhist concepts made rapid headway across Asia, especially after they had been championed by the Emperor Ashoka, who purportedly converted to Buddhism after reflecting on the horrific cost of the military campaigns that had created a great empire in India in the third century BC. Inscriptions from this time bear testimony to the many people now following Buddhist principles and practices as far away as Syria and perhaps beyond. The beliefs of a sect known as the Therapeutai that flourished in Alexandria in Egypt for centuries bear unmistakable similarities to Buddhism, including the use of allegorical scriptures, the devotion to enlightenment through prayer and detachment from the sense of the self in order to find inner calm.1
The ambiguities of the source material make it difficult to trace the spread of Buddhism with accuracy. Nevertheless, it is striking that there is an extensive contemporary literature that describes how the religion was carried out of the Indian subcontinent and introduced to new regions. Local rulers had to decide whether to tolerate its appearance, to stamp it out or to adopt and support it. One who did the latter was Menander, a Bactrian king in the first century BC, and descendant of one of Alexander the Great’s men. According to a text known as the Milindapañhā, the ruler was persuaded to follow a new spiritual path thanks to the intercession of an inspirational monk whose intelligence, compassion and humility stood in contrast to the superficiality of the contemporary world. It was enough, apparently, to convince the ruler to seek enlightenment through Buddhist teachings.2
The intellectual and theological spaces of the Silk Roads were crowded, as deities and cults, priests and local rulers jostled with each other. The stakes were high. This was a time when societies were highly receptive to explanations for everything from the mundane to the supernatural, and when faith offered solutions to a multitude of problems. The struggles between different faiths were highly political. In all these religions – whether they were Indic in origin like Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism, or those with roots in Persia such as Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism, or those from further west such as Judaism and Christianity, and, in due course, Islam – triumph on the battlefield or at the negotiating table went hand in hand with demonstrating cultural supremacy and divine benediction. The equation was as simple as it was powerful: a society protected and favoured by the right god, or gods, thrived; those promis
ing false idols and empty promises suffered.
There were strong incentives, therefore, for rulers to invest in the right spiritual infrastructure, such as the building of lavish places of worship. This offered a lever over internal control, allowing leaders to form a mutually strengthening relationship with the priesthood who, across all the principal religions, wielded substantial moral authority and political power. This did not mean that rulers were passive, responding to doctrines laid out by an independent class (or in some cases caste). On the contrary, determined rulers could reinforce their authority and dominance by introducing new religious practices.
The Kushan Empire, which stretched from northern India to embrace most of Central Asia in the first centuries AD, offers a case in point. There, the kings patronised Buddhism, but they also forced its evolution. It was important for a ruling dynasty that was not native to the region to create a justification for their pre-eminence. To do so, ideas were blended together from a range of sources to form a lowest common denominator that would appeal to as many as possible. As a result, the Kushans sponsored the building of temples – devakula, or ‘temples of the divine family’ – which developed the concept that had already become established in this region, that rulers linked heaven and earth.3
Menander had earlier announced on his coinage that he was not only a temporal ruler but also a saviour – something so significant that it was noted in both Greek (soteros) and Indic script (tratasa) in bilingual legends on his coins.4 The Kushans went further, establishing a leadership cult that claimed a direct relation to the divine, and created distance between ruler and subject. An inscription found at Taxila in the Punjab records this perfectly. The ruler, it states boldly, was ‘Great king, king of kings and Son of God’.5 It was a phrase that has obvious echoes with the Old and the New Testaments – as does the concept of the ruler being a saviour and a gateway into the next life.6
In what was tantamount to a revolution in Buddhism around the first century AD, a transformation took place in the way that that faith shaped the daily life of its adherents. In their most basic, traditional form, the teachings of the Buddha were straightforward, advocating finding a path from suffering (Sanskrit: duh˙kha) that led to a state of peace (nirvāna), by means of following eight ‘noble paths’. The route to enlightenment did not involve third parties, nor did it involve the material or physical world in any meaningful way. The journey was one that was spiritual, metaphysical and individual.
This was to change dramatically as new ways of reaching a higher state of consciousness emerged. What had been an intense internal journey, devoid of outside trappings and influences, was now supplemented by advice, help and locations designed to make the path to enlightenment and Buddhism itself more compelling. Stupas or shrines ostensibly linked to the Buddha were built, becoming points of pilgrimage, while texts setting out how to behave at such sites made the ideals behind Buddhism more real and more tangible. Bringing flowers or perfumes as an offering to a shrine would help achieve salvation, advised the Saddharmapundarīka, often known as the Lotus Sutra, that dates to this period. So too would hiring musicians to ‘beat drums, blow horns and conches, pan-pipes and flutes, play lutes and harps, gongs, guitars and cymbals’: this would enable the devotee to attain ‘buddhahood’.7 These were deliberate efforts to make Buddhism more visible – and audible – and to enable it to compete better in an increasingly noisy religious environment.
Another new idea was that of endowment – specifically endowments granted to new monasteries springing up across the routes fanning out from India into Central Asia. Donating money, jewels and other gifts became common practice, and with it the concept that donors would be ‘carried over the oceans of sufferings’ as a reward for their generosity.8 Indeed, the Lotus Sutra and other texts of this period went so far as to list which precious objects were most suitable as gifts; pearls, crystal, gold, silver, lapis lazuli, crystal, coral, diamonds and emeralds were all considered highly acceptable.9
Large-scale irrigation projects in the valleys of what are now Tajikistan and southern Uzbekistan built around the turn of the eras show that this period saw rising affluence and prosperity as well as increasingly vibrant cultural and commercial exchange.10 With wealthy local elites to turn to, it was not long before monastic centres became hives of activity and home to scholars who busied themselves compiling Buddhist texts, copying them and translating them into local languages, thereby making them available for wider and larger audiences. This too was part of the programme to spread the religion by making it more accessible. Commerce opened the door for faith to flow through.11
Around the first century AD, the spread of Buddhism from northern India along the trade routes taken by merchants, monks and travellers accelerated rapidly. To the south, in the Deccan plateau, scores of cave temples were built, with stupas dotting the landscape deep into the Indian subcontinent.12 To the north and east, Buddhism was transmitted with growing energy by the Sogdian merchants who played a vital role in linking China with the Indus valley. These were travelling merchants from the heart of Central Asia, classic middlemen whose own close-knit networks and efficient use of credit left them ideally positioned to dominate long-distance trade.13
The key to their commercial success was a dependable chain of stopping points. As more Sogdians became Buddhist, stupas were built alongside their principal routes, as can be seen in the Hunza valley of northern Pakistan: scores of passing Sogdians carved their names into rocks alongside images of the Buddha in hope that their long journeys would be fruitful and safe – poignant reminders of the traveller’s need for spiritual comfort when far from home.14
It was not just small-scale scratchings that testify to the energetic spread of Buddhism in this period. Kabul was ringed with forty monasteries, including one that a later visitor described with awe. Its beauty was comparable to that of springtime, he wrote. ‘The pavement was made of onyx, the walls of pure marble; the door was made from moulded gold, while the floor was solid silver; stars were represented everywhere one looked . . . in the hallway, there was a golden idol as beautiful as the moon, seated on a magnificent bejewelled throne.’15
Soon Buddhist ideas and practices were spreading east through the Pamir mountains and into China. By the start of the fourth century AD, there were sacred Buddhist sites all over Xinjiang province in north-western China – such as the spectacular complex of caves at Qyzyl in the Tarim basin that included halls for worship, places dedicated to meditation and extensive living quarters. Before long, western China was studded with places that were transformed into sacred spaces, at Kashgar, Kucha and Turfan for example.16 By the 460s, Buddhist thought, practices, art and imagery had become part of the mainstream in China, robustly competing with traditional Confucianism, a broad cosmology that was as much about personal ethics as about spiritual beliefs, but which had deep roots going back a millennium. This was helped by aggressive promotion from a new ruling dynasty who, as conquerors originally from the steppes, were outsiders. As with the Kushan before them, the Northern Wei had much to gain by promoting the new at the expense of the old, and championing concepts that underlined their legitimacy. Huge statues of the Buddha were erected at Pincheng and Luoyang, far into the east of the country, together with lavishly endowed monasteries and shrines. There was no mistaking the message: the Northern Wei had triumphed and they had done so because they were part of a divine cycle, not merely brute victors on the battlefield.17
Buddhism made sizeable inroads along the principal trading arteries to the west too. Clusters of caves dotted around the Persian Gulf, as well as large numbers of finds around Merv in modern Turkmenistan, and series of inscriptions deep inside Persia, attest to Buddhism’s ability to start competing with local beliefs.18 The rash of Buddhist loan-words in Parthian also bears witness to the intensification of the exchange of ideas in this period.19
The difference, however, was that the deepening of commercial exchange galvanised Persia in another direction as it
experienced a renaissance that swept through the economy, politics and culture. As a distinctively Persian identity reasserted itself, Buddhists found themselves being persecuted rather than emulated. The ferocity of the attacks led to the shrines in the Gulf being abandoned, and the stupas that had presumably been set up along the land routes within Persian territory being destroyed.20
Religions rose and fell as they spread across Eurasia, fighting each other for audiences, loyalty and moral authority. Communication with the divine was more than a matter of seeking intervention in daily life: it became a matter of salvation or damnation. The jostling became violent. The first four centuries of the first millennium, which saw Christianity explode from a small base in Palestine to sweep through the Mediterranean and across Asia, were a maelstrom of faith wars.
The decisive moment came with the seizure of power by the Sasanian dynasty, who overthrew the ruling regime in Persia by fomenting revolt, murdering rivals and exploiting the confusion that followed military setbacks on the frontier with Rome – above all in the Caucasus.21 After taking power in 224 AD, Ardashīr I and his successors embarked on the full-scale transformation of the state. It involved the assertion of a strident identity that drew a line under recent history and sought to accentuate links with the great Persian Empire of antiquity.22