HISTORY OF ASIA GENERAL SURVEY 89 



who settled in Tibet, and the Great Yue-chi who advanced to the 

 banks of the Hi, and in 163 B. c. occupied, in the place of the Sakas, 

 the country south of the Tien-shan where Yarkand and Kashgar 

 now stand. Some years later the Yue-chi, pressed in their turn by the 

 Wu-sun, once more drove the Sakas out of Sogdiana, beyond the 

 Oxus, to the country watered by the Cabul River. About 35 B. c. 

 the leader of these Yue-chi subdued Cabul, Kashmir, and Penjal. 

 The conversion to Buddhism of one of his successors, Kanichka, the 

 greatest chief of the Yue-chi or Indo-Scyths, gave a fresh impulse to 

 the zeal of the followers of Shakyamuni; from 15 B. c. to 45 A. D. was 

 held in Kashmir the great cecumenic council which finally revised the 

 canon accepted in the north but rejected by the Church of Ceylon. 



We may be asked at what time Buddhism reached China. We 

 cannot answer with any degree of certainty. Some savants give 221 

 and 219 B. c. as the date of the introduction of Buddhism into China; 

 there is nothing really authoritative to support their assertion. We 

 may fairly suppose that the warlike expeditions against the Hiung-nu 

 conveyed to China some knowledge of Buddhist worship. The new 

 doctrine was introduced into China by the way of Central Asia; one 

 thing is certain, that in the year 2 B. c. an embassy was sent by the 

 Chinese Emperor Ngai to the Ta Yue-chi and that its chief got some 

 oral information about the new religion. Buddhism was recognized 

 officially in China by the Han Dynasty; the dynasty of the Later Han 

 (24-220 A. D.) had dominated in Central Asia, and, though weak- 

 ened for years, their rule had been maintained with still more force 

 by Wu Ti, of the Western Tsin (265-290). To this period (269) 

 belong the documents, so interesting for the administration as well 

 as for the religion of this region, discovered during recent years by 

 Dr. M. A. Stein, of the Indian Educational Service, at Uzun Tati, be- 

 tween Khotan and Niya, in the desert of Takkla Makkan, explored 

 by Sven Hedin. Of that time also are the documents dug from the 

 sand-buried town of Lau-lan near the Lob-nor, by Sven Hedin him- 

 self. The Hindu civilization which borders on the desert of Gobi, from 

 Khotan to the Lob-nor, to Hami and to Turfan, vanished rapidly after 

 Wu Ti; under the great T'ang Dynasty, during the second half of the 

 eighth century, the Tibetans threatened the authority of the Chinese 

 in the country of the Four Garrisons (Kucha, Khotan, Karashahr, 

 and Kashgar), namely. Eastern Turkestan. From 791 onwards the 

 Tibetans, masters of Turfan and the surrounding countries, had 

 completely ousted the Chinese, whose mandarins had been recalled in 

 784 by the Imperial Government on account of the hopeless situa- 

 tion in the region. 



The Chinese Buddhist pilgrims, eager to get the good word from 

 the source itself, were drawn along the roads of High Asia to the 

 valley of the Sacred Ganges in quest of the books giving the Key to 



