Central Asian art is somewhat wanting in spontaneity.  Except when painting portraits (which are many) the artists do not seem to go to nature or even their own imagination and visions.  They seem concerned to reproduce some religious scene not as they saw it but as it was represented by Indian or other artists.

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Only one side of Central Asian history can be written with any completeness, namely its relations with China.  Of these some account with dates can be given, thanks to the Chinese annals which incidentally supply valuable information about earlier periods.  But unfortunately these relations were often interrupted and also the political record does not always furnish the data which are of most importance for the history of Buddhism.  Still there is no better framework available for arranging our data.  But even were our information much fuller, we should probably find the history of Central Asia scrappy and disconnected.  Its cities were united by no bond of common blood or language, nor can any one of them have had a continuous development in institutions, letters or art.  These were imported in a mature form and more or less assimilated in a precocious Augustan age, only to be overwhelmed in some catastrophe which, if not merely destructive, at least brought the ideas and baggage of another race.

It was under the Emperor Wu-ti (140-87 B.C.) of the Han dynasty that the Chinese first penetrated into the Tarim basin.  They had heard that the Hsiung-nu, of whose growing power they were afraid, had driven the Yueh-chih westwards and they therefore despatched an envoy named Chang Ch’ien in the hope of inducing the Yueh-chih to co-operate with them against the common enemy.  Chang Ch’ien made two adventurous expeditions, and visited the Yueh-chih in their new home somewhere on the Oxus.  His mission failed to attain its immediate political object but indirectly had important results, for it revealed to China that the nations on the Oxus were in touch with India on one hand and with the more mysterious west on the other.  Henceforth it was her aim to keep open the trade route leading westwards from the extremity of the modern Kansu province to Kashgar, Khotan and the countries with which those cities communicated.  Far from wishing to isolate herself or exclude foreigners, her chief desire was to keep the road to the west open, and although there were times when the flood of Buddhism which swept along this road alarmed the more conservative classes, yet for many centuries everything that came in the way of merchandize, art, literature, and religion was eagerly received.  The chief hindrance to this intercourse was the hostility of the wild tribes who pillaged caravans and blocked the route, and throughout the whole stretch of recorded history the Chinese used the same method to weaken them and keep the door open, namely to create or utilize a quarrel between two tribes.  The Empire allied itself with one in order to crush the second and that being done, proceeded to deal with its former ally.