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Ample as are the materials for the study of Buddhism in Central Asia those hitherto published throw little light on the time and manner of its introduction.  At present much is hypothetical for we have few historical data—­such as the career of Kumarajiva and the inscription on the Temple of Maitreya at Turfan—­but a great mass of literary and artistic evidence from which various deductions can be drawn.

It is clear that there was constant intercourse with India and the Oxus region.  The use of Prakrit and of various Iranian idioms points to actual colonization from these two quarters and it is probable that there were two streams of Buddhism, for the Chinese pilgrims agree that Shan-shan (near Lob-nor), Turfan, Kucha and Kashgar were Hinayanist, whereas Yarkand and Khotan were Mahayanist.  Further, much of the architecture, sculpture and painting is simply Gandharan and the older specimens can hardly be separated from the Gandharan art of India by any considerable interval.  This art was in part coeval with Kanishka, and if his reign began in 78 A.D. or later the first specimens of it cannot be much anterior to the Christian era.  The earliest Chinese notices of the existence of Buddhism in Kashgar and Kucha date from 400 (Fa-Hsien) and the third century (Annals of the Tsin, 265-317) respectively, but they speak of it as the national religion and munificently endowed, so that it may well have been established for some centuries.  In Turfan the first definite record is the dedication of a temple to Maitreya in 469 but probably the history of religion there was much the same as in Kucha.

It is only in Khotan that tradition, if not history, gives a more detailed narrative.  This is found in the works of the Chinese pilgrims Hsuan Chuang and Sung Yun and also in four Tibetan works which are apparently translated from the language of Khotan.[518] As the story is substantially the same in all, it merits consideration and may be accepted as the account current in the literary circles of Khotan about 500 A.D.  It relates that the Indians who were part-founders of that city in the reign of Asoka were not Buddhists[519] and the Tibetan version places the conversion with great apparent accuracy 170 years after the foundation of the kingdom and 404 after the death of the Buddha.  At that time a monk named Vairocana, who was an incarnation of Manjusri, came to Khotan, according to Hsuan Chuang from Kashmir.[520] He is said to have introduced a new language as well as Mahayanism, and the king, Vijayasambhava, built for him the great monastery of Tsarma outside the capital, which was miraculously supplied with relics.  We cannot be sure that the Tibetan dates were intended to have the meaning they would bear for our chronology, that is about 80 B.C., but if they had, there is nothing improbable in the story, for other traditions assert that Buddhism was preached in Kashmir in the time of Asoka.  On the other hand, there was a dynastic change in Khotan about 60 A.D. and the monarch who then came to the throne may have been Vijayasambhava.