Today, most Uyghurs are Muslims. For centuries, however, Uyghurs were Buddhists. By around 1000 CE, they, like many of their neighbors, had decisively turned toward the Dharma, and a golden age of Uyghur Buddhism flourished under the Mongol empire. Dwelling along the Silk Road in what is now northwestern China, they stood at the center of Buddhist Eurasia, linking far-flung regions and traditions. But as Muslim power grew, Uyghur Buddhists converted to Islam, rewriting their past and erasing their Buddhist history. This book presents the first comprehensive history of Buddhism among the Uyghurs from the ninth to the seventeenth century. Johan Elverskog traces how the Uyghurs forged their distinctive tradition, considering a variety of social, political, cultural, and religious contexts. He argues that the religious history of the Uyghurs challenges conventional narratives of the meeting of Buddhism and Islam, showing that conversion took place gradually and was driven by factors such as geopolitics, climate change, and technological innovation. Elverskog also provides a nuanced understanding of lived Buddhism, focusing on ritual practices and materiality as well as the religion’s entanglements with economics, politics, and violence. A groundbreaking history of Uyghur Buddhism, this book makes a compelling case for the importance of the Uyghurs in shaping the course of both Buddhist and Asian history.

This first volume of the Silk Roads Studies is a reference manual of the published Uygur Buddhist literature. Uygur Buddhist Literature creates a complete inventory of the published Uygur Buddhist texts along with a bibliography of the pertinent scholarlyliterature. The work includes an introduction that outlines the history of the discovery of the Uygur Buddhist Literature and a short history of the Buddhist Uygurs and their translation activities. The survey of the literature itself is divided into six sections: (1) Non-Mahayana Texts, including Sutra, Vinaya, Abhidarma, Biographies of the Buddha (including Jatakas) and Avadana; (2) Mahayana Sutras; (3) Commentaries; (4) Chinese Apocrypha; (5) Tantric Texts (6) Other Buddhist Works. Included under each title of a text is a brief synopsis of the text and an explanation of the Uygur manuscript, including where known: origin of translation, the translator and the place of translation, the place it was found, and any other interesting points. After this brief survey of the manuscript, the signature of the manuscript with references to the editions of the text is provided as well as additional references to the secondary literature. The survey concludes with an index to titles, translators, scribes and sponsors. This manual is an essential tool not only for specialists in the field of Altaic, especially Turcological or Monogolian, Iranological, Sinological or Buddhological Studies, but is also written for a larger public of students interested in Asian religions and cultural history in general. This book provides in a systematic and exhaustive way the most recent information on the places where the documents are kept, a synopsis of the text, editions and secondary literature.

Archaeological excavations and historical records show that Uyghur-land is the most important repository of Uyghur and Central Asian treasures.This publication allows readers to get a full understanding of Uyghur cultural identity.

CONTENTS: Preface. Table of Chinese Dynasties. Maps of Dynasties. Introduction, Growth and Domestication. Maturity and Acceptance. Decline. Conclusion. Glossary. Chinese Names and Titles. Bibliography. Index.

The interdisciplinary volume Transfer of Buddhism across Central Asian Networks (7th to 13th Centuries), edited by Carmen Meinert, offers a new transregional and transcultural vision for religious transfer processes in Central Asian history. It looks at the region as an integrated (religious) whole rather than from the perspective of fragmented sub-disciplines and analyses the spread of Buddhism as a driving force in a societal and cultural change of pan-Asian importance. One particular dimension of this ‘Buddhist globalisation’ was the rise of local forms of Buddhism. This volume explores Buddhist localisations through manuscripts and material culture in the multiethnic oases of the Tarim basin, the Transhimalyan region of Zangskar, Ladakh and Kashmir and the Western Tibetan Kingdom of Purang-Guge. Contributors are: Kazuo Kano, Deborah Klimburg-Salter, Rob Linrothe, Linda Lojda, Carmen Meinert, Henrik H. Sørensen, Monica Strinu, Gertraud Taenzer, Sam van Schaik, and Jens Wilkens.

Chinese Esoteric Buddhism is generally held to have been established as a distinct and institutionalized Buddhist school in eighth-century China by “the Three Great Masters of Kaiyuan”: Śubhākarasiṃha, Vajrabodhi, and Amoghavajra. Geoffrey C. Goble provides an innovative account of the tradition’s emergence that sheds new light on the structures and traditions that shaped its institutionalization. Goble focuses on Amoghavajra (704–774), contending that he was the central figure in Esoteric Buddhism’s rapid rise in Tang dynasty China, and the other two “patriarchs” are known primarily through Amoghavajra’s teachings and writings. He presents the scriptural, mythological, and practical aspects of Chinese Esoteric Buddhism in the eighth century and places them in the historical contexts within which Amoghavajra operated. By telling the story of Amoghavajra’s rise to prominence and of Esoteric Buddhism’s corresponding institutionalization in China, Goble makes the case that the evolution of this tradition was predicated on Indic scriptures and practical norms rather than being the product of conscious adaptation to a Chinese cultural environment. He demonstrates that Esoteric Buddhism was employed by Chinese rulers to defeat military and political rivals. Based on close readings of a broad range of textual sources previously untapped by English-language scholarship, this book overturns many assumptions about the origins of Chinese Esoteric Buddhism.

The ERC-funded research project BuddhistRoad aims to create a new framework to enable understanding of the complexities in the dynamics of cultural encounter and religious transfer in pre-modern Eastern Central Asia. Buddhism was one major factor in this exchange: for the first time the multi-layered relationships between the trans-regional Buddhist traditions (Chinese, Indian, Tibetan) and those based on local Buddhist cultures (Khotanese, Uyghur, Tangut, Khitan) will be explored in a systematic way. The first volume Buddhism in Central Asia (Part I): Patronage, Legitimation, Sacred Space, and Pilgrimage is based on the start-up conference held on May 23rd–25th, 2018, at CERES, Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Germany) and focuses on the first two of altogether six thematic topics to be dealt with in the project, namely on “patronage and legitimation strategy” as well as "sacred space and pilgrimage."