silk road

Connections across Eurasia: The Silk Roads
Finding the Main Point: What was the economic and cultural impact of the Silk Road trading network?

The most famous of those networks of exchange, widely known now as the Silk Roads after their most famous product, linked the various peoples and civilizations of the Eurasian landmass from China to Europe by the early centuries of the Common Era (see Map 3.1). Especially during prosperous and politically stable times, a vast array of goods made their way across the Silk Roads, often carried in large camel caravans that traversed the harsh and dangerous steppes, deserts, and oases of Central Asia. Those caravans stopped at inns or guesthouses, known as caravanserai, located all along the trade routes from the eastern Mediterranean to China. There merchants could rest, exchange goods with local people and other traders, and resupply their animals. Such places became centers of cultural exchange as merchants from many religious and cultural traditions met and mingled. Some of the caravanserai developed into major Central Asian commercial cities such as Bukhara, Samarkand, Khotan, Kashgar, and Dunhuang.

ap® exam tip
Understanding the goods, ideas, technology, and peoples that traveled the Silk Roads, and their impact on Eurasian cultures, is key for success on the AP® Exam.


Map 3.1 The Silk Roads

For 2,000 years, goods, ideas, technologies, and diseases made their way across Eurasia on the several routes of the Silk Roads.



ap® causation
According to this map, what geographic or environmental obstacles did Silk Road traders have to contend with? How did traders overcome these obstacles?

The Making of the Silk Roads
Most of the goods that made their way across this Eurasian network of exchange were luxury products destined for an elite and wealthy market, rather than staple goods, for only readily moved commodities of great value could compensate for the high costs of transportation across such long and forbidding distances. Silk was the most prominent of those luxury goods. China had long held a monopoly on its production, but by the sixth century c.e., the knowledge and technology for producing raw silk had spread beyond China to Korea, Japan, India, Persia, and the Byzantine Empire. As the supply of silk increased, its many varieties circulated even more extensively across Afro-Eurasian trade routes. In Central Asia, silk was used as currency and as a means of accumulating wealth. In both China and the Byzantine Empire, silk became a symbol of high status, and governments passed laws that restricted silk clothing to members of the elite. Furthermore, silk became associated with the sacred in the expanding world religions of Buddhism and Christianity. Chinese Buddhist pilgrims who traveled to India seeking religious texts and relics took large quantities of silk with them as gifts to the monasteries they visited. In the world of Christendom, silk wall hangings, altar covers, and priest’s robes became highly prestigious signs of devotion and piety. By the twelfth century, the West African king of Ghana was wearing silk, and silk circulated in Egypt, Ethiopia, and along the East African coast as well.

ap® exam tip
Be able to explain the relationships between governments and trade routes across time and place.

Over many centuries, various technological innovations, such as yokes, saddles, and stirrups, made the use of camels, horses, and oxen more effective means of transportation across the vast distances of the Silk Roads. A “frame and mattress” saddle, most likely an Arab invention, allowed camels to carry much heavier loads in a stable fashion. New forms of credit and economic exchange also facilitated the operation of the Silk Road network. Paper money, initially a Chinese innovation called “flying cash” because of its tendency to fly away in the wind, made it unnecessary to carry heavy metal coins. European traders introduced “bills of exchange,” a kind of contract promising payment. And novel banking practices allowed urban-based banking houses to offer credit to merchants.

ap® causation
What lay behind the emergence of Silk Road commerce, and what kept it going for so many centuries?

Compared to global commerce today, the volume of trade on the Silk Roads was modest, and its focus on luxury goods limited its direct impact on most people. Nonetheless, it had important economic and social consequences. Peasants in the Yangzi River delta of southern China sometimes gave up the cultivation of food crops, choosing to focus instead on producing silk, paper, porcelain, lacquerware, or iron tools, many of which were destined for the markets of the Silk Roads. In this way, the impact of long-distance trade trickled down to affect the lives of ordinary farmers. Furthermore, merchants could benefit immensely from their involvement in long-distance trade. One such individual, a twelfth-century Persian trader named Ramisht whose ships traversed the Indian Ocean and Red Sea, made a personal fortune with which he commissioned an enormously expensive covering made of Chinese silk for the Kaaba, the central shrine of Islam in Mecca.

Religion and the Silk Roads
More important even than the economic impact of the Silk Roads was their role as a conduit of culture. Buddhism, for example, a product of Indian civilization, spread widely throughout Central and East Asia as Indian traders and Buddhist monks brought the new religion to the trans-Eurasian trade routes of the Silk Roads. There it took root especially in the oasis cities of Central Asia, such as Merv, Samarkand, Khotan, and Dunhuang. Conversion to Buddhism in such places was voluntary, without the pressure of conquest or foreign rule. Dependent on long-distance trade, the inhabitants and rulers of those sophisticated and prosperous cities found in Buddhism both a rich spiritual tradition and a link to the larger, wealthy, and prestigious civilization of India.

ap® exam tip
Understanding that Buddhism, like other major religions, spread along trade routes is fundamental to success on the AP® Exam.

ap® causation
What facilitated the spread of Buddhism along the Silk Roads?

As Buddhism spread across the Silk Roads from India to Central Asia, China, and beyond, it also changed. The original faith had shunned the material world, but Buddhist monasteries in the rich oasis towns of the Silk Roads found themselves very much involved in secular affairs. Some of them became prosperous, receiving gifts from well-to-do merchants, artisans, and local rulers. The begging bowls of the monks became a symbol rather than part of a daily activity. Sculptures and murals in the monasteries depicted musicians and acrobats, women applying makeup, and even drinking parties, all of which suggested a wealthier and more worldly style of living, far removed from traditions of Buddhist asceticism.

Religious practice changed as well. It was the more devotional Mahayana form of Buddhism — featuring the Buddha as a deity, numerous bodhisattvas (fully enlightened beings who assisted a suffering humanity), an emphasis on compassion, and the possibility of earning merit — that flourished on the Silk Roads, rather than the more austere psychological teachings of the historical Buddha. Moreover, Buddhism picked up elements of other cultures while in transit on the Silk Roads. In the Sogdian city of Samarkand, the use of Zoroastrian fire rituals apparently became a part of Buddhist practice. In a similar way, the gods of many peoples along the Silk Roads were incorporated into Buddhist practice as bodhisattvas.

ap® exam tip
You must be able to give examples of how major religions, such as Buddhism, changed as they spread beyond their places of origin.


Dunhuang Located in western China at a critical junction of the Silk Road trading network, Dunhuang was also a center of Buddhist learning, painting, and sculpture as that religion made its way from India to China and beyond. In some 492 caves, carved out of the rock between about 400 and 1400 c.e., a remarkable gallery of Buddhist art has been preserved. In this mixture of sculpture and painted images, the Buddha is surrounded by other enlightened beings or bodhisattvas.

ap® causation
How does this image illustrate changes in Buddhism since the time of its founding?

Buddhism initially entered China via the Silk Road trading network during the first and second centuries c.e. and by the eighth century c.e. had become widely accepted, particularly in its broader Mahayana form. One of the most popular expressions of Buddhism in China was the Pure Land school, in which faithfully repeating the name of an earlier Buddha, the Amitabha, ensured rebirth in a beautifully described heavenly realm, the Pure Land. In its emphasis on salvation by faith, without arduous study or intensive meditation, Pure Land Buddhism became a highly popular and authentically Chinese version of the Indian faith.

ap® causation
What facilitated the initial acceptance and spread of Buddhism in China?

The impressive growth of Chinese Buddhism, however, was accompanied by a persistent undercurrent of resistance and criticism. In 819, Han Yu, a leading figure in the Confucian counterattack on Buddhism, gave expression to this hostility:

Now the Buddha was of barbarian origin. His language differed from Chinese speech; his clothes were of a different cut; his mouth did not pronounce the prescribed words of the Former Kings…. He did not recognize the relationship between prince and subject, nor the sentiments of father and son.2

Several decades later, the Chinese state took direct action against the Buddhist establishment and against other foreign religions. A series of imperial decrees between 841 and 845 ordered some 260,000 monks and nuns to return to normal life as tax-paying citizens. Thousands of monasteries, temples, and shrines were either destroyed or turned to public use, while the state confiscated the lands, money, metals, and serfs belonging to monasteries. Buddhists were now forbidden to use gold, silver, copper, iron, and gems in constructing their images. These actions dealt a serious blow to Chinese Buddhism. Its scholars and monks were scattered, its creativity was diminished, and its institutions came even more firmly under state control.

Despite this persecution, Buddhism did not vanish from China. The Chan school of Chinese Buddhism, which drew heavily on Daoist outlooks and emphasized strict meditation practice, became dominant during the Song dynasty and was favored by court officials and scholars. At the level of elite culture, Buddhist philosophical ideas played a role in a reformulation of Confucian thinking called Neo-Confucianism that took place during the Song dynasty. Focused on the study and interpretation of classical Confucian texts, this outlook rejected the religious aspects of both Buddhism and Daoism but appreciated the high moral standards of Buddhist teachings, which were understood as aligning with Confucian values. At the village level, Buddhism became one element of Chinese popular religion, which also included the veneration of ancestors, the honoring of Confucius, and Daoist shrines and rituals. Temples frequently included statues of Confucius, Laozi, and the Buddha, with little sense of any incompatibility among them. “Every black-haired son of Han,” the Chinese have long said, “wears a Confucian thinking cap, a Daoist robe, and Buddhist sandals.” Unlike in Europe, where the new religion of Christianity triumphed over and excluded all other faiths, Buddhism in China became assimilated into Chinese culture alongside its other traditions (see AP® Looking Again: Chinese Cultural Traditions, page 175).

Meanwhile, many of China’s own traditions spread to nearby societies such as Korea, Japan, and Vietnam, which actively borrowed cultural features from their giant and highly prestigious neighbor. Korea, for example, sent tribute missions to China, which gave legitimacy for Korean rulers and offered models of court life and administrative techniques that they sought to replicate back home. A new capital city of Kumsong was modeled directly on the Chinese capital of Chang’an (chahng-ahn). Tribute missions also enabled both official and private trade, mostly in luxury goods such as ceremonial clothing, silks, fancy teas, Confucian and Buddhist texts, and artwork. All of this enriched the lives of a Korean aristocracy that was becoming increasingly Chinese in culture. Thousands of Korean students were sent to China, where they studied primarily Confucianism but also the sciences and the arts. Buddhist monks visited centers of learning and pilgrimage in China and brought back popular forms of Chinese Buddhism, which quickly took root in Korea. Schools for the study of Confucianism, using texts in the Chinese language, were established in Korea. In these ways, Korea became a part of the expanding world of Chinese culture.


Confucian Education This eighteenth-century image of a Korean Confucian classroom reflects the long-enduring role of Confucius in education across much of East Asia, where mastery of his teachings became an important mark of elite status and a means for social advancement.

ap® continuity and change
What cultural changes occurred in Korea and Japan in response to Chinese influence?

Chinese culture also found favor in Japan. Various schools of Chinese Buddhism took root, first among the educated and literate classes and later more broadly in Japanese society. By 1200, the Chinese Chan school of Buddhism had become Zen in Japan, where it was highly popular among the samurai warrior class. Chinese Neo-Confucian teachings arrived in Japan around 1240 and proved highly influential among intellectuals. By the seventeenth century Neo-Confucianism had become the official ideology of the Japanese Tokugawa regime. The Chinese writing system — and with it an interest in historical writing, calligraphy, and poetry — likewise proved attractive among the elite.