How did greater connectivity during the first Silk Roads era facilitate the spread of religion?

Question

What will be an ideal response?

Answer 1

A striking example of the cross-fertilization ofideas and traditions is the spread of Buddhist ideology alongthe great trade routes. Buddhism first emerged in northernIndia in the sixth century BCE. Eight hundred years later,according to ancient Chinese Buddhist documents, theKushan king, Kanishka the Great (ca. 129–152 CE), convenedan important meeting in Kashmir at which the decisionwas taken to rewrite the Buddhist scriptures in a morepopular and accessible language. This helped facilitate theemergence and spread of Mahayana (or Great Vehicle)Buddhism, partly because the scriptures were now writtenin a language the common people could understand, andnot one that could be read only by religious elites.

The well-traveled trade routes from India through theKushan realm and into China facilitated the spread ofBuddhist ideas that, because they offered the hope of salvationto all regardless of caste or status, was already popularwith India’s merchants. Chinese merchants active in thesilk trade became attracted to the faith, too, and returnedhome to spread the Buddhist message. Chinese edicts of 65 and 70 CE specifically mention the spread of Buddhismand opposition to it from imperial scholars devoted toConfucianism. By 166 CE the Han emperor himself was sacrificing to the Buddha, and the Sutra on the “Perfectionof the Gnosis” was translated into Chinese by 179 CE. By thelate fourth century, a period of disunity in China, much ofthe population of northern China had adopted Buddhism,and by the sixth century much of southern China as well.The religion also found ready acceptance in Korea, Japan,
Tibet, Mongolia, and Southeast Asia.

The Silk Roads also facilitated the spread of Christianity,Manichaeism, and later, Islam. Christian missionariesmade good use of the superb Roman road and sea transportationnetworks. The Christian missionary, Paul of Tarsus,may have traveled some 8,000 miles (13,000 kilo meters)along the roads and sea lanes of the eastern Roman Empirepreaching to small Christian communities. Christianityeventually spread farther to the east along the Silk Roads,through Mesopotamia and Iran, into India, and eventuallyinto China. One branch of Christianity, that of theNestorians, became particularly strong throughout thecentral and eastern Silk Roads. The Central Asian religion of Manichaeism also benefited from the silk routesafter it emerged in Mesopotamia in the third century CE.Its founder, Mani (216–272 CE,) was a fervent missionarywho personally traveled extensively throughout the regionand also dispatched disciples. Manichaeism was based ona cosmology in which the struggle between a good, spiritualworld of light, and an evil, material world of darknesswas continuously being waged throughout human history.Like Buddhism, Manichaeism was particularly attractiveto merchants, and eventually most of the major Silk Roadstrading cities contained Manichaean communities.