A comparative study of buddhist material culture in the 6 th and 7th Centuries: from the Hindu Kush to Northern China

This dissertation investigates the transformation of Buddhist material culture across Northern China, Gandhara, and Central Asia from the sixth to the seventh centuries CE. During this period, textual and archaeological evidence, indicates that Buddhism was in decline in Gandhara which most notably the records of the Chinese pilgrim Xuanzang, yet conversely flourished to its west in the Hindu Kush region (termed “Post-Gandhāra” Buddhism) and to its east in Northern China (termed “Early Medieval” Chinese Buddhism). While previous scholarship has extensively studied these regions separately, the connections between them during this “chaos period” – when nomadic powers (the Huns in Gandhara and Central Asia, the Xianbei in Northern China) controlled all three areas – remain under-theorized. Moreover, the role of different nomadic polities in shaping Buddhist material culture has never been systematically compared. This dissertation argues that the decline of Gandharan Buddhism was not a sudden collapse caused by the Huns, but rather a gradual transformation of monastic space and ritual practice, with parallel developments emerging in Northern China and the Hindu Kush. Furthermore, the Buddha Hall or shrine images became the mainstream in Post-Gandharan and Early Medieval Chinese Buddhism. To gather the evidence, the study examines three case studies: Yecheng (capital of the Northern Qi dynasty in Northern China), the Swat valley (Uddiyana, an important site for Buddhist pilgrims), and Bamiyan (a new Buddhist center in the Hindu Kush in the sixth century). The methodology integrates literary sources, including Chinese pilgrim records (Faxian, Songyun, Xuanzang) and biographies of Gandharan monks (for example, Narendrayasa), together with recent archaeological evidence from all three regions.