1|P a g e

SILK AND BUDDHISM

-Dr. V. R. Shenoy and Dr. A. R. Shenoy
INTRODUCTION
The story of silk is in many ways a story of human proto-history as well as history;
it is a story of human observation, curiosity and inquiry. According to a Chinese
legend Lady Hsi-Ling-Shih, wife of the mythical Yellow Emperor, who was said
to have ruled China in about 3000 BC is credited with the introduction of silkworm
rearing and the invention of the loom. The legend also gives Lady Hsi-Ling-Shih
the title Goddess of Silk. New archeological finds along the lower Yangzi River
in China such as, a small ivory cup carved with a silkworm design and thought to
be between 6000 and 7000 years old, and spinning tools, silk thread and fabric
fragments place the origins of sericulture to be even earlier than previously
thought, even perhaps before recorded history!
In the British museum, there is an artifact; a painting on a wooden panel which
shows scenes from the Central Asian story of the Silk Princess the story is a
legend in which a Chinese princess smuggled the secret of how to make silk out
of China and into the country of her new husband, the 1st Century AD king of
Khotan (now in Xinjiang province, China).As she was a princess the border
guards did not dare search her. In this painting her elaborate headdress conceals the
cocoons of the silk moth and the seeds of the mulberry tree. The most interesting
aspect about this wooden object panel was that it was found from a Buddhist shrine
in Khotan and therefore had its standing in a religious context. It is evidence for
the close interaction between religion, ritual and daily life of Ancient Khotan along
the Silk Road and the role that silk had as an important relic in Buddhist rituals.
Also, considering the fact that silk was known to the Chinese since proto-history,
the smuggling out of silk know-how from China as depicted in the British museum
Khotan artifact also reveals how zealously and successfully, the Chinese guarded
their secret of silk and sericulture for thousands of years! The genesis and
establishment of Buddhism in the ancient Indian subcontinent and its subsequent
spread to the Far-east, namely China was to have a positive impact on the silk trade
between China and India. In fact, early Sino-Indian civilizational interactions can
be seen through the prism of the intimate connection between Buddhism and Silk.
2|P a g e

That silk was used in ancient India is borne out by the wall paintings of the
Buddhist caves of Ajanta dating from 2
nd
century BC to around 7
th
century AD.
Here, one can notice the manner in which Central Asian style of clothing, such as
caps, tunics and boots influenced Indian attire as such gear often appear in the
Ajanta art works. In cave xviii at Ajanta, the wall painting shows a royal attendant
wearing 'silk brocade with a floral design or a maid servant with a skin of striped
silk'.
The Sino-Indian silk connection was so enduring and so lasting that in the memory
of many of our elderly parents as well as grand parents the image of the Chinese
silk seller at our doorsteps hawking silk fabrics was stereotypical till the early 60s.
This image even became the subject of a cartoon by R.K Laxman in Times of India
in the wake of the Chinese invasion of 1962. In that particular You Said it
cartoon a husband in Mumbai reading about the Chinese invasion faints at seeing a
Chinese Silk Seller at his door! The wife reassures him that it is not a Chinese
soldier but just the Chinese silk seller! The bitter atmosphere of suspicion and
animosity towards anything Chinese or remotely Chinese that followed the Sino-
Indian War of 1962 destroyed the practice of Chinese/Tibetan silk sellers, who
would go door to door trying to sell their silk merchandise.

SILK IN BUDDHIST ESCHATOLOGY
The thought of death and afterlife, the concept of the hereafter has been with
humans ever since the dawn of their evolution. Proto-historical burial sites from
the Stone Age containing objects revered by the dead bear ample testimony to
mans concern with his final destiny. This eschatological zeal was carried to an
extreme in the Egyptian pyramids and ancient Chinese burial sites where
multitudes of relics and provisions were kept in a methodical manner to see that
the superior and royal dead did not suffer from lack of any wants in their eternal
afterlife. Silk was naturally a part of the catalog of objects at the burial sites in
China, but what appears completely surprising is the fact that silk has also been
found from pyramids of ancient Egypt. Egyptologists found silk tissues from a 30-
50 year old female mummy in Deir-el-Medina in Thebes. Even though silk
became more common in Egypt from the 4
th
century AD, the Deir-el-Medina silk
3|P a g e

tissue find suggests that silk was in fact used in Egypt as long ago as 1000 years
BC, suggesting perhaps an indirect or even direct Sino-Egyptian trade linkage
involving silk as a commodity
In Buddhism, theological discussions and ritual practices served to address
eschatological concerns, relic worship was an important expression of this concern.
The use of silk both as a sacred object and as a currency of transaction in the
purchase and upkeep of Buddhist relics and in the construction and maintenance of
Buddhist shrines has been extensively reported in historical literature.
Buddhism, originating in India around the time of Confucius, continued to flourish
during the Tang period and was adopted by the imperial family, becoming
thoroughly sinicized and a permanent part of Chinese traditional culture.

Figure1ApagefromtheMahayanaBuddhistDiamondSutra(VajracchedikPrajpramitStra),printedinthe9thyear
ofXiantongEraoftheTangDynasty,i.e.868A.D.CurrentlylocatedintheBritishLibrary,London.

4|P a g e

The use of silk as an element for Buddhist rituals began at the latest by the 4
th

century AD. From the 5
th
century AD, in both India as well as in China, silk
banners were considered obligatory for ceremonies. The custom of emperors'
granting ritual robes to monks became particularly significant during the T'ang
Dynasty, though it probably started in the sixth century. The quality of the silk
robe granted became a status symbol among Buddhist monks and other religious
figures and attained symbolic significance. Buddhist Sanskrit texts openly
expounded the offering of silk by devotees. In the Mahavastu, a text of the
Lokottaravda school of Early Buddhism and one of the major Buddhist texts
extant from the early centuries AD, it is stated that 'he who has placed a festoon of
fine silk on a monument of the saviour of the world prospers in all his aims, both
among gods and among men, avoids base families and is not reborn among them;
he becomes wealthy and affluent, a sovereign in this world'. In the Tang records
of the miracles in India, a passage from Fa-yuan-chu-lin contains the information
that when Sakyamuni reached nirvana, he left the golden woven robe made by his
aunt to Maitreya, the future Buddha. His favourite disciple, Mahakasyapa, was
entrusted with the task of delivering the robe. Twenty years later, Mahakasyapa
climbed a mountain to wait for the Maitreya to inherit this robe.
Indian silks 5
th
to 6
th
century AD probably reached China. A Chinese document
found in a tomb dated 574 AD in Turfan, Central Asia, names a kind of silk textile
'deva brocade' made without killing the silk worm in order to protect the length of
the cocoon filaments. When Buddhism flourished in China, auspicious objects in
India, such as the peacock, lion, elephant and bodhi tree joined in the menagerie of
Chinese animals on textile design.
Yu-yang Tsa-tsu (Miscellany of Forgotten Lore), a Chinese work of 9
th
century AD
authored by Tuan Cheng-shih mentions the custom of people covering the dead
with a face-cover (made of silk) in Tang China. An inventory dated 437 AD, after
naming the clothes of the dead, lists a bundle of yellow silk yarn thirty feet long in
his hand, followed by the Chinese geomantic symbols: black dragon on the left,
white tiger on the right, red skylark in front, Hsuan-wu (an imaginary animal, a
combination of a turtle and snake)behind. In the Chinese literature Tu-lu-fan
Ch'u-t'u-wen-shu, a rather typical inventory dated 548 AD of artifacts from a tomb
contains ten thousand gold coins, one million silver coins, one thousand pieces of
brocade, ten thousand bolts of damask, one thousand catties of silk floss, ten
5|P a g e

thousand bolts of plain silk, and a 1,000,090,000 foot long silk yarn for climbing
to the heaven. In another image from a tomb from Tang China, a Buddhist monk
is shown helping a devotee go over to the other world, hopefully one of the
heavens, with the instrumentthe silk yarnto climb up to heaven ready at hand.
In yet another instance from Tang China, an inventory dated 673 AD from a tomb
contained a will which was addressed to the Buddha. The man who had drawn up
this will explained that he had had an image of the Buddha and two of
bodhisattvas made, and that he had recited the Ullambana Sutra. He planned to
spend the merits he accrued from these efforts in the other world along with the
numerous silver coins, silks and specifically named female and male slaves who
were his personal property! Some inventories of merits obtained from tombs
were drawn up by the relatives of the dead. A woman listed the merits of her
mother-in-law to include the payments she had made to monks to recite sutras as
well as her donations to monks in silk. From another inventory obtained from a
tomb, a woman listed among the many merits of her dead father-in-law the sutras
he had recited, the silk banners he had made and the silk clothes he had donated.
This extremely long list recorded the many things done to try to buy him back from
death during the year he had been ill. In the 9
th
century AD, a monastery in
Ch'ang-an preserved six pieces of clothing that belonged to the former empress Wu
Tse-t'ien (684-705 AD), including a shawl of golden weaved tapestry with a
dragon pattern, a jacket and an embroidered shirt.
On the one hand, it is likely that devotees gave their best belongings to the Buddha
On the other hand, items used by the deceased persons were considered polluted,
which prevented others, at least those in the same social standing, from using them
again. Donating these beautiful silks to Buddhist institutions served two purposes.
It brought merit to the dead and helped them in their reincarnations. The items
became usable wealth after being purified in a religious institution which was
powerful enough to overcome the pollution of death.
Buddhists in the Tang period China gradually believed that the currency they
needed in the other world was the merit they had accumulated. Though they could
buy merit with silk, changing them to a foreign currency had to be through an
agency or mediumBuddhist institutions and rituals. A devotee could donate
silks and silk clothing to a monk or monastery to have sutras recited, to have a
statue carved or to have a stupa built to store relics for his benediction.
6|P a g e

According to the Tripitaka, The Tantric teacher, Amoghavajra, received numerous

yards of all kinds of silk from the emperor in such great quantity that they piled up
like a hill and Buddhist sources report that he never kept these for himself.
Amoghavajra was probably the most favoured Buddhist monk in the Tang court
next to Hsuan-tsang. This Tantric teacher from a Brahman family in north India
and brought up in Central Asia (his father was Indian and mother was from Suguda
in Eastern Persia), often received hundreds of bolts of silks, dozens of embroidered
silk banners and other silk items such as beddings, for his performance of Tantric
rituals. In the year 746 AD, as a reward for his successful prayer for rain, the
emperor granted him two hundred bobs of silk as well as a purple silk robe.
Emperor Hsuan-tsung personally placed the robe on his shoulders.
When the Chinese pilgrim Fa-hsien visited India between 399 and 414 AD, he
observed the wide use of silk banners in Buddhist rituals. For example, silk
banners were hung in the Buddha's garden near Sravasti and were used in a parade
of the Buddha's image in Pataliputra. A century after Fa-hsiens visit to India, the
pilgrims Sung-Yiin and Hui-sheng saw several tens of thousands of silk banners
hung over a stupa in Uzuntati, Central Asia. Assuredly in the 7
th
century AD,
when Hsuan-tsang visited India, the use of silk banners in Buddhist rituals practice
was still in vogue. Sanskrit texts from Gupta period show that silk banners were
also used in non-Buddhist rituals and on secular occasions in India.
During the 7
th
century AD or later, the killing of the silk worm for extracting silk
became a religious dilemma for Sino Buddhists. In the days of the Buddha and the
period immediately following, the use of silk was not in vogue among the monks
and devotees in Buddhism. The clothes of the monks at that time were made of
cotton, the most easily available material in India. It was from the Gupta period
320-550 AD, that silks became fairly common in India, and Indian monks accepted
them without much dispute. The Chinese traveler I-ching described the silks used
by the monks of the five parts of India as 'rough silks' (shih-chan), meaning that
these silks were made from broken cocoons, which set free Indian monks from the
guilt of killing worms. Silk textiles made from broken cocoons at holy centers such
as Benares were highly priced textiles for Vaishnavite Hindus and Jains.
7|P a g e

During the 7
th
century AD the people of Kapisa (Afghanistan) were so eager to
acquire Chinese silk that they even traded their precious relics, the parietal bone
and some minor relics, for silk. Though Chinese silks were treasured, the ruler was
willing to donate them for religious purposes. A Kapisa king once gave five bolts
of 'pure silk brocade' to Hsuan-tsang. Chinese pilgrims, though disputing about
whether monks should wear silks, were well aware of the demand for Chinese silks
and unhesitatingly considered
silks carried to India the best
gifts to the Buddha or the
currency paid to monasteries.
Among the treasures found in
the stupa of the historical Fa-
men monastery in Fa-men,
Shaanxi, China; there are a few
pieces of purple silk with golden
embroidery in which are
wrapped finger bones of
Sakyamuni (honorific for
Gautam Buddha), the founder of
Buddhism. Relic-worship
ceremony was a repetition of
funeral rites for the Buddha or
other Buddhist deities. Relics in
the Fa-men monastery were
frequently taken out for worship
by the monks and emperors.
In 1987 excavations at Fa-men revealed stele inscribed with records of such
ceremonies and donations. According to one of the inscriptions, after performing a
rite of bathing the relics in the year 649 AD, the monk, Hui-kung, donated 3000
bolts of silk to the relics in the year 656 AD. An inscription of 874 AD recorded all
the donations made by generations of emperors, empresses, princes and others who
were qualified to do so. Archaeologists actually found more than seven hundred
pieces of the silk clothes listed in the inscription, though most of them were
carbonized beyond recovery. An inscription dated to 741 AD from another site of
Figure2:FamenTemple
8|P a g e

relics, the Ch'ing-shan monastery, states that the relics were covered with exquisite
silks. Even though the excavated silk items from the Fa-men monastery are quite
large in quantity, they obviously do not represent all the donations. Most of them
probably were used to cover the cost of building and maintaining the stupas, or
they simply became the property of the monastery under the name of the Buddha.
Clearly, this association of silk with Buddhism, as a material expression of the
religious function of relics in the life and death cycle, brought silk textiles and
clothes into Buddhist institutions, including those beyond the border of T'ang
China.
While worshipping the parietal bone of the Buddha in Nagarahara (near Jalalabad ,
Afghanistan), Hsuan-tsang donated fifty gold coins, one thousand silver coins, four
silk banners, two pieces of brocade and two sets of ritual robes. He then sprayed
flowers, for which he presumably had to pay.
A disciple of the Chinese pilgrim, Hui-ning, travelled to Canton from India with
the new text on relic worship. On his way back to India to resume the pilgrimage,
the disciple carried a few hundred bolts of plain silk for his teacher in Kalinga.
When he reached the Mahabodhi monastery in Bodha Gaya, I-ching made a ritual
robe of the same measurements as the
Tathagata statue in Bodh Gaya from the silk
donated to him by the monks and lay
devotees of Shantung, China. He also
presented tens of thousands of gauze silk
canopies to the monastery in honour of his
friend, the Vinaya teacher, Hsuan from P'u-
chou.
In the early period of the Tang Dynasty, Tai-
tsung frequently sent envoys to the
Mahabodhi monastery in Bodha Gaya with
donations of ritual silk robes. This tradition
continued into the eleventh century, when
two Chinese monks donated a gold
embroidered kasayaa Buddhist ritual silk
robeto spread over the throne of the
Figure3:MahabodhiTempleBodhGaya
9|P a g e

Buddha in Mahabodhi on behalf of the Sung emperor.

Even after they went back to China, Chinese Buddhist teachers sent silks to India
through Indian monks. In his career which spanned the regimes of two Tang
emperors, Hsuan-tsang received more than ten thousand pieces of silk ranging
from plain silk to damask and brocade, plus a few hundred pieces of clothes and
ritual robes. But he never accumulated anything for himself. Except for spending
on building stupas and making images, he gave these silks to the poor and 'foreign
Brahman guests', i.e. Indian guests. Many Indian Buddhist monks resided in T'ang
China. Numerous records tell of emperors who rewarded these monks with silks or
silk ritual robes for their religious services, translations and preaching activities.
For example, Parabhagramitra (called Po-lo-p'o-ka-lo-mi-to-lo in Chinese), a monk
from central India, received many bolts of silk from the court during his career in
China, including a ritual robe made in the palace workshop.
Evidently, all these historical facts mentioned so far, demonstrate the affiliation
between Silk and Buddhist Relics, and the significance of this association in
Buddhist eschatology.

SILK AS A DIPLOMATIC TOOL IN BUDDHIST CHINA, THE

DIMENSION OF SEMIOTIC VIRTUOSITY AND SUMPTUARY RULES
IN SINO BUDDHISM
Rulers in various parts of the world have for both domestic and diplomatic
purposes, tried to impress their subjects and neighbours with rare goods; in case of
the Chinese, it was silk. In addition to reserving high quality silk for their own use,
the Han rulers of China also gifted such silks to foreigners for diplomatic purposes.
From the 2
nd
century BC, China engaged in a prolonged warfare with a nomadic
group, the Hsiung-nu, along the northwest border. The Hsiung-nu was a loose
confederacy of nomadic tribes. The shan-yu, head of the Hsiung-nu confederacy,
relied on luxury goods such as silk from a settled society like the Chinese to retain
the loyalty of the tribal chiefs and on constant warfare to maintain the solidarity of
the whole confederacy.
In respect of silk, especially in ancient China, the most obvious trait was its
restriction throughout history either by price or by law to the elite. Thus, when
10|P a g e

T'ang China effectively monopolized and regulated the production and transaction
of silk, restrictions on exquisite silks were implemented through the law. The
purpose was essentially political. In China a set of statutes for clothing to
distinguish their bureaucratic echelons and ecclesiastical hierarchy was enacted
thus consolidating political order; here silk can be said to be a medium of
expressing semiotic virtuosity, that is, the capacity to signal fairly complex social
messages exquisite silks can only be worn by the aristocracy and not
commoners! Your clothes strictly define your social status by statute!
The government in Han China forbade merchants from wearing chin (polychrome
patterned silk), embroidered silk and other fine textiles. Since various Chinese
governments used a large quantity of silk as gifts to foreigners for political reasons
or in exchange for desirable foreign goods, they also tried to control its export. An
edict of 714 AD forbade the sale to foreigners of the most exquisite silk products:
polychrome patterned silks, damasks, gauzes, crepes, embroideries and other fine
silk. When T'ang China built a bureaucratic system on the ruins of a disintegrated
polity and the remains of a decadent aristocracy, it reorganized the old custom of
regulating the clothes worn by different social groups into a system which helped
to distinguish the new bureaucratic echelon; naturally silk clothes were reserved
for the Royalty and aristocracy.
The Buddhist Pali vinaya and Sanskrit Pratimoksa Sutras stipulate certain
conditions under which a monk could receive donations of clothing. The
Pratimoksa Sutras are much lengthier and elaborate on clothing than the vinayas,
because society and textile products in the early centuries AD, when the Sanskrit
texts were compiled, were much more complex than during the time of the Buddha
and later, when the Pali monastic rules were formed. The traveler I-ching in the 8
th

century AD observed that four different schools of Buddhism distinguished
themselves through different ways of wearing their under-garments and belts.
Some Chinese pilgrims who went to India with clothes that were not in fashion
were so embarrassed that they tore them up and discarded them as rags.
In the year 648 AD Emperor T 'ai-tsung gave an audience to two famous monks.
Both wore fine ritual robes which they had inherited from their teachers, who, in
turn, had received them from Emperor Liang Wu-ti (503-550 AD). The emperor
discerned faults in the robes and showed the monks an exquisite robe made in his
11|P a g e

palace workshop. Both monks expressed, by composing poems, their desire to

have the robe as a gift. But the emperor gave them only fifty bolts of silk each and
saved the robe for Hsuan-tsang. Hsuan-tsang received an additional precious ritual
robe in 656 AD for his prayers for the empress who had a difficult childbirth.
Hsuan-tsang described the robe as 'superb apparel with golden thread'. From the
mid-Tang period, purple robes were established as the highest badge of honour
that monks could receive. Many outstanding Buddhist monks received purple robes
from the court. In the Pao-ying monastery of Ch'ang-an, a famous portrait of the
Maitreya shows him wearing a purple Kasaya.
Clearly, there was an unambiguous association between the use of silk garments
and the body, person and personality of the user in Sino-Buddhism. Sino-Buddhist
monks used to wear scarce fine cotton cloth in preference to silk which was widely
available in China, because of their Buddhist vinaya rules forbidding silk as it
involves death of the silk worm in its manufacture. It was I-ching, the Chinese
traveler and Buddhist scholar who persuaded his fellow Chinese monks to accept
silk. He argued that since Indian monks used silks, Chinese monks need not
confine themselves to the very scarce fine cotton cloth when silk was easily
available. I-ching argued that only deliberately killing silk worms would create
one's karmathe negative score for one's future lives. Even a layman should not
witness the killing of silk worms But, he argued, if a donor takes the silk to you
with good intention, you should just happily accept it and wear it to protect your
body in order to nurture merit.
The Pratimoksa Sutras of Mahasamghikas ruled that no monk should own rugs
made of sheep's wool mixed with silk while that of Mulasarvastivadins ruled that a
monk should not own a rug made of silk. These rules were probably intended to
prohibit individual monks from owning expensive property rather than to oppose
the use of silk. However, neither sect had reservations about silk garments! Since
the monks could not wear fancy clothes, they had to sell them through financial
institutions attached to the monastery. No wonder the sumptuary laws could not
stop commoners from acquiring and even wearing fancy silk clothes in ancient
China. Further, as silk fabrics served as a token of Buddhist devotion, commoners
were endowed with the right of purchasing the finest weaves for religious purpose.
The popularity of silk strengthened their desire to obtain fine silks, and they thus
12|P a g e

legitimately released silks to a large market outside the small circle of upper social
groups in China.
It seems that there were no sumptuary laws regulating clothing according to
official or social status in ancient and early medieval India. Actually it was
impossible to have this kind of law issued by any Indian monarch because the so-
called law code, the dharma, was never enacted by any Indian ruler but compiled
and interpreted by various schools of Brahmans according to prevailing customary
laws. While monarchs were supposed to follow and enforce dharma, it was the
Brahmanical or Hindu social system that enforced all the regulations prescribed by
the dharmas. The Arthasastra and its commentaries were more like manuals
containing knowledge of how to rule for kings and their ministers than dharmas.
Neither the Arthasastra nor the dharmas could cover the practices of the whole
society, as the Buddhists and Jains had monastic rules and guidelines for their laity.
In dharma literature, there were regulations about how one should wear which kind
of garment on ceremonial occasions, but there were no references about which
material should be worn by different kinds of people. The Arthsastra contains
references about the production of textiles and their provenances, for the purpose
of taxation, but it gives no advice on who should wear what. In South India silks
were freely used by whoever could afford them, even at the time when classical
Tamil works, such as Shilappadikaram and Manime kalai, were collected.
Shilappadikaram (The ankle bracelet) was written at the end of the third ancient
Tamil literary epoch, the Sangam period 3
rd
century BC to 3
rd
century AD and
Manime kalai was written by the Tamil Buddhist poet Seethalai Saathanar and is
the only extant Tamil Buddhist literary text from the Sangam period.

BUDDHISM AS A DRIVER OF THE SILK TRADE
Silk trade developed with the spread of Buddhism from India to China. As
payment for Chinese silks India sent precious stones and other jewels as well as
incense and spices to China from the early centuries AD. A combination of these
luxuries gained a sacred status in Buddhist rituals and eventually crystallized in the
Buddhist concept, the sapta-ratna (Seven Treasures).
13|P a g e

Silk trade benefitted the Kushanas. Cities prospered from the domestic and inter-
cultural trade under the rule of the Kushanas. The values of traders were inevitably
involved in the theological developments of Buddhism. Numerous votive
inscriptions dated to the Kushana period contain statements that benefactors
expected their donations to win them merit which would bring welfare to
themselves and to their loved ones. The rise of these commercial values among
Buddhists paralleled the institutionalization of Buddhist monasteries. Urban
prosperity brought great wealth into Buddhist monasteries. Traders, artisans, and
other urban dwellers, as always, donated handsomely to monasteries and thus
facilitated the expansion of Buddhist institutions.
Kharosthi documents dated to the late third or the early 4th century AD from
Central Asia reveal that silk fabric and garments were used as payment in
transactions. The price of a woman was forty-one bolts of silk. A Buddhist
monastery listed fines in bolts of silk for monks who broke its rules. As a
monastery was a station for pilgrims and traders, it is not surprising that the
monastery and monks preserved silk as their property. Chinese documents from
Turfan also record the practice of using bolts of silk as money.
The silk industry, from sericulture to weaving, was well established in India during
the Gupta era. The wealth of the well-known Mandasor silk weaving guild testifies
to the prosperity of the trade. In the early seventh century when Hsuan-tsang
visited India, he listed silk as one of the most popular materials for clothing in the
country.
As Buddhist activities in both Tang China and post-Gupta India evolved around
relic-worship and translations, and as pilgrimages were undertaken for commercial
purposes, the silk trade and the pilgrimage trade in Buddhist relics intertwined and
formed the core of Sino-lndian cultural exchanges. In short, silk became sacred
when used for religious purposes, especially for relic worship. The relics of the
Buddha gained in commercial value when there was a market demand for them.
Buddhist relics played a special role in the silk trade, and the silk trade played a
special role in the development of Buddhism.
In ancient India, the domestic market for silk was quite large. Consumers ranged
from the most sacred and elitist personnel to those of low social status, there were
14|P a g e

no sumptuary rules or royal orders forbidding the wearing of silks in India by

commoners as was the case in China. Silk was considered appropriate enough for
clothing deities. The goddess Lakshmi is described as wearing a white silk scarf in
the Harsa Carita (The chronicles of King Harshvardhana). Kings and royal
members enjoyed wearing silk, as is evident from the textiles which formed part of
the rich dowry and wedding decorations for Rajyasri, the sister of King Harsa. But
servants, especially female servants, and low status persons like dancers could also
wear silk. Agrawala in his work Deeds of Harsha identified the costumes of
both a sun god and a dancer as the costly Persian silk stavaraka.

SUMMARY
Ancient Sino-Indian connections involved on one hand the spiritual force of
Buddhism from the Indian subcontinent which provided much welcomed
eschatological relief to the Chinese people in contrast to the very rigid and rational
morality based Confucianism which was prevalent in China; on the other hand silk
from China became a symbol of eschatological expression due to its regular use in
Buddhist relic worship. The routine involvement of silk in relic worship also
helped in the transition of this material from being a restricted item into becoming
a commodity for the general Chinese people.
The Sino-Indian Buddhist spiritual connection ensured that silk got included in the
Buddhist concept of seven treasures, sapta ratna which heightened the spiritual
importance of this material and boosted its trade. Stressing once again, in China,
the religious dimension of silk ensured that despite sumptuary and royal
injunctions silk would find its way, eventually into the hands of commoners for
religious as well as personal use. In ancient Asia, Buddhist proselytizing and
pilgrimages continued to promote silk transactions and thus silk trade.

REFERENCES
1. G. Lubec et al, Nature, 4th March 1993
2. Xinru Liu, Silk and Religion, Oxford University Press, 1996
3. Tripitaka v. 53, 504a
15|P a g e

4. Fa-hsien (edited biography of Fa-hsien, ed Chang hsun), 1985

5. Yang, Hsuan-chih, 266
6. Hsuan-Tsang, 382
7. Leggett, 1949, The Story of Silk (New York: Lifetime Editions), 101
8. Bayly, CA, 1986, The Origins of Swadeshi (Home Industry): Cloth and
Indian Society. 1700-1930, in The Social Life of Things, ed. A. Appadurai.
Cambridge University Press, pp. 285-321.
9. Tripitaka v. 54. 212c
10. Hui-li & Yen-Tsung. Ta-ts'u-en-ssu San-tsang-fa-shih Chuan (Biography of
Hsuan-tsang), eds Sun Yu-t'ang & Hsieh Fang (Beijing: Chung-hua-shu-chu,
1983).
11. Tuan, Ch'eng-shih, Yu-yang Tsa-tsu (Miscellaneous information), ed. Fang
Nan-sheng (Beijing: Chung-hua Shu-chu. 1981)
12. Turfan v. 2. 62-3
13. Turfan v. 6, 402, Ast. 4
14. Turfan v. 6, 500, Ast. 201
15. Hou, Jo-ping, 1989. 'Fa-men-ssu Ti-kung Fa-hsien-te Chih-t'i chih T'a Ming'
(Inscription on the chaitya stupa found in the cell of Fa-men Monastery),
Wen-po, vol. 33. no. 6, pp. 88-9.
16. WANG Ts'ang-hsi, 1989, 'Fa-men-ssu Kung-wu-chang Shih-i'
(Interpretation of the problems in the inscription of the inventory of
donations in the Fa-men Monastery), Wen-po, vol. 33. no. 4, pp. 30-3.
17. Lo. Ch'ang-an. 1987, 'A Great Number of Rare Relics Were Unearthed in
Famen Temple", Wen-po, vol. 19. no. 4, pp. 3-4.
18. Ta-T'ang Hsi-yu-ch'iu-fa-kao-seng-chuan, 77, 154
19. Tripitaka v. 50, 439c-440c
20. Hsu Kao-seng-chuan, v. 3
21. Tripitaka v. 50. 294b
22. Cunningham, Alexander. 1892, Mahabodhi (London: H.W. Allen).
23. Chou Ta-fu, 1957, 'Kai-cheng Fa-kuo Han-hsueh-chia Sha-wan tui Yin-tu
ch'u-i'u Han-wen-pei te Wu-shih' (A criticism on the interpretation by the
French sinologist Chavannes about the Chinese inscriptions excavated in
India), Li-shih Yen-chiou, 1957. no. 6.
24. Prebish, Charles S., 1975, Buddhist Monastic Discipline, Pennsylvania State
University Press.
16|P a g e

25. Moti Chandra, Costumes, Textiles, Cosmetics and Coiffure in Ancient and
Medieval India, Delhi, 1973,pp 53
26. Burrow. Thomas, 1940, A Translation of Kharoshthi Documents from
Chinese Turkestan (London: The Royal Asiatic Society, 1940).