The Buddhist Maritime Silk Road

Book excerpt: The Buddhist Maritime Silk Road is a collection of lectures Dr. Lancaster delivered at the Department of Religious Studies at the University of the West, California. These lectures describe the search for models that can deal with the study of how Buddhism spread from the Ganges Basin and established itself throughout the Southeast area of Eurasia. Additionally, the book contains many images of Buddhist sites, many of which were taken by the film crews and exhibition teams led by Professor Sarah Kenderdine and Professor Jeffrey Shaw, the leading figures in new media art. These images formed part of the large museum exhibits that opened at the City University of Hong Kong and the Buddha Museum at Fo Guang Shan in Taiwan. The book recounts the magnificent history of the world of Maritime Buddhism from a diverse range of aspects—the various Buddhist traditions, pilgrims and monks, causes and conditions, norms and rituals, cross-cultural relations between East and West, as well as the intricacies of navigation technology, and migrations of the Austronesian peoples—all remarkable and crucial elements of the transmission of Buddhism brought to new heights of importance. In this book, the iconic cycle formed by the northern overland and southern maritime trading routes was described by Dr. Lancaster as “The Great Circle of Buddhism.”