Kumarajiva and Kucha in His Time

Kumarajiva (c. 344–413) was a great Buddhist scholar who passed his early years in Central Asia and north-western India and then went to China to present to it an early authentic interpretation of Mahayana Buddhism. Reports of his religious and political activities provide us with insights into the complexity of the crossing of linguistic and cultural barriers between communities and countries that he carried out, thereby clearing the path for later Buddhist translators and theologians. Many scholars have studied his complicated life story and contributions to Buddhist literature in China based on Chinese historical records. ¹ Most researchers have focused on Kumarajiva’s journey to China and interactions with Buddhist scholars there. This article, on the other hand, aims at tracing the intellectual and political environment of Kucha, an oasis in Xinjiang where Kumarajiva was born, and in which, according to Buddhist hagiography, he emerged as a highly intelligent scholar, though with a rather shady personal character.

There is general agreement among our sources that Kumarajiva was born in Kucha from an Indian aristocratic father and a princess of Kucha, a state in the Tarim Basin. ² His father, Jiumo Yan (Kumara Yan), rarely appeared in his life, for he was brought up and educated into Buddhism by his mother. Jiumo Yan was supposedly about to inherit the position of prime minister from his father in a principality but decided to give up his political career, preferring exile in Kucha. The status of this Indian aristocrat is ambiguous, to say the least, for there is no indication of the specific state he was from. Fourth-century India was not a unified empire. The Gupta Dynasty ruled over a large portion of North India, surrounded by numerous small states that were either subject to its suzerainty or independent. Meanwhile, in Gandhara, Tukharistan and Central Asia, east of the Pamir Plateau, remnants of the former Kushan Empire lingered on under the shadow of the rising Sassanid Empire that extended its power from the Iranian Plateau to areas beyond the Hindukush. The circumstances of the time indicate that Kumarajiva’s father was more likely to have been an exiled noble from the former Kushan territory than an aristocrat from one of the kingdoms on the Ganges Plain.

The decline of the Kushan Empire and the coming of the Sassanid suzerainty in the early third century caused a realignment of political patronage for religious institutions in Central Asia. The Sassanid Empire based its legitimacy on Zoroastrianism. Zoroastrian temples appeared in oasis cities, such as Samarkand, and the communities in Sogdiana, or the part of Central Asia to the west of the Pamir Plateau. There, Zoroastrian religious practices were mixed with local cults. The Sogdians, however, were practical farmers and traders. In their homelands, they mostly followed Zoroastrian rituals for life events, such as funerals. However, when they travelled as traders, they accepted the religions of their clients, such as Buddhism. Thus, when they followed the treacherous routes across and along the Indus to India, they learned to worship Buddhist stupas. Kucha, on the other side of the Pamirs, became a stronghold of Buddhism, probably due to the influx of immigrants from the former Kushan territory. Thanks to the Silk Road trade, Sogdians and Kuchans, though separated by religion, languages ³ and the formidable Pamir Mountains, shared many cultural traits—music, dance, dress style and exquisite silk textiles for clothing. ⁴ The Kuchans, however, had to look to the south to obtain guidance on Buddhist teachings.

By the mid-fourth century, when Kumarajiva was born, Buddhism was a well-established faith in Kucha and enjoyed patronage from its royal family. Buddhist institutions in Kucha developed a unique form, fitting the oasis environment which sustained pastoralism along with agriculture. Enough wealth was thereby created to provide sufficient livelihood for intellectual and religious pursuits. Communities continued to perform rituals to their local cults, and immigrants who came to Kucha from the other side of the Pamir Plateau were not only Buddhists of various sects but also Zoroastrians, Brahmans, etc. The influx of various religious and ethnic groups also brought several languages to Kucha. Buddhist missionaries were active in creating artworks, sculptures, wall paintings, stucco figurines and silk paintings in and around stupas and temple caves, helping thus to popularise stories of the lives of the Buddha and Buddhist saints. Using artworks, Buddhist teachers from faraway lands spread the simple teachings of the Buddha among people who could not understand the language of philosophical Buddhism. Learned scholars mastered Indic languages, including Gandharian and Iranic languages such as Bactrian, as well as Sanskrit used in Mahayana Buddhism along with Brahmanism. Kucha was an oasis state constantly dealing with rivalries between oases and menace from surrounding powerful states. As a source of solace in a disturbed world, Buddhism was more than just a religion; it was, as a state religion, an important part of the state machinery in the Kucha kingdom. Royal patronage and support from the lay community provided resources for the large scale of construction and artistic creation of Buddhist monastic caves during the fourth century, when Kumarajiva grew up there. ⁵ On the cave murals, female figures—musicians and dancers—superseded male figures in paradise scenes. This characteristic of Silk Road Buddhist art is first found in Kucha.

The city of Kucha was the largest metropolis on the northern rim of the Takla Makan Desert. According to the history of the Jin Dynasty (281–369), Kucha city was surrounded by three layers of walls, while it boasted about 1,000 Buddhist stupas and temples. People engaged in both agriculture and pastoralism. The palace of the king was as splendid as the abode of gods. ⁶ It was also said that statues of the Buddha seated in the royal palace made it look like a Buddhist monastery. ⁷ In this theocratic state, Buddhist monasteries were practically supplementary institutions sustaining the monarchy. Many princes and princesses, and other women of the royal family, filled the numerous monasteries. That there were so many nuns in Kucha amazed the Chinese Buddhist scholar Seng You (444–518) who recorded that royal women from oases east of the Pamir filled the three major nunneries in Kucha. Altogether, those nunneries housed about 260 nuns. ⁸ Monasteries and nunneries in Kucha were highly disciplined places. All monks and nuns had to switch rooms and beds or even monasteries every 3 months. A monk could not stay outside overnight even once before he passed 5 years of the ordained life. Only three adult nuns together could go out or travel. A young nun going out not accompanied by her instructor could be expelled from the monastery. In short, Buddhist institutions were boarding schools for elite young men and women from the eastern part of Central Asia. Therefore, they were also important diplomatic and strategic assets of the Kucha regime.

This political context makes the act of Kumarajiva’s mother, Jiva, understandable. She offered herself to an immigrant, or a refugee, from India: her husband, Jiumo Yan, could have been an aristocratic Indian but might not have been a Buddhist. Jiva decided to abandon her husband and join the monastery together with their 7-year-old son, Kumarajiva, so as to give her son an education, as Buddhist monasteries were the key educational institutions there. It seems that Kumarajiva learned everything offered in the Kucha monastery in 2 years. Jiva then took him across the Pamir and the Indus to Jibin (Kashmir) to study with a famous teacher, a cousin of the Jibin king. Though the teacher, Bantoudaduo, was a well-known Buddhist scholar, Kashmir was not yet the great Buddhist centre as it was to become in the latter part of the first millennium. The king, who might not have been a Buddhist himself, sponsored many debates between Kumarajiva and scholars of other religious sects. ⁹ Kumarajiva gained not only fame but also knowledge and possibly new ways of thinking through the debates, thus possibly laying the foundations for his later intellectual development.

By the time Kumarajiva was 12 years of age, Jiva took him back to Kucha. As an already established scholar, other oasis states tried to invite him to serve as a high official, but Kumarajiva was not interested. Instead, Jiva furthered her son’s education by travelling to other oases and looking for teachers. Kumarajiva thus took advantage of travelling Buddhist teachers, as well as scholars of other religions, along the Central Asian Silk Road, to study, discuss and debate, covering various fields of knowledge. It was in Kashgar that he was, for the first time, used as a diplomatic instrument. The king established him as a high instructor of Buddhism to attract the friendly attention of Kucha. Meanwhile, Kumarajiva continued his education. He studied the four Vedas with their commentaries and other branches of knowledge, such as astrology. The study of Brahmanical literature should have necessitated training in Sanskrit, which is quite different in grammar and pronunciation from the Prakrit of the early Buddhist texts he had studied so far. Excellent in scholarship, Kumarajiva was nevertheless not scrupulous in minor matters and thus caused some criticism among Buddhist monks. ¹⁰ After all, Kumarajiva was a teenager who had not yet been ordained as a monk.

Around that time, two princes, Shache and Canjun, appeared on the scene as outstanding Buddhist teachers. Again, there is no indication where the princes were from. Kumarajiva, probably already fluent in Sanskrit, studied Mahayana Buddhism with them. ¹¹ It is likely that the two princely Buddhist teachers came from the former Kushan territory where Mahayana theology in Sanskrit had apparently matured and Mahayana institutions had prospered.

When Kumarajiva reached the age of 20, he was ordained as a monk in the Kuchan king’s palace, where he was assigned a teacher to learn ‘Vinaya’, the code of discipline of Buddhist monks. Meanwhile, the influx of nomads into North China in the fourth century had created waves of instability in Central Asia which were now to sweep over Kucha. Relieved from the responsibility of her son’s further education, Jiva left for India to pass the rest of her days there. ¹² As Kumarajiva was a famous Buddhist scholar, gaining him became a token of cultural superiority for rival warlords. It was now that Kumarajiva started his journey eastwards to China, voluntarily or involuntarily.

In China, Kumarajiva’s life bore the stamp of his Kuchan background, where Buddhism had co-existed with a worldly morality. The author of Biographies of Outstanding Monks and those of other hagiographical works profusely apologise for the monk Kumarajiva’s marriage to a Kucha princess and, later, in Chang-an, for his taking concubines when in charge of translating Buddhist texts. Buddhist historians such as Huijiao wished Kumarajiva had disciplined himself to set an example to others in the Buddhist sangha in China. ¹³ However, Kumarajiva probably did not mean to be an exemplary monk. Probably for the purpose of diluting the expectation from his Chinese colleagues, Kumarajiva re-translated the Vimalakirti, the very text portraying a householder Buddhist whose knowledge of Buddhist theology surpassed that of all the monks and even the bodhisattvas. ¹⁴ This was a way of claiming that even though he was not an exemplary monk, Kumarajiva was nevertheless the most outstanding Buddhist scholar of his day.

The theocratic Kucha regime did not allow the monastic realm to be independent free of the secular political domain. Members of royal families, not only from Kucha but also from other oases, princes and princesses joined monasteries for education. Marrying their princesses off to outstanding scholars was a general strategy of retaining talent among rulers in Central Asia. This practice also created opportunities for unusual Central Asian women, such as Jiva, Kumarajiva’s mother, to look to the world away from the oases. Meanwhile, dynamics of warfare and intellectual exchanges on the Silk Road not only sharpened Kumarajiva’s understanding of Buddhist theology but also provided him access to a vast repertoire of knowledge, especially command over different languages, which made him the most outstanding translator of Buddhist texts of his time.