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The Buddhist Maritime Silk Road (3): The Great Circle of Buddhism and Its Rim
The spread of the Buddhist movement throughout the peninsula and across to Sri Lanka was impressive. However, a far greater challenge awaited the tradition outside the cultural and linguistic domains of India. The “Great Circle”would carry Buddhist ideas and practices thousands of miles away from India. New homes for it were found along the coasts and rivers, wherever merchants needed to go. Eventually, the arcs of the “Great Circle” of Buddhism would encompass the whole of Southeast Eurasia. One portion of the arc went from the West Coast of India up the Indus Valley and around the far end of the Himalayas to the Tarim Basin leading to Chang’an (Xi’an), a route of more than 4,000 miles. The connecting maritime segment of the “Great Circle” started on the western shores of India, circling the peninsula and Sri Lanka up the East Coast to the Bay of Bengal and then moving East around the coastlines of Bangladesh, Myanmar, Malay Peninsula, across to Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam, before turning north to East Asia and the ports of China, Korea, and Japan. The circumference of both arcs land and sea, measured enough miles to encircle the equator of the earth; the indented shorelines contained 20,000 miles of surface, five times the land route mileage.
《佛教海線絲綢之路》第三章——教大圓環的弘傳和發展
佛教在整個印度半島乃至斯里蘭卡的傳播運動，令人感到震撼。然而，離開印度文化及其語言境域的佛教傳統，面臨更大的挑戰。藉由「大圓環」路線，佛教的思想與實踐傳播至距離印度數千英里之外的地方，商人必經的沿海與河岸一帶，皆是佛教拓展的新據點，致使這個佛教「大圓環」的弧線涵蓋整個歐亞大陸的東南部。「大圓環」的一部分由印度西海岸延伸至印度河谷，穿越喜馬拉雅山脈的盡頭到達塔里木盆地，最後抵達長安（今西安）地帶，這是一條超過4 千英里的陸路。而與海域相連的「大圓環」路線則始於印度西海岸，環繞半島和斯里蘭卡，沿著印度東海岸到孟加拉灣，再經由孟加拉、緬甸、馬來半島的海岸線向東延展，經泰國、柬埔寨和越南，向北轉到東亞的中國、韓國、日本的港口。此沿海路圓環所串連的陸地與海洋，其周長加總起來足以環繞赤道一圈，其中曲折的海岸線長達2 萬英里，是陸路里程的五倍。
