A History of Uyghur Buddhism

Apart from a small group of specialists, few people know that the historic Uyghurs were anything other than Muslims in northwest China. Johan Elverskog's eloquent and highly accessible book provides an important and timely corrective to that view. His study answers several questions that connect topics usually treated separately; how and why the medieval Uyghurs converted to Buddhism, what role the Uyghur Buddhist kingdom in the Tarim Basin played in central Asia and in wider East-West relations over time, and how and why those Uyghurs eventually converted to Islam. He reminds readers that the medieval Uyghurs who established new states in eastern central Asia and Gansu in the mid-ninth century played important roles in wider Asian history but are mostly either overlooked or not well understood. Elverskog's exhaustively sourced history not only retrieves their story for readers, it also reminds us of the importance of Buddhism to Asian history as the first “pan-Asian faith” (4). His history will also satisfy readers who think of the Uyghurs as Muslims because he ends by examining the eventual conversion of the Uyghur Buddhists to Islam. This story provides a convenient case study for Elverskog to return to the topic of historic interactions between Buddhism and Islam, the subject of some of his earlier work.Elverskog sustains several arguments through the book's chapters, organized chronologically and focused on political and economic aspects of Uyghur Buddhism. Chapter 1 provides readers with a satisfying account of conversion to Buddhism by the first generation of diaspora Uyghur elites who settled in the Tarim Basin and Gansu after they were evicted from their steppe empire in the mid-ninth century. Readers familiar with the scholarship on the medieval Uyghurs will be especially glad for Elverskog's coherent narrative because the sources have been written in several languages, much of it philological in nature, and are sometimes difficult to track down. The second chapter focuses on the central role that Tanguts and Tibetans played in stimulating Uyghurs to convert to Buddhism. Elverskog's main argument in these first chapters is that the Uyghur aristocracy, not the ruling clan, converted to Buddhism. This is an important argument and goes against traditional assumptions that conversion was tied to the Uyghur court. It also ties into Elverskog's argument that the conversion was part of a larger trend that occurred across most of Asia in the eleventh century.Chapter 3 focuses exclusively on the economics of the West Uyghur kingdom in the Tarim Basin in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, by which time the Ganzhou Uyghur state ceased to exist. It is no surprise to learn that those Uyghurs became the main intermediaries of trade between Liao in north China, Song, Tibet, and Qarakhanid central Asia. Perhaps more surprising, at least for readers not familiar with the economics of religious institutions, will be Elverskog's convincing argument that the Uyghur elites in the Tarim Basin converted to Buddhism precisely because it legitimized their production and accumulation of wealth, which they invested in their Buddhist institutions to support the propagation of the Dharma. The Tarim Basin Uyghurs were perhaps uniquely positioned to act as commercial agents in the monetized world of commerce, continuing a trend that they doubtless learned from Sogdians.Elverskog then describes the Buddhism of the Tarim Basin Uyghurs in the tenth through thirteenth centuries in chapter 4, titled “Uyghur Buddhisms.” The title embeds his argument that several schools of Buddhism thrived in the Uyghur kingdom, at least until the Mongols showed up in the early 1200s. The wide range of textual and visual sources that Elverskog draws on in this chapter is striking and illustrates his deep familiarity with the scholarship on the historic Uyghurs. This is also the most complex topic of the book, and readers will be very happy for Elverskog's clear narrative that is surprisingly jargon free. Most important, Elverskog opposes the traditional view that the history of Uyghur Buddhism was a smooth, one-way evolution from Tocharian Nikaya giving way to Chinese Mahayana, which was displaced by Tibetan Tantrism in the Mongol period. Instead of assuming sharp divisions between Buddhist schools, lingering “Protestant presuppositions” (94), he draws on evidence from a range of different textual and visual sources to convincingly show that the Tarim Basin Uyghurs were remarkably flexible in their adoption and use of Buddhist schools precisely because their religion was not managed or mandated by the state. That changed once the Uyghurs were subsumed into the emerging Mongol Empire.Some readers may be surprised that the last chapter discusses Uyghur conversion to Islam, but it fits with Elverskog's argument that it happened because the West Uyghur kingdom had lost its political independence when they became Mongol subjects; “it was within this larger historical context [the Mongol Empire] that Uyghur Buddhists came to engage with Central Asian Muslims, which ultimately led to the Uyghurs abandoning the Dharma and becoming Muslims” (135). Elverskog identifies the Qarakhitay state as the source of tensions between Buddhists and Muslims in the West Uyghur kingdom—in his words, “the first time in Islamic history that Muslims were under the rule of a non-Muslim state” (136). The Uyghurs submitted voluntarily to Chinggis in 1209, ensuring their favorable treatment in the rapidly growing empire. Unfortunately, the Uyghurs were also dragged into the Mongol civil wars after 1260, which culminated in the division of the Chagatai Khanate and their long process of conversion to Islam. Elverskog provides important evidence showing that relations between Buddhists and Muslims were not altogether hostile. Even more important and less well known is the fact that Uyghur Buddhists continued to thrive for over a century after their ruler's conversion! In fact, it was not until the 1449 Tumu crisis that Uyghur Buddhists were driven out of their homeland. The last official visit of Uyghur Buddhists to the Ming court came in 1473, to request asylum for some two hundred monks.This book is the result of Elverskog's long interest in the historic Uyghurs, Buddhism, the interactions of Buddhism and Islam along the historic silk roads, and the Mongol Empire. It certainly delivers on the promise made by the book's title, to provide a history of the Buddhist Uyghurs. It also provides much more, exploring a wide range of themes and topics across several disciplines, all pivoting around the story of the Uyghurs. The book is also noteworthy because the narrative is jargon free and easily accessible to readers of all levels due to Elverskog's lively and animated writing style, amply illustrated and backed up with endnotes that will be of interest to specialists. It is good to have an updated history of the medieval Uyghurs, a people who were uniquely able to connect steppe and sown, eastern and western Asia, and Buddhism and Islam.