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India and China had contact with each other since ancient times. These contacts became closer and more frequent after Buddhism was introduced in China in the early centuries of the Christian Era. The cultural gulf was narrowed by the frequent visits of the Buddhist monks, their translation activities, and by the exchange of philosophical ideas in general. Indian as well as Chinese monks participated in this activity wherein thousands of texts were translated. These are instances where texts on secular subjects were also translated into Chinese. In this way, along with Buddhist religious ideas, other aspects of Indian culture such as art, architecture and science also became known to the Chinese. Central Asia played an important role in the development of Sino-Indian contacts in its early stages. It was through Central Asia that the Buddhist ideas reached China for the first time. The first Buddhist text to be

97 translated was "The Sutra of Fourty-Two Sections" and this task was carried out by the earliest known missionaries Kasyapa Matanga and Dharmaraksa in AD 65. Later in AD 179 Shi Gao, a Central Asian monk, translated a hundred and seventy-nine sutras into Chinese. These visits and translations continued during the Han dynasty (202 B.C. to 220 AD) by which period the number of translations reached four hundred and thirty-four. Kumarjiva (~ 401 AD) is considered to be one of the greatest translators of Buddhist works into Chinese. He also hailed from Central Asia. He rendered one hundred and six works into Chinese including important treatises of Nagarjuna and Aryadeva. Further in the fifth and the sixth centuries Paramartha and Bodhiruchi translated hundreds more texts. Thus by the beginning of the seventh century, over two thousand texts were rendered into Chinese. This figure indicates the colossal magnitude of the work carried out by medieval traveler scholars. Visiting the holy lands of India, collecting valuable Buddhist texts and manuscripts, bringing them back to China and rendering them into Chinese became a common practice among the Chinese Buddhist monks after the first visit by Fa Xian in AD 399. During the Tang

98 dynasty, which ruled China over three hundred years, these visits were intensified and this period can be appropriately regarded as the golden period of Sino-Indian contact. During this period the celebrated Buddhist monk-traveler 2 Xuan Zhuang' came to India. He stayed here for sixteen years and returned to China in AD 645, with a large number of books, several of which he rendered into Chinese. Yi Xing 3 visited India in AD 673 and returned in AD 695. He brought back four hundred different texts. On Dharmadeva (AD 973), Dharmaraksa (AD 1990), Jnanasri (AD 1053), Shao Lu and Huai Song were some of the later translators. The Chinese Buddhist Tripitika was first printed in China in AD 972, in the Song dynasty, and was reprinted several times in the successive dynasties. the whole, there was extensive activity of this kind for over a millennium with greater concentration during the regime of the Tang dynasty. The intellectual exchanges of this period influenced the philosophical, religious as well as scientific life of these two culture areas. 2 xuan ying 3 FJ