Religion & Ideas – Histovia

Fourteenth-century Japanese painting of Xuanzang in a patterned robe, carrying a tall bundle of Buddhist scriptures on his back.

Xuanzang’s Long Road Home: A Pilgrimage Becomes a Library

Xuanzang returned to Chang’an in 645 with hundreds of Buddhist texts. The journey through Central Asia and India was only the beginning of the work of translating them.

Curved sandstone fragment with two surviving lines of Ashoka’s Brahmi inscription in a museum display

Ashoka’s Edicts and the Limits of Imperial Dhamma

Ashoka’s inscriptions joined remorse, welfare, and religious restraint to an imperial government that still claimed the power to punish.