Miriam Rosenthal, British historian, Caravans and Karma: A Commercial History of Buddhist Asia, 2011

“It is easy to imagine Buddhism crossing the Silk Roads on the shoulders of wandering monks, but such a picture understates how thoroughly the religion depended upon the caravan. Monasteries were built where caravans stopped; caravan masters endowed them with grants of land and with relics purchased from their commercial profits, and the texts that pilgrims copied in Dunhuang or Khotan were paid for, as often as not, in the same silver that had purchased silk.”

“Merchants, not missionaries, were the true engine of conversion. They carried manuscripts as part of their cargo, attended sermons along their routes, and translated abstract doctrine into a practical language of merit. Princes along the routes adopted the religion at least in part because it bound them to the commercial world flowing through their cities.”