Buddhism spread across Asia through networks of overland and maritime routes between India, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, and China. … Anonymous foreign monks who traveled between India and China along the silk routes were responsible for the transmission of Buddhism at sub-elite levels.

How did religion spread on the Silk Road?

Buddhist merchants from those areas built temples and shrines along the Silk Road everywhere they went; the priests and monks who staffed those religious establishments preached to local populations and passing travelers, spreading the faith rapidly.

Did Buddhism spread through conquest?

In the second century A.D., the conquests of northern India, western Iran, Afghanistan and parts of Central Asia by Kanishka, the great Iranian Buddhist king of the Kushan empire, facilitated the spread of Buddhism not only throughout his empire but along the Silk Road into China, as well.