This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.
Buddhism reaches Central Asia as merchants, monks and texts move together along the Silk Road's southern routes, out of Gandhara and into Bactria and the Tarim Basin, across roughly the first to third centuries CE. No single missionary embassy carries this spread; it travels the way trade itself travels, gradually and along an established corridor rather than by one dramatic act.
The Kushan Empire, ruling much of that corridor across the same centuries, gave the tradition its decisive institutional footing there. King Kanishka himself converted and patronized monasteries and a Buddhist council, and Kushan era centers at Bamiyan, Hadda and elsewhere grew into major hubs, places where texts were copied, monks trained and the teaching itself was carried onward.
What changed for Buddhism's spread is the corridor itself: Central Asia became the route by which the tradition continued east toward China, a passage station whose own monasteries were as much a relay as a destination. No single country or region corresponds to the historical corridor, so the event is anchored here to Central Asia, the nearest real region on record, the approximation stated plainly rather than rounded onto any one modern state.