Buddhism in Afghanistan

Buddhism, a religion founded by Gautama Buddha, first arrived in modern-day Afghanistan through the conquests of Ashoka (r. 268–232 BCE), the third emperor of the Maurya Empire. Among the earliest notable sites of Buddhist influence in the country is a bilingual mountainside inscription in Greek and Aramaic that dates back to 260 BCE and was found on the rocky outcrop of Chil Zena near Kandahar.

Many prominent Buddhist monks were based in Afghanistan during this period: Menander I (r. 165–130 BCE), a Greco-Bactrian king, was a renowned patron of Buddhism and is immortalized in the Milinda Panha, a Pali-language Buddhist text; Mahadharmaraksita, a 2nd-century BCE Indo-Greek monk, is said to have led 30,000 Buddhist monks from "Alasandra, the city of the Yonas" (a colony of Alexander the Great, located approximately 150 kilometres or 93 miles to the north of modern-day Kabul) to Sri Lanka for the dedication of the Mahathupa in Anuradhapura, according to the Mahavamsa (Chap. XXIX); Lokaksema, a 2nd-century Kushan monk, travelled to the Chinese capital city of Luoyang during the reign of the Han dynasty, and was the first translator of Mahayana Buddhist scriptures into the Chinese language.

The Nava Vihara monasteries, located near the ancient city of Balkh in northern Afghanistan, functioned as the centre of Buddhist activity in Central Asia for centuries.

The Buddhist religion survived the Islamic conquest of Afghanistan by the Umayyads and successive rule by the Abbasid Caliphate and regional Islamic polities. Buddhism in Afghanistan was effectively destroyed in the 13th century by Mongol armies during the Mongol conquests. Foreign Buddhists were known to have had a presence in the Mongol Ilkhanate and Chagatai Khanate, which controlled parts of the region. The disintegration of these states in the 14th century also signaled the last mentions of Buddhism in Afghanistan.