Abstract
The key role of Buddhist monastic communities of Bactria and Sogdiana for the spread of Buddhism from India to China in first centuries AD is quite well attested by written and epigraphic sources, as well as archaeological finds. Numerous monasteries, stupas, and shrines have been excavated and researched in last decades in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, and many individual examples of small plastic art connected with Buddhist religious practice were found here and there in Bactria and Transoxiana.
All these data require setting of a new chronological framework that would rely on recently postulated chronology of Kushans and related phenomena. This paper presents an attempt of such an evaluation.