Sogdians

For those interested in more about the Sogdians, see article available for free download here.

Included is a fairly detailed account of the history of Sogdiana, including its peoples, their origins and religions, and references to it in the historical record, as well as a chronology of the various empires that controlled the area.

One small item of interest is the note that "most Sogdain monks with the surname K'ang who came to China from the second century onward were said to originate from K'ang-chu" or were descendants of Sogdian émigrés.

The second section of the article includes an overview of Sogian Buddhism based on "biographies of monks, reports of traveling monks and Sogdian Buddhist texts" as sources.
There are also brief biographies of several of these notable monks themselves.

This section also includes a comprehensive list of Sogdian Buddhist texts, most of which were apparently translations of Chinese texts.
Of interest here is an explanation of issues that arose from literal and faithful translations of Chinese texts into the Sogdian language - often without sufficient understanding of the "underlying Chinese Buddhist technical terms."

There is a section on Manichaenism syncretism which details Buddhist influences, Buddhist terms incorporated into this religion and even the integration of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.