Editorial

My only contact with Wilfred Cantwell Smith (in person, rather than through his writings) was a talk he gave at the 14th quinquennial congress, at Winnipeg in 1980, of the International Association for the History of Religion.Two of his thoughts in that lecture rang intriguing bells at the time, and still do so.The first was a remark about the number of movements in the history of humanity that seemed to have had their origin in Central Asia: "movements," not simply of peoples, but in the human mind.The second was a suggestion that the time was now ripe, or at least drawing near, when it would be possible to write a unified history of human religion, while still of course acknowledging the differences between the religions.The first remark fed a long-standing curiosity on my part regarding what was, especially in the era of the Cold War, a sort of "black hole" in most people's (certainly in my) knowledge of what was somewhat vaguely called "Central Asia": it was reminiscent of the nineteenth century's "darkest Africa."So, for instance, although Afghanistan may be "Inner" rather than Central Asia, it was a considerable surprise to find that, due to the Russian invasion, it was the first item on the BBC's News Bulletin at 7 o' clock on Christmas Day in 1979.I had spent a few days there in 1961, on my way back to Britain after two years' study in India; but I cannot recall in all the intervening eighteen years, ever meeting any body else who had been there.Now, of course, Afghanistan has a worldwide Afghan diaspora.The second suggestion chimed in with a handful of "coincidences" that had presented themselves over the years.At school, when studying the implications of Sir Mortimer Wheeler's excavations at Harappa and Mohenjo-Dharo, and Toynbee's Maurya and Gupta civilizations, I had come across the theory, based on the discovery of some coins in Sri Lanka, that the Roman Empire was trading with the Chinese Empire in A.D. 150; and the suggestion that the rosary had been introduced to the West, as an aid to prayer, by two Buddhist monks sent to Alexandria following the adoption of that faith by the Emperor Asoka (c.270-230 BCE).However, as a recent graduate travelling and studying the (then, unrecognized)

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