The smooth and prosperous Silk Road in the Tang Dynasty also further promoted the ideological and cultural exchanges between the East and the West, which had a lot of positive and far-reaching influence on the development of mutual social and national ideologies in the future. Such ideological and cultural exchanges were closely related to religion.
After Buddhism was introduced into China during the reign of Emperor Ai in the Western Han Dynasty, it became widespread in the Southern and Northern Dynasties and reached its peak in the Sui and Tang Dynasties. During the reign of Emperor Taizong of the Tang Dynasty, the eminent monk Xuanzang went to India via the Silk Road through Central Asia to learn scriptures and give lectures. It took sixteen years to write the book "The Western Regions of the Tang Dynasty", which recorded the politics, society and local customs of various countries in India at that time. It is still the most important data for Indian scholars to study the medieval history of India. He brought back 657 Buddhist classics, and Tang Emperor Zong Zong built the Big Wild Goose Pagoda in Chang 'an so that he could store and translate sutras. Later, the eminent monk Yijing went to India from the sea and took another 16 years to retrieve 400 Buddhist sutras. He wrote the Biography of the South China Sea and the Biography of the Eminent Monk in the Western Regions of the Tang Dynasty, introducing to China the culture and living conditions of South Asian countries at that time.
