On one of his missions to Middle India, the Tang diplomat Wang Xuance is reported to have learned from the abbot of Mahābodhi Monastery about a belief among Indian clergy that when corrupt doctrines eventually eclipse the Indic lands, genuine Buddhist doctrines will continue to fluorish in the peripheral east. In other words, after the disappearance of Buddhist doctrines from India, China would emerge as the new Buddhist realm. If this is indeed a true reflection of views of the seventh-century Indian clergy and not a fabrication of the Chinese Buddhists, it would not only explain the attempts by some of the South and Central Asian monks to authenticate the presence of bodhisattva Mañjuśrī at Mount Wutai, but also the increasing number of Indian and foreign monks making pilgrimage to China.
Tansen Sen, Buddhism Diplomacy and Trade The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600-1400 (Honolulu: Universiy of Hawai'i Press, 2003), 84-85.
Does anyone know of anything similar with respect to Buddhism being transmitted into Tibet?