Attanasio, A.A. "Ink from the New Moon"
Divergence: c 1000 CE
What if: North America was discovered and settled by Chinese Buddhists.
Summary: A scribe describes the Unified Sandalwood Autocracies, and an encounter on its eastern shores with a European explorer named Christ-bearer.
Published: In Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, November 1992; What Might Have Been? Volume 4: Alternate Americas (eds. Gregory Benford and Martin H. Greenberg), q.v.; Roads Not Taken: Tales of Alternate History (eds. Gardner Dozois and Stanley Schmidt), q.v.; and The Mammoth Book of Alternate Histories (eds. Ian Watson and Ian Whates), q.v.