Buddhism
It is widely believed that Buddhism was introduced in China during the Han period (206BC-220AD). According to historical records, Buddhism was imported into China by Central Asians. It is believed that during the third century BC, Central Asian Merchants went to the Northwest of India, present-day Pakistan Afghanistan, where they later learnt Buddhism and accepted it as their religion. This had a great effect, and by the second century BC, some Central Asian cities like had become important Buddhist centres. It is believed that the Chinese people’s first contact with Buddhism was through Central Asians who had already become Buddhists. This happened in the First Century BC when China’s Han Dynasty had extended its power to Central Asia, which led to an increase in cultural and trade ties between China and Central Asia. Due to these interactions, the Chinese people learnt more about Buddhism, and in the middle of the First Century BC, a whole Buddhist community was already established in China. Also, as there was an increase in interest for Buddhism by the Chinese people, there was a demand for translators to translate Buddhist texts from Indian to the Chinese language. This led to the influx of Buddhist translators from India and Central Asia in the middle of the second century. By this time, the collection of Buddhist texts translated in the Chinese language had significantly grown, and Buddhism had become popular in China, and a Chinese Monastic order was formed.
Buddhism was assimilated into China through the help of Daoism. Therefore Buddhism credits its successes in China o Daoism. To help the Chinese people understand Buddhism. Buddhism heavily relied on Daoism by borrowing ideas through the aid of the Chinese language. It should hover be noted that both Buddhism and Daoism benefitted from the exchange. For instance, the exchange helped Daoists to expand their ideas about cosmos and how to structure their monastic order. The exchange, on the other hand, helped Buddhists to gain a lexicon making it easier to teach the Buddhist tradition.
Buddhism in China also underwent many changes or transformations, leading to most scholars referring to it as many Buddhisms. The transformation of Buddhism is in the form of many schools of Buddhism that taught and promoted different philosophies and mediation practices. One of the prominent schools of Buddhism was Tian-tai school whose teaching system and practice was based on the Lotus Sutra. The Tian-tai school also arranged all the Buddhist texts into graded categories to suit the varying aptitude of the followers. The other schools of Buddhism that arose were the Ch’an and the Pure Land schools. The Ch’an school emphasized the practice of meditation as the direct way of gaining insight and experiencing Enlightenment in this very life. Under the Land pure school, its practices were centered on the recitation of the name of Amitabha Buddha. This practice was based on the teachings that required people to recite Amitabha Buddha’s name and have sincere faith in him for them to be born in the Western Paradise (Pure Land) of Amitabha Buddha.
The transformation of Buddhism continued into the nineteenth century when it faced persecution from Taoist emperor. The emperor called for monasteries to be demolished, and temple land confiscated. He also called ordered monks to return to secular life and ordered Buddha’s images to be destroyed. This marked an end of an era of Buddhism in China, and the existence of many Chinese schools of Buddhism ceased. The schools were absorbed into the Ch’an and Pure Land schools, which were the only schools that had survived. This resulted in the emergence of a new form of Chinese Buddhist practice which incorporated both the practice of Ch’an mediation and the recitation of the name of Amitabha Buddha as well as studying Buddhist texts. This is the type of Chinese Buddhism existing to the present day. It is notable that Buddhism continues to be a major influence in Chinese religious life. Buddhism has, however, been modernized and its traditions reformed to include western-style education that includes the study of secular and foreign languages by Buddhists.
The growing influence of Buddhism in china inspired new ways of depicting deities, new types of architectural spaces in which to worship them, and new ritual motions and actions. For instance, as Buddhism popularity increased, more than 10,000 temples had been built across China by the end of the fifth century. The Buddhist images influenced the construction of these temples within the Buddhist temples. Examples of Buddhist temples built in the Chinese context include Dunhuang in Gansu Province, Yungang in Shanxi Province, and Longmen in Henan Province. Some of the Buddhist practices in China include laypersons visiting temples to pray, burn incense, place offerings of fruit or flowers at altars, and observe rituals performed by monks.