Chapter FIFTEEN
Early Buddhism in China

The source of the Mahayana revolution was that now-familiar region in the northwestern part of the Indian subcontinent, the region known as Ghandara in ancient times.  In the early centuries of the common era Mahayana Buddhism radiated out from there, ultimately traveling great distances. (In fact, it’s still traveling.) Much of North India was influenced by Mahayana, but Buddhism’s days were numbered in its Indian homeland. Over the next several centuries Buddhism in India would slowly fade into near insignificance. Those Buddhist communities that did endure were ultimately all but destroyed by foreign invaders, first the Huns in the fifth century C.E., and finally the Turkish Mughals, whose brutal conquest of India began in the eleventh century. By this time, though, Buddhism—especially Mahayana Buddhism—was alive and well in many places outside of India.
Geographically close to India is Tibet, and Mahayana, or more specifically Vajrayana Buddhism, would eventually travel up into the high country where it was to become solidly established. Before that, though, Buddhism traveled far afield, hitching a ride on that fascinating highway of trade that we know as the “Silk Road.” The Silk Road was an extremely long caravan route that connected China with the other parts of the Eurasian continent. Much more than silk was traded, though; everything imaginable made its way back and forth between East and West, and thanks to a subsidiary route, south into India as well. Buddhist ideas, Buddhist books, even Buddhist monks entered the flow and moved with it wherever the Silk Road might take them. The lands to the west were not particularly receptive, however. During the late Roman times the institutional monolith of the Christian Church presented a bulwark of resistance, and beginning in the late seventh century this was superseded by the even more intransigent resistance posed by the rise of Islam.
Toward the east, though, it was a different story. Mahayana Buddhism would eventually make its way into China and become thoroughly integrated into that culture. But there was a very interesting intermediate step that most people in the modern world have never heard about.

Buddhism in the Tarim Basin

Near the center of the map of Eurasia is a well-defined oval depression named the Tarim Basin. Within the Tarim Basin is the Takla Makan, today one of the world’s most formidable deserts; it ranks with the Sahara in heat and lifeless aridity. It is a nearly thousand-mile-wide sea of nothing but scrub and shifting sand dunes. But, it wasn’t always this way. Tens of thousands of years ago the Takla Makan was a lake, and the sand we see today was then the lake bottom. That was when much of the northern hemisphere was covered with ice. Then about ten thousand years ago the ice began to retreat. By the time Mahayana appeared on the scene the lake was gone and the desert was well established. But there was still a good deal of residual glaciation in the higher elevations of the mountains that surround the Takla Makan. Continual glacial melt fed numerous rivers that plunged out of the mountains and into the desert where they eventually petered out and disappeared. But along the fringes of the desert, at the base of the mountains, there was a margin of well-watered and fertile land. Here were to be found many towns, some of them quite large, that grew rich on the trade passing through the Takla Makan region.
When it reached the desert of the Takla Makan, the Silk Road necessarily split into a northern route and a southern route. In the extreme western part of the Takla Makan, caravans traveling west converged again at the cosmopolitan city of Kashgar, a welcome stopping place before heading off into the treacherous passes of the Pamir Range. Kashgar is still there, but today’s city is only a tiny hint of what it used to be. Kashgar was a major trade center, and transfer place, for the caravans traveling the Silk Road. At its height the exotic bazaars of Kashgar rivaled those of Istanbul. Everything in the world was available in Kashgar, for the right price.
Kashgar was not a Chinese city, but near the eastern end of the Takla Makan the routes converged on Dunhuang (Tun-huang), the farthest western outpost of Chinese civilization. Dunhuang was a lot like Kashgar, but it was decidedly Chinese. A section of the Great Wall—the farthest west it would go—was constructed to the area of Dunhuang.
The justly famous Mugao Grottoes, one of the most splendid of all the remains from that distant time, are located not far from Dunhuang. The grottoes, actually a series of hand chiseled caves, line the face of a cliff that fronts on a now dried up watercourse. The walls and ceilings of the caves are decorated with very beautiful paintings of Buddhist themes from the earliest period of Buddhism in China. Many of the paintings are pure enchantment. Viewing these treasures is not a problem; the government of China has fixed up the site and opened it to the public. The problem is getting there. To say that Dunhunag is remote is very much an understatement. From Dunhuang it was another thousand-mile journey to the great city of Changan, the imperial capital of China in those days.
Changan, now known as Xian,* is a capital city no longer, and the original character of Dunhuang has disappeared entirely. So too have the glaciers, and the rich life of the towns and cities they nourished around the perimeter of the Takla Makan. But in the days when the water poured from the mountains, and the trade goods moved on the caravan routes, Buddhism became established in this area and flourished for several centuries. It was a mini-“golden age” that history has largely forgotten. Numerous Buddhist monasteries were established in the area, some of them actually out in parts of the desert where water was still available at that time.
These monasteries were surprisingly rich treasure houses of Buddhist art and scholarship. Some of them were home to hundreds of monks. And then—as is the fate of all things eventually—this happy age came to an end. The drying-up of the highlands was only a part of the story, though undoubtedly a big part. Nature was assisted by a series of invasions; Mongol tribesmen from the north, and later the conquest of Islam. One by one the monasteries were destroyed or abandoned. In time the sands covered their remains and they were forgotten. By the end of the eighth century nothing much remained of the region’s once-great Buddhist culture.
Thus did the remains of this great historical legacy lie unnoticed beneath the desert sands for more than a millennium. Interest was revived in nineteenth-century Europe as the study of history and archaeology began to take its modern form. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite modern enough yet. With no strong government to control research in the area, freebooting self-styled “archaeologists” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries ransacked the region, plundering everything they could find. Their “excavations” more often looked like battlefields than careful research sites. Monastery libraries were looted of their manuscripts, well-preserved in the dry desert conditions. Much artwork too was stolen, some of it chiseled directly from the walls of monastery rooms, and shipped back to museums in Europe and America which were willing to pay top dollar for these treasures. Finally, in 1920 the Chinese government moved to halt the plunder, and today what is left is being properly studied and exhibited. Enough remains to dazzle the eye and convince the world of Buddhist studies that in the region of the now desolate Takla Makan Buddhism once flourished, and it was from there that Buddhism launched the beginning of its gentle conquest of China.

The earliest Chinese Buddhist document that is widely accepted as being historically verifiable comes to us from the middle of the second century C.E. It is a fragment of the Pali Canon translated into Chinese by a scholar named An Shigao (An Shih-kao). There is reason to believe, however, that Buddhist monks had been spreading the good word in China for a full century before this. Thus Buddhism first encountered Chinese culture during the time of the Han Empire, a time when China was unified and the governing class was strong. The Han Empire was to the far eastern parts of Eurasia what the Roman Empire was to the far western parts. They co-existed during the first and second centuries C.E.
During the time of Han there was some resistance to Buddhism from Confucians, who as a group held virtually all important government posts. Buddhist roots grew slowly at first. But the Han Empire, like the Roman Empire, was destined to fall. The Great Wall had kept the barbarous hordes of the north at bay for five centuries, but in the third century C.E. they finally broke through, overwhelming China and plunging much of the land into an era of tumult and division. (It’s a fascinating story; two centuries later descendents of these invaders, known to history as the Huns, would wreak the same kind of havoc on Roman Europe.) In the aftermath of the fall of Han, Buddhism in China grew rapidly. So, in sum we can say that Buddhism entered China during the first century C.E., grew relatively slowly for its first couple of centuries, and then began to spread rapidly.
Like so many other countries, the land of China is divided into a “north” and a “south.” Speaking very broadly, North China centers on the basin of the Yellow River (the Huanghe) , and the south centers on the great Yangtse, one of the longest and mightiest rivers in all of Eurasia. The invaders overran only the northern parts of China. Many people, especially from the upper classes, fled to the south where the traditional culture, if not the empire form of government, was preserved. Life was far from peaceful, though. For three centuries all parts of China would be convulsed by constant warfare and shifting borders. Slowly, very slowly, the Chinese people would win back the land of the north, but it would not be until the year 589 C.E. that all of China would be reunited again. In that year the Sui Dynasty was established, and the bad old days were over, at least for a while.
Buddhism became solidly established in China during the turbulent three centuries that separate the fall of Han and the rise of Sui. There were a number of reasons for this, the most obvious being that Confucian officials lost their position of power with the fall of Han, and thus were not able to offer effective resistance to this “foreign” influence. In North China the very foreignness of Buddhism worked to its advantage. The conquering warlords of the north were attracted to the fact that Buddhism was not a native Chinese system. In the south, though, where Confucian and Daoist scholarship continued to flourish, Buddhism succeeded despite its still-evident foreign character.
Little by little, the original hostility changed to curiosity, and finally to warmth. But why? Why did Buddhism eventually experience a friendly reception in China? What was the appeal? What did this exotic philosophy have to offer to a people who already possessed a rich and ancient civilization? This is a very interesting question, especially when one stops to consider that, with the exception of Marxism, Buddhism is the only foreign philosophy of life ever to be integrated into the culture of China. (And the jury is still out with regard to the enduring effect of Marxism.)
For one thing, the essentials of Buddhism did not really stand in conflict with the teachings of Daoism and Confucius. There was a resonance among them, especially between the philosophies of Buddhism and Daoism. Apparently the Buddhist emphasis on disciplined meditation was a strong part of its initial appeal. Meditation in the broad sense of the word was a part of the Daoist way of life, but it was ill-defined. Buddhist meditation would give a new and dynamic form to this latent potential of Daoism. One cannot help but think of a similar situation that exists in the modern Western world where we have seen a succession of Indian gurus promoting various schools of meditation. Huge numbers of Westerners have been excited by this “new blood” from old India. Perhaps something like this was part of Buddhism’s early days in China.
This “resonance,” though, went much deeper than simply a shared interest in meditation. Buddhism did not work a revolution in China; rather it helped to bring out and give clearer form to attitudes that were already inherent in Chinese philosophy. This was true even at the deepest levels. For example, the Daoist belief that all things have non-being as their origin was in harmony with the Buddhist teaching that all things by nature are “empty.” As Heinrich Dumoulin points out, “Buddhists were especially impressed by the Chinese rejection of the duality between being and non-being, and by their emphasis on the ineffability of reality.” (66)
Before long the entire vast world of Buddhist scripture was being translated into Chinese. What an undertaking that must have been! In some places government-sponsored “Translation Bureaus” were established. The languages, like the cultures, were very different. Finding appropriate words in Chinese was no easy task. Since Daoism seemed to have the closest philosophical affinity to Buddhism, Daoist terms were widely used in the work of translation. Just as the Christians are sometimes accused of “baptizing” Aristotle in translating his works into Latin, the Chinese to some extent “Daoicized” Buddha. It was the beginning of a process of development that would eventually result in a thoroughly Chinese Buddhism.
We can’t overstate the scope or the importance of the work of translating the vast literature, especially the Buddhist sutras, into Chinese. In this connection one name stands out with singular greatness. We know him as Kumarajiva (koo-mar-a-JEE-va). Born in 344 C.E., Kumarajiva studied for many years at a Theravadin monastery in Kashmir, that fertile ground of Buddhism up in the northwestern part of India. He started out as a Theravadin, but the exciting new ways of Mahayana were in the air and in time got into his blood. Finally he relocated from Kashmir over the mountains to Kashgar, where before long he began to make a name for himself in the work of translation. His fame spread to China, and at long last he took up residence in the great city of Changan.
Kumarajiva headed a large Translation Bureau in Changan, focusing mainly on translating the Mahayana sutras into Chinese. Kumarajiva’s most important work was the meticulous translation of the Prajnaparamita and the related works of Nagarjuna into Chinese. These works had tremendous impact on the developing character of Chinese Buddhism. Given the fundamental importance of the Prajnaparamita in Chinese Buddhism, it’s no exaggeration to say that Kumarajiva was largely responsible for the ultimate ascendancy of Mahayana in China. “That the Chinese showed a preference for Mahayana over Hinayana is due principally to the wisdom teachings of the Prajnaparamita sutras, which they found to resonate deeply with their own spiritual heritage.” (Dumoulin, 66)
Kumarajiva died at the age of sixty-three in 409 C.E. By this time Buddhism, more particularly Mahayana Buddhism, was well on the way to becoming an established part of the culture in all parts of China. The Mahayana sutras, newly translated from Sanskrit into the Chinese language, provided a base from which many different “schools” of Buddhism would grow. Not all of these schools emerged immediately—some would not take final form until the sixth or even the seventh centuries—but the net effect was a broad proliferation of Buddhist sects in China. All, however, shared common roots in the Mahayana sutras. Let me mention just a few of the better known ones; they are representative of the wide variety of possibilities.