History of Chinese Buddhism
The history of Chinese Buddhism begins in the Han dynasty, when Buddhism first began to arrive via the Silk Road networks (via overland and maritime routes). The early period of Chinese Buddhist history saw efforts to propagate Buddhism, establish institutions and translate Buddhist texts into Chinese. The effort was led by non-Chinese missionaries from India and Central Asia like Kumarajiva and Paramartha well as by great Chinese pilgrims and translators like Xuanzang. After the Han era, there was a period in which Buddhism became more Sinicized and new unique Chinese traditions of Buddhism arose, like Pure Land, Chan, Tiantai and Huayan. These traditions would also be exported to Korea, Japan and Vietnam and they influenced all of East Asian Buddhism. Though Buddhism suffered numerous setbacks during the modern era (such as the widespread destruction of temples during the Taiping Rebellion and Cultural Revolution), it also experienced periods of reform and revival. Buddhism is currently the largest institutionalized religion in mainland China. Han dynasty (206 BCE–220 CE) Various legends tell of the presence of Buddhism on Chinese soil in very ancient times. While the scholarly consensus is that Buddhism first came to China in the first century CE during the Han dynasty, through missionaries from India, it is not known precisely when Buddhism entered China. Generations of scholars have debated whether Buddhist missionaries first reached Han China via the maritime or overland routes of the Silk Road. The maritime route hypothesis, favored by Liang Qichao and Paul Pelliot, proposed that Buddhism was originally practiced in southern China, the Yangtze River, and Huai River region. On the other hand, it must have entered from the northwest via the Gansu corridor to the Yellow River basin and the North China Plain in the course of the first century CE. The scene becomes clearer from the middle of the second century onward, when the first known missionaries started their translation activities in the capital, Luoyang. The Book of the Later Han records that in 65 CE, the prince Liu Ying of Chu (present-day Jiangsu) "delighted in the practices of Huang-Lao Daoism" and had both Buddhist monks and laypeople at his court who presided over Buddhist ceremonies. The overland route hypothesis, favored by Tang Yongtong, proposed that Buddhism disseminated through Central Asia – in particular, the Kushan Empire, which was often known in ancient Chinese sources as Da Yuezhi ("Great Yuezhi"), after the founding tribe. According to this hypothesis, Buddhism was first practiced in China in the Western Regions and the Han capital Luoyang (present-day Henan), where Emperor Ming of Han established the White Horse Temple in 68 CE. In 2004, Rong Xinjiang, a history professor at Peking University, reexamined the overland and maritime hypotheses through a multi-disciplinary review of recent discoveries and research, including the Gandhāran Buddhist Texts, and concluded: The French sinologist Henri Maspero says it is a "very curious fact" that, throughout the entire Han dynasty, Daoism and Buddhism were "constantly confused and appeared as single religion". A century after prince Liu