Buddhism and Chinese Culture: Phases of Interaction

Arthur F. Wright
The Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 17, No.1 (Nov., 1957), 17-42.

Buddhism and Chinese Culture:

Phases of Interaction
ARTHUR F. WRIGHT

N CHINE, depuis les seconds Han (25-220 A.D.), en Coree, depuis Ie VIe
siecle, au Japon, depuis Shotoku (593), Ie Bouddhisnle est partout: doctrines, systemes croyances, institutions politiques, architecture, sculpture, peinture, sur tous les domaines il est un facteur capital; sans lui, rien ne s'explique;
autour de lui, tout s'eclaire et s'ordonne."-Sylvain Levi.
The great French Orientalist stated with his usual clarity the challenge which
Buddhism presents to historians of China and its cultural satellites. Western
historians of China have, for a variety of reasons, been slow to respond to this
challenge. They have been burdened with a vast range of ground-breaking tasks,
with the effort to achieve a preliminary ordering of materials, events, and
institutions. They have been understandably appalled at the ramifying complexity of Buddhist doctrines, texts, practices, and symbolism. And they have,
until recently, been guided in their inquiries by the unseen hands of generations
of Confucian historians-men "vho regarded Buddhism as an alien cultural
excrescence, and the Buddhist periods of Chinese history as shanleful chapters
in the life of a great people.! Modern scholarship in China, in Japan, and in the
West has made great strides over the last thirty years, and it is now possible for
the historian to estimate the role and importance of Buddhism in the total
development of Chinese civilization. It is possible for him to take account of the
interaction of Buddhism and Chinese culture, and thus to order and clarify
historical phenomena which have hitherto remained obscure or misunderstood.
The question then arises as to ho\v he is to do this, what kinds of things "vill
guide and foster this effort at understanding. The present paper seeks to make a
modest contribution to this effort by suggesting a provisional historical outline
of the interaction of Buddhism and Chinese culture. This outline is meant to aid
the historian in two ways. It suggests a preliluinary periodization of the interacThe author is Associate Professor of Chinese I-listory at Stanford University and Chairman of the Association's Con1mittee on Chinese Thought. The present paper was presented
in draft to the Ninth Congress of Junior Sinologues at Paris, September 1956. The author
is indebted to the University of Chicago's Program for Comparative Studies of Cultures
and Civilizations for assistance towards the preparation and presentation of this paper.
1 Despite their use of modern methods, Dr. Hu Shih's studies in Chinese Buddhist history are not unmarked by this attitude. See his "The Indianization of China: A Case Study
in Cultural Borrowing" in Independence, Convergence, and Borrowing, Harvard Tercentenary Publications (Calnbridge, 1937), pp. 219-247. The last sentence of this essay reads:
"With the new aids of modern science and technology, and of the new social and historical
sciences, we are confident that Vle may yet achieve a rapid liberation from the two thousand
years' cultural domination by India."
17

18

ARTHUR F. WRIGHT

tion of Buddhism and Chinese culture, and thus reduces a long period of time, an
inordinate variety of events, into segments that are susceptible of study. In doing
this it offers a series of hypotheses on the process of cultural interaction through
time-hypotheses which can be tested, modified, or discarded as empirical
inquiry proceeds.
Several major problems complicate the study of this process of interaction and
of the phases into which it falls. One is the problem of cultural levels. As Levi's
statement suggests, Buddhism interacted through the centuries with all levels of
Chinese culture: with literary and philosophic traditions, with economic and
political institutions, with mores and behavioral norms, with indigenous traditions in art and architecture, vvith the religions of all classes and of all the subcultures of China. This raises the question as to whether developments at one
cultural level are to be taken as dominant in the process, as in some sense setting
the pattern of interaction occurring at the other levels. Are we safe in saying that
interaction seen, let us say, at the philosophic level, is a model for, or even a guide
to what goes on at the political or economic level? Clearly we are not, for each
level of human activity has its specific character and dynamics, vvhich will show
a different pattern of interaction with elements introduced from an alien source.
Yet in the extraordinarily homogeneous civilization of China, where we find
institutions, ideas, and behavior reinforcing one another and reiterating the same
themes, the various cultural levels are inevitably closely interrelated. And this
would suggest that there may be certain major points in time where significant
shifts or transitions in the process of interaction occur at all or most of the culturallevels. Lacking the encylopedic knowledge which would be needed to deal
with each of these various cultural levels, I nonetheless believe that certain major
shifts in this historic process can be discerned, and these provide the articulation
in the provisional series of phases suggested belo\v.
Another problem in developing such a historical schema is the problem of
social classes, each with its distinctive and changing ethos, with different felt
needs which condition the response a class will make to a foreign idea or institution, and thus the pattern of interaction \vhich will emerge. Therefore, in the
present inquiry we shall necessarily deal with the process of interaction among
the elite and among the peasantry, while keeping in mind some of the characteristic ways in which these mutually interdependent classes affected one another. 2
It need hardly be said that our data for analyzing the process in the peasant
villages is sadly deficient.
A further problem in establishing any series of phases or periods for a historical
process lies in defining the points of transition from one phase to another. European historians, in their studies of the transition from the Middle Ages to the
Renaissance, have made it clear that such transitions are neither sharp nor
sudden. Rather they represent a discernible culmination of complex changes
going on at many levels of society and culture. Elements from the preceding
2 Robert Redfield, in his Peasant Society and Culture (Chicago, 1956), has suggested a
number of ways of looking at the relation between elite and peasant culture in a single society. See particularly the chapter "The Social Organization of Tradition," pp. 67-104.

BUDDHISM AND CHINESE CULTURE

19

period linger on or find different expression in the age which follows; trends in
one age prefigure a maj or transition which is to come. This is the view of historical change which I have taken in this paper.
In attempting a phasing of the interaction of Buddhism and Chinese culture,
we are dealing with two culture complexes in continuous process of change. The
Buddhism of the fifth century, both through new importations and continuous
adaptations, is drastically different from that of the third century. In this same
period Chinese culture and society undergo parallel but equally sweeping changes.
Any historical analysis must therefore take account of both patterns of change
and of the interactions between them. It should, perhaps, attempt to "weight"
the two patterns, to discern which had a stronger influence on the other. My
present impression is that Chinese institutional and cultural development had
the greater weight in determining the successive phases of interaction which we
shall consider. I shall call attention to those facts which seem to substantiate this
relative weighting of determining forces. The provisional phasing presented in
the following pages consists of the following periods:
Phase I. The Period of Preparation, 65-317
Phase II. The Period of Domestication, 317-589
Phase III. The Period of Acceptance and Independent Growth, 589-c.900
Phase IV. The Period of Appropriation, c.900 to the present
I. THE PERIOD OF PREPARATION, 65-3173
The first period of the history of Buddhism in China was preparatory in two
respects: One is the evolution of those social and intellectual conditions which
tended to make the Chinese responsive to a foreign religion and its cultural
accompaniments. The other is the developlnent of ways and means of translating
the foreign religion into language, metaphor, and patterns of behavior which the
Chinese could understand and adopt.
Let us first try to shovv how the political, social, and intellectual events of these
years tended to create an atmosphere of receptivity, thus preparing the way for
thorough domestication in the age that followed.
By the middle of the second century A.D. the great Han Empire ,vas ,veIl on
the way towards disintegration. Long years of peace had brought the growth of
wealth, a trend towards the development of an exchange economy. The population had gro"\vn, but the social arrangements of a stable agricultural society ,vere
3 The first date is conventional-that of the Buddhist observances of Ying, Prince of
Ch'u, brother of Han Ming-ti, recorded in the Hou-Han shu. See H. Maspero, "Le songe et
l'ambassade de l'Empereur Ming," BEFEO, X (1910), 95-130. Wada Sei, in a recent article,
expresses doubts-"which I do not share-concerning this account written down by Fan Yeh
in a much later and strongly Buddhist age. Wada believes that the first incontrovertible
evidence of the presence of Buddhism in China is that given by the references to Buddhism
in Chang IIeng's (78-139) "Hsi-ching fu" ["Rhyme-prose on the Western Capital"]. See
Wada Sei, "Bukkyo toden no nendai ni tsuite" ["Concerning the Date of the Eastward
Transmission of Buddhism"] in Sasaki kyoju koki kinen shukuga rombun bunshu [A Collection of Essays in Honor of Professor Sasaki's Seventieth Birthday] (Tokyo, 1955), pp.
491-501.

20

ARTHUR F. WIlIGHT"

being steadily eroded as ne\v groups struggled for po\ver and \vealth. The imperial
power weakened, the great nobles lived lives of idleness and luxury supported by
income from landed estates worked and managed by others. A succession of
empresses' families used their positions for ruthless and rapacious drives for
political and economic povver. At the imperial court, which became ever more'
extravagant, incompetent and clique-ridden, the eunuchs occupied key positions,
-positions which they exploited to amass great power and huge fortunes. 4 The
Confucian literati, as power slipped from them, formed yet another competing"
group banded together in their common opposition to the corruption of imperial.
power, the eunuchs, the idle nobility, and the nouveaux riches. We need not
follow the course of the sordid power struggle among these groups in the capital
and, increasingly, among the provincial \varlords. What is important for OUY
present purpose is the fact that the upper level of the Han socio-political order"
was riven by conflict, that the moral and political sanctions of an earlier day vvere
undermined and discredited, that a mood of uncertainty and questioning developed within the elite.
Upon the peasantry fell the burden of supporting a corrupt and divided upper
class; upon them fell the burden of military service, corvee, increasing taxation,
and the exactions of the landed magnates. Peasant bitterness and resentment
found expression in the mounting power of Taoist religious fraternities, which
offered both religious consolation in a troubled age and a focus of organized
opposition to intolerable oppression. The vast Yellow Turban revolt dramatized
the extent of the alienation of the people from the state and the fanaticism of
their devotion to new doctrines and new leaders. 5 The ferocious suppression of
the rebellion did not unite the upper class around the decaying throne for therestoration of effective government but paved the \vay for the emergence of a
series of military dictators whose \vars, as Balazs has renlarked, transforlued
China in one generation from a po\verful empire into a vast celuetery. 6 The
successor states of the Han were military dictatorships, and, even where they
\vere able to exercise power at the local level, they did little to restore a stable and
viable peasant economy. In the years before 317, therefore, the peasantry is sunk
in misery and sullen discontent. The breakdo\vn of their once stable life was
complete, and they were readily dra\vn to those cults and organizations that
promised some amelioration of their lot, some hope for the future. The breakup
of the Han peasant society, then, is one of the factors that prepared the "vay in
this period for the spread of an alien religion.
On the ideological and philosophic level, the Han Confucian synthesis \vas
lltterly discredited by the collapse of the order which it served and sanctioned.
Indeed doubts about its coherence and validity had grown more insistent from
4 See Etienne Balazs, "La crise sociale et la philosophie politique a la fin des Han,"
TP, XXXIX (1949),84-87. Balazs, p. 86, cites the account of Hou-Han shu, ek. 8, which
records that the five eunuchs who assassinated the head of one of the Empress' family
cliques were ennobled by the grateful monarch, given a marquisate 'which entitled them
to income from 76,000 families and, in addition, the sum of fifty-six millions.
5 See Howard S. Levy, "Yellovv Turban Religion and Rebellion at the End of Han,"
JAOS, LXXVI (1956),214-227.
6 Balazs, p. 91.

BUDDHISM AND CHINESE CULTURE

21

the time of Wang Ch'ung (27-c.97), and vvhen its formulae proved inapplicable
or unworkable in time of crisis, the troubled Chinese upper class began to look
elsewhere for the means of understanding what had befallen their society, and
for prescriptions for its ills. In this, China's second great age of crisis and intellectual ferment, Taoism, Legalism, and the lesser doctrines of the age of the
Warring States reappeared. Both Taoism and Legalism attracted interest because
of their repudiation of Confucian tradition, by the very radicalness of their
prescriptions for an age vvhen old ways had been found wanting. Revived Legalism soon ceased to be protest, and often found itself sanctioning the absolute
power of military dictators. Revived Taoisnl remained, then, the principal
dissenting and protestant body of thought. Men found in the amorphous, loosely
related concepts of the Lao-tzu, the Chuang-tzu, and the I-ching ways of talking
about the individual and social malaise vvhich afflicted them. They found a
vocabulary of protest and a rationality of escape. Indeed an earlier mood of
protest gave way, as the years of chaos and misery \vore on, to an escapist mood,
a sense of futility and a full retreat froln responsibility.7 Ch'ing-t'an, the dominant
mode of discourse among the neo-Taoists, became less and less a speculative
instrument and more and more a diversion of defeated men. I suggest that neoTaoism had provided the Chinese upper class with some limited means of analyzing their sad individual and collective plight; it had enlarged the speculative
range of their minds. But the vocabulary of the Taoist classics was lil-vuited, a
primitive and poetic, dominantly negative vocabulary that could not fully satisfy
the speculative interests it had aroused, nor suggest solutions for the problems
it had raised. Arthur Waley's characterization of Wang Yen (266-311), Prime
Minister at the end of the period we are discussing, suggests the atmosphere of
futility and negation:
He belonged to one of the most distinguished fan1ilies in China, the \Vangs of Lang-yeh,
and was descended from a long line of high officials. He was famous for his great beauty
and in particular for the jade-like whiteness of his hands. He subscribed to the theory
that though exceptional people can acquire transcendent powers through the cult of le
neant (to use M. Sartre's convenient term), inferior people (among whom he modestly
ranked himself) must be content if through their cult of the neant they manage (in a dangerous world) to save their own skins. He did his best to take a negative line towards everything, merely to drift with the tide of events ... 8

We have suggested some of the ways in vvhich the breakup of the Han oekumene
prepared the way for new ideas and institutions. Chinese self-confidence, the
surest antitoxin against the viruses of innovation and xenophilia, had been
seriously undermined. Yet the peasantry turned to religious Taoism, and the
literate to neo-Taoist philosophy. The reason for this was not that Buddhism
\vas not present in China but that it was still in the process of being translated
and adapted-prepared for a Chinese clientele.9 I shall now turn to this simultaneous phase of what I have called the period of preparation.
7 See Etienne Balazs, "Entre revolte nihiliste et evasion mystique, les courants intellectuels en Chine au IIIe siec]e de notre ere," Etudes Asiatiques, II (1948), 27-55.
8 Arthur Vvaley, "The Fall of Loyang," History Today, No.4 (April 1951), p. 8.
9 This does not mean that there "vas no interest whatever. We know, for example, that

22

ARTHUR F. WRIGHT

Everyone vvho has contemplated the process by which Indian ideas and institutions were made intelligible, and, to a degree, acceptable, to the Chinese has been
struck by the breadth of the cultural gulf which had to be overcome. A paradigm
of some of the points of divergence will suggest the problems of "translation"
which this age of preparation first began to deal with, and which were a major
preoccupation in the succeeding period of domestication:
Language

Literary modes

Psychology of the
individual
Time and Space
Socio-political
values

Chinese

Indian Buddhist

Uninflected, ideographic, and

(in its written form) largely
monosyllabic; no systematized grammar.
Terseness, metaphors from familiar nature, limited imaginative range, concreteness.

Highly inflected, alphabetic,

polysyllabic, with a highly
elaborated formal grammar.

No disposition to analyze the

personality into its components.
Finite, life-time, milieu, and
generation oriented.
Familism, supremacy of the
secular power, pursuit of the
good society.

Discursiveness, hyperbolic metaphor, unlimited imaginative

flights, predilection for the
abstract.
A highly developed science of
psychological analysis.
Infinite, aeon-oriented.
Individualism (in the Mahayana, universal salvationism),
supremacy of spiritual power,
pursuit of non-social goods.

The effort to bridge these gaps during the period of preparation was carried
on in scattered centers by a handful of missionaries who were almost totally
unprepared for the tasks they faced. Like the early Christian missionaries
centuries later, they knew virtually no Chinese, and their few converts knew
nothing of foreign languages. The first translations were the product of a naive
but touching optimism, of a pooling of ignorance and enthusiasm. In the capitals
of Han, Wu, vVei, and Western Chin a succession of devoted Central Asian monks
beginning with An Shih-kao labored at the work of textual translation, and the
corps of devoted Chinese collaborators gradually increased in numbers and
proficiency. Temples and clergy grew more numerous, and one source states that
in the years of the Western Chin (265-317), Buddhist establishments in Ch'angan and Lo-yang numbered 180, and clergy 3,700. 10 The following table gives a
rough indication of the steadily increasing work of translation during the period
,ve are considering: 11
the Han Emperor Huan (ruled 147-167), on the recommendation of the sorcerer Hsiang
Chieh, paid homage to a Buddha image CHou-Han shu [T'ung-wen ed. of 1884], 60B.23a),
that at that time "there were a few believers among the common people" (Hou-Han shu,
118.12b), etc. Yet the interest that did exist seemed, on the one hand, rather idle curiosity
about an exotic form of Taoism and, on the other, a desire to acquire and exploit its alleged
magical pow"er. This slowly changes towards the end of the period we are considering.
10 Pien-cheng lun, ch. 3 (Taisho Vol. LII), p. 502c.
11 Figures from Tokiwa Daijo, Yakugyo soroku [General List of Translated Scriptures]
(Tokyo, 1938), pp. 11-17.

23

BUDDHISM AND CHINESE CULTURE

Later Han,
c.60-220

(about 160 years)

Number of known translators

Number of known titles, extant or lost

San-kuo Wei and

Wu, 220-265,
220-280 (60 years)

Western Chin,
265-317
(52 years)

13

11

16

409

253

491

Yet the increasing number of translations indicates only one of the levels at
,vhich preparatory adaptation went forward. Small communities of believers
began to develop at scattered points throughout China. At Tun-huang in the far
northwest, at Lo-yang, in the Canton region of the far south, in Nanking and
Wu-ch'ang on the Yangtze, in eastern Chekiang, possibly in Shantung. About
191 a numerous community was organized by a Chinese official in northern
Kiangsu-an area which, significantly, had recently been a center of Yello\v
Turban dissidence and revolt; in this center religious observances were part of
a wider social program that met some of the problems of a disorganized, impoverished, and demoralized peasantry.I2
Throughout this period Buddhism develops outside the main stream of
Chinese philosophic life. The early, inperfect translations suggest that the scattered communities of Chinese neophytes were not interested in doctrine but in
the practices leading to salvation. Demieville suggests that Dharmaraksa's translation, in 286, of one of the versions of the Prajful-paramitti-8utra is the first to
make the speculative ideas of Mahayana mysticism accessible and reasonably
intelligible to literate Chinese; this appeared at a time when the revival of the
study of the Chuang-tzu reflected a rising interest in an analogous range of indigenous ideas. I3 Although the translators invariably made use of Taoist terminology to render the basic ideas of Indian Buddhism, the ch'ing-t'an colloquies
of the period show little evidence of the interaction between Indian and Chinese
philosophies; the first Chinese Buddhist exegetical works are few and fumbling,
outside the main stream and the main centers of Chinese intellectual life.
Nonetheless during this period some of the issues in the competing claims of
Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism were given preliminary statement. Ts'ao
Chih (192-232), Prince of the Wei ruling house and pioneer experimenter with
Chinese adaptations of Indian psalmody, wrote the first attack on Taoism from
a Buddhist viewpoint. Mou-tzu's Li-huo lun, written at the end of the second
century, is a kind of cyclopedia of the points at which Buddhism had to be
reconciled with or adapted to Chinese tradition: I4 the alien versus the native,
familism versus monasticism; Sinocentrism versus Indocentrism; the ritual and
12 See T'ang Yung-t'ung, Han Wei liang Chin nan-pei ch'ao Fo-chiao shih [History of
Buddhism in the Han, Western and Eastern Chin, and Nan-pei ch'ao periods] (Ch'ang-sha,
1938), pp. 71-73. H. Maspero suggested that this community may have been historically
linked to the early Taoistic-Buddhist community at P'eng-ch'eng fostered by Prince Ying
of Han who died in A.D. 71. See "Les origines de la communaute bouddhiste de Lo-yang,"
JA, CCXXV (1934),91-92.
13 See Paul Demieville, "La penetration du Bouddhisme dans la tradition philosophique
chinoise," Cahiers d'histoire mondiale, Vol. III, No.1 (1956), pp. 19-38.
14 I accept Pelliot's dating. See his "]Vleou-tseu on les doutes leves," TP, XIX (1920),
255-433.

24

ARTHUR F. WRIGHT

behavioral prescriptions of the Chinese Classics versus those of the Buddhist

Canon; Chinese conceptions of a finite existence versus Buddhist ideas of transmigration. These are some of the problems which, stated in this period of preparation, are major themes in the period of domestication to follow.
The social and intellectual trends, the preliminary phases of Buddhist social
activity, translation, intellectual development, and apologetics which have been
outlined above suggest some of the lineaments of the age of preparation, and some
of the reasons for its being so described. Let us now turn to the second phase.
II.

THE PERIOD OF DOMESTICATION,

317-589

The pivotal character of the year 317 illustrates the suggestion made earlier
that major turning points in Chinese social and political history seem to articulate
the phases in the process of interaction which we are examining. This was the
year in which the final stand of Chinese power in the north was made and failed.
'"fhe first and probably decisive stage of the political cataclysm came in 313 when
Lo-yang fell to the Huns, was sacked and destroyed, and the Chinese Emperor
was carried off to the barbarian's camp. One foreign observer's comments on the
catastrophic Chinese defeat have been preserved. This is a fragmentary letter
from the Sogdian merchant Nani-vandak to his colleague at Samarkand. He
expresses astonishment that "those Huns who were yesterday the Emperor's
vassals" should now have overthrown the empire. "And, Sir," he writes, "the
last Emperor-so they say-fled from Saragh (Lo-yang) because of the famine,
and his palace and "valled city were set on fire.... So Saragh is no more, Ngap
(Yeh, the great city in northern Honan) no more 1"15
The Chinese had lost control of the heartland of their culture, of the most
populous provinces, of the monuments and landmarks of their past; they had lost
to disdained and hated barbarians. The psychological and intellectual impact of
this debacle was enormous. Socially and politically the effects were far-reaching
and long-lasting. During the next 272 years two widely different cultures developed in north and south; different institutions evolved in response to the different
needs of the t\VO areas. This meant that the domestication of Buddhist ideas and
institutions proceeded along different lines in north and south. In considering
domestication, therefore, we shall be obliged to consider the process of interaction
between Buddhism and the two differently evolving cultures of south and north.
We shall see that the two processes of domestication converge and culminate to
usher in the period of acceptance and independent gro\vth which begins with the
reunification of the empire in 589.
Domestication of Buddhist ideas and institutions in the south

The Chinese ruling class ,vhich fled the north to establish a series of weak
dynasties in Nanking had suffered a severe psychological shock. They found
themselves in a rich but recently colonial area, much of it still populated by
aborigines. They felt themselves exiles, and behaved like emigres; their mood
15

Waley, p. 10. The translation from the Sogdian is by W. B. Henning.

BUDDHISM AND

CHINES:B~

CULTURE

25

was a compound of chagrin, self-pity, and deep self-doubt. A scene in the country
outside the new capital of Chien-k'ang recalls this mood. The leaders of the ne,v
government assembled,
they sat on the grass, drank and feasted. Chou Hou sat down among them and said: "The
scenery in general is no different, it is just that there are other mountains and rivers."
They all looked at one another and wept. Only \Vang Tao (the Prime Minister, brother of
the ill-fated last Prime Minister of the Western Chin), his expression changing with deep
emotion, said: "We should join forces with our royal house and reconquer our homeland.
Why sit looking at one another like prisoners in chains?"16

Although the increasingly futile neo-Taoist colloquies continued to be a nlajor

pastime of the upper class, their recent bitter experience induced a more serious
mood, a more urgent quest for some sort of certainty. Buddhism responded to
-this mood and this need, and more and more monks were to be found in the houses
of the rich and the powerful. Many of these monks, such as Chih Tao-lin, \vere
deeply versed in the concepts and the vocabulary of neo-Taoism, and could
present Buddhist ideas in the familiar ch'ing-t'an mode. Many of the leading
monks were born members of the aristocracy; they tended to move from "Confucian" basic education to an interest in neo-Taoism, and thence to Buddhism.17
These men knew intimately the mental and psychological preoccupations of
their class. They expounded the neo-Taoist classics in terms of Buddhism, and
Buddhism in terms of Taoism, and in this process Buddhist ideas were rapidly
Sinicized. They brought to their sophisticated but uneasy patrons a steady flo,v
of new ideas gleaned from the increasing numbers of translated scriptures and
Chinese exegetical writings.
The figure of Vimalakirti was presented as an ideal model of character, overshadowing and outmoding the old ideals of the Confucian chun-tzu and the 'l'aoist
sage. Here was no bloodless moral paragon, no naked ascetic but a rich and
powerful aristocrat, a brilliant talker, a respected householder and father, a pure
and self-disciplined personality, yet a man ,vho denied himself no luxury or
pleasure while he changed all whom he met for the better.I8 Buddhism thus
presented the southern aristocrats with a new model for a worldly life. At the
same time, it began to attract more and more people to a monastic life. Taoism
had long exalted the virtues of withdrawal and contemplation, and the social and
political instability of the south encouraged escape from the frustrations of the
16 Shih-shuo hsin-yu (Ssu-pu pei-yao ed.), 1A.22b. At the end of his speech Wang Tao
says, literally, "Why should we sit looking at one another like [so many] prisoners of Ch'u?"
The allusion is to a prisoner from Ch 'u state whom the Marquis of Chin took pity on, released, and sent back to Ch'u as a peace envoy. See Legge's translation of the Ch'un-ch'hl
and Tso-chuan, Vol. I, p. 371.
17 Demieville, pp. 23-24, suggests that this pattern of progression from ConfucianislIl
through neo-Taoism to Buddhism was typical for educated Chinese converts from the 4th
to the 7th century.
18 For the reflection of the vogue of Vimalakirti in Buddhist art, see J. LeR,oy Davidson,
"Traces of Buddhist Evangelism in Early Chinese Art," Artibus Asiae, XI (1948), 251-,265. Vimalakirti figures prominently in the cave-temples of north China, but the meaning
of his cult in the north would be differently interpreted in relation to a different clientele.

26

ARTHUR F. WRIGHT

\vorld. Buddhisnl no\v provided a more highly sophisticated and aesthetically

satisfying regimen for the meditative life, a richer and more di\Tersified body of
doctrine and philosophy, and-in the Bodhisattva ideal-a stronger ethical
justification for such a life.
In the monasteries and temples which the rich and the pious endowed-fronl
motives of piety, hope of salvation, fear of retribution, or love of ostentatious
spending-an increasing clergy busied themselves with the study of the vast
foreign literature that was coming to them in a steady flow of translation. Here
in the south foreign missionaries were rare, and doctrinal discussions were carried
on in Chinese by monks who seldom knew an Indian language. It is in this setting
that many of the distinctive ideas of a domesticated Buddhism develop: a notion
of the prime moving force of the universe that partakes of the qualities of the
Chinese tao and the Buddhist dharmakaya; a rationalization of the celibate life
that claims that the Vinaya is the counterpart of li; a rationalization of the monk's
place in society that claims for him "higher forms" of both hsiao (filial submission)
and chung (loyal devotion to authority); a conception of the soul and its salvation that owed much to the competing motions of both Taoism and Confucianism.
The idea that Buddhism, if widely adopted, vvould bring about (that old Chinese
ideal!) an harmonious and united society. Out of discussions and disputations, out
of the struggle \vith the strange metaphors and vocabulary of a huge and heterogeneous sacred canon, Chinese monks developed special interests and emphases.
It is these which prefigure the development of schools in the succeeding age.
Meanwhile the whole effort of the clergy and of their lay patrons is to discover
the "true" meaning of Indian Buddhism and to relate that meaning to the intellectual, spiritual, and social problems of their time and milieu.
Outside the temple walls the Chinese clergy moved freely in and out of the
palaces of the rich and powerful. They also \vorked among the populace as a
,vhole, and entered into a fierce competition with Taoist adepts-who had deeper
local roots-for a popular following. The preaching of formulas of salvation, the
elaboration of public ceremonies to compete \vith those of the Taoist religion, the
performance of rituals invoking divine help against disease and natural disastersall these means \vere used in their bid for popular support. By the sixth century,
in north and south alike, the old village associations for fertility rites and other
observances \vere being transformed into Buddhist organizations; thereafter they
played an increasingly important role in making Buddhism an integral part of
village life.I9 Yet one has the impression that the Buddhism of the south was
Inore intellectual, more aristocratic, than that of the 110rth, and that it had fewer
adherents among the common people. And despite the growing populousness and
prosperity of the south, the abuses of clerical privileges and immunities began to
be noticed, and the burden of lavish temple building weighed heavily upon the
common people. When an emperor of the Southern Ch'i attempted to outdo a
predecessor in the building of lofty and richly ornamented pagodas a bold,
19 See Jacques Gernet, Les aspects econo'miques du Bouddhisn~e dans la societe chinoise
du Ve au Xe siecle (Saigon, 1956), pp. 245-269. I have revie\ved this important study in
JAS, Vol. XVI, No.3 (May 1957), pp. 408-414, under the title "The Economic Role of
Buddhism in China."

BUDDHISM AND CHINESE CULTURE

27

official remonstrated with him: "Your Majesty's building of this temple is

entirely financed with money which the common people got by selling their sons
and putting their daughters in bond servitude. If the Buddha knew of this, he
\vould be grieved and distressed. Your crinle is higher than the pagoda. \Vhat
religious merit does this have?"20 Throughout this period there vvere attacks on
Buddhism, but, though \veak measures of regulation were taken, the attackers
lacked real confidence in the Confucian formulas they affirmed, and thus offered
no significant checks on the steady infiltration of Buddhism into court
and culture.
Under all the short-lived southern dynasties, a series of fervently Buddhist
emperors sponsored and promoted the growth of the alien religion. The performance of spectacular acts of penance, the building of splendid temples, the
support of thousands of clergy-all motivated by belief in their efficacy as means
to salvation-characterized several reigns. The best known of these Buddhist
emperors is Liang Wu-ti. The festivals of the Buddhist year dominated his court
calendar, he himself took Buddhist vows, and in 504, on the Buddha's birthday,
he ordered the imperial relatives, the nobles, and the officials to forsake Taoism
and embrace Buddhism. In 517 he ordered the temples of the Taoists-whose
religion had steadily increased in power and influence (partly through its selective
borrowing fronl Buddhism)-destroyed, and the Taoist clergy returned to lay
life. In the titles vvhich were given this pious ruler, we see the symbols of the
domestication of Buddhism as an adjunct of imperial po\ver. He was called
Huang-ti p'u-sa (Emperor Bodhisattva), Chiu-shih p'u-sa (Savior Bodhisattva),
and P'u-sa t'ien-tzu (Bodhisattva Son of Heaven).21
At many other levels, domestication went forward under the southern dynasties. New genres of Sino-Buddhist literature emerged, new architectural and art
forms fused the native and the foreign, new music and musical instruments
developed under foreign inspiration, new theories and practices in medicine
merged with Chinese medical traditions, Buddhist principles \vere reflected in
modifications of the penal code.
This brief survey suggests that domestication occurred at many levels in the
south: at the level of thought and philosophy, of religious belief and practice, of
social values and behavior, of state policy, and in the other cultural spheres just
mentioned. We shall now examine the simultaneous but different process going
on in the north.
Domestication of Buddhist ideas and institutions in the north.
When north China fell to barbarian invaders in 317, this was the culmination
of a long series of miscalculations and blunders on the part of the Chinese, and
of a series of natural disasters that together left the north weakly adrilinistered,
economically shattered, and, in certain key areas, virtually depopulated. Con20 See Nan-Ch'i shu (T'ung-wen ed. of 1884), 53.3b; also Miyakawa Hisayuki, "Rikucho
jidai jin no Bukky6 shink6" ("The Buddhist Faith of the People of the Six Dynasties
Period"), Bukkyo shigaku, Vol. IV, No.2 (1955), pp. 1-17.
21 On this ruler, see Mori Mikisabur6, Ryo no Butei [Elnperor Wu of the Liang J (Kyoto,
1956), especially pp. 134-169.

28

ARTHUR. F. WRIGHT

quest of the north was accomplished by a coalition between those barbarians

,vhom Chinese emperors had unwisely allowed to settle in the area and their
cousins from beyond the great ,vall. In this vast area, from the decline of the Han
onward, the institutions of settled agrarian life and the morale of the gentry and
of the peasantry had been badly eroded. N OvV as the harsh militaristic invaders
set up their regin1es, they encountered little coherent resistance. The breakup of
well ordered Chinese life and culture in the north is the pre-condition both for
the continuance of barbarian control and for the spread and domestication of
Buddhism in north China.
Buddhisn1 found acceptance in all the strata of a deeply divided population:
among the non-Chinese rulers and their kinsmen, among the surviving Chinese
gentry, among the mass of the peasantry. At each stratum Buddhism, in the
process of winning adherents and maintaining its dominance, underwent a
process of adaptation. The configurations of this socially stratified process give
us the pattern of domestication in the north.
Buddhism was appealing to the non-Chinese ruling groups in a variety of ways,
and gifted missionaries, such as Fo-t'u-teng and, later, resourceful native clerics
exploited this receptivity to the full. Buddhism, notably in the persons of the
great monks, offered the rulers charismatic and magical power ,vhich helped to
,yard off natural disasters, to 'Yin battles, to calculate future natural and human
events. "rhus ,ve find the Buddhist clergy taking over the functions of rain-makers,
calendar specialists, physicians, and general advisors. In performing these
functions-and especially in meeting the rising challenge of their Taoist rivalsthe monks domesticated Buddhism to its new environment and introduced it
into reahns of activity where it ,vas to remain for centuries.
Buddhism commended itself to the rulers because it was not Chinese. As one
of them remarked in an edict encouraging his subjects to become Buddhists, "We
,\rere born out of the marches, and though We are un,vorthy, We have complied
,vith our appointed destiny and govern the Chinese as their prince ... Buddha
being a barbarian god is the very one we should worship."22 This foreign religion
commended itself to the conquerors as a personal faith ,vith its own means for
quieting their superstitious fears and the spaSlns of remorse that occasionally
shook them after some terrible slaughter of their subjects. Temples could be
erected for the benefit of the souls of those \vho died in battle ;23 services of
penance, donations to the clergy, and the commissioning of votive images could
atone for their violent and ruthless acts. But in addition to these personal reassurances, Buddhism provided them, in the clergy, with a group of educated
advisors totally dependent on the rulers' favor-a group as opposed as were
their masters to the resurgence in the north of a Confucian-dominated Chinese
state. Buddhism also appealed to them as a faith that was likely to induce
Edict of the Later Chao ruler Shih Hu, c. 335. See \Vright, "Fo-t'u-teng, A Biography,
XI (1948),356.
231VIiyakawa, p. 8, cites the case from Wei shu, ch. 73, of a Northern Wei general who
suffered remorse for the ferocious slaughters he had perpetrated, and donated his own
houses for the building of temples in all the provinces in which he had held office. This
means of expiating mass violence was to persist in the Sui and T'ang.
22

HJ~1S

BUDDHISNI AND CHINESE

CULTURE~

29

submission and docility alnong the Inasses, to deepen their alienation from those
older native patterns of belief and behavior "\vhich, if reasserted, might bring an
end to alien domination. The favor of the rulers had far-reaching effects: it
protected and encouraged the clergy as they proselytized among the population;
it gave increasing economic support to telnples and monasteries, making then1,
as never before, centers of trade, of money-lending, of milling, of a developing
artisanry, and of large-scale agricultural enterprise. 24 The rulers also supported
artists and artisans "\vho, in the course of this period, transformed imported forms
and motifs into a progressively domesticated Sino-Buddhist art-a process ,vhich
is dramatized in the sequence of cave temples at Yiin-kang and Lung-men.
Buddhist organization developed to such a point that it required state controls,
and there emerges in the N orthern Wei a hierarchy of state-appointed Buddhist
officials-the domestication of a loosely affiliated clergy into a Chinese-type
bureaucratized organization.
When we turn to the Chinese gentry vvho remained in the north, "re find that
Buddhism offered some of the same appeals as it did to their emigre cousins south
of the Yangtze. They too had felt the shattering blow of the conquest of the north
by their enemies, and they lived uneasily and uncertainly under a succession of
barbarian overlords. We find many of theln turning to the alien faith for consolation, for the means of comprehending and enduring a life "\vhich Confucian
forn1ulae failed to explain and for ,vhich Taoism only prescribed escape. Many
of them, as their fortunes improved, became generous lay patrons of Buddhism;
in this they were motivated by hope of salvation but sOlnetilnes also by the
desire to ingratiate themselves ,vith their pious rulers and to secure tax exemption for their estates. Buddhism became part of their daily lives, of their thought,
and of their family observances.
Other members of the gentry entered the monastic life, and many became
leaders in the busy intellectual and ceremonial life of the northern capitals. These
metropolitan clerics were in more regular contact \vith foreign missionaries than
their southern counterparts and, through their o"vn studies and through participation in great translation ptojects, they contributed notably to the domestication
of Buddhist ideas in China. In the life and thought of Tao-an (312-385) one sees
a growing a\vareness of the ilnmense problems of translation and adaptation
vvhich Buddhisln presented to the Chinese. 25 'Vith him the easy "equivalence" of
See Gernet, passim.
See, inter alia, Arthur E. Link, "Shyh Da,v-an's Preface to Sailgharakf?a's Yogacarabhumi-sutra and the Problem of Buddho-Taoist Terlninology in Early Chinese Buddhism," J ADS, LXXVII (1957), 1-14. Ocho Enichi has recently suggested the three preconditions for the development of a matured theory of translation. These pre-conditions,
"which were fulfilled by Tao-an's time, were: 1) opportunities for sustained contact \vith
foreigners which deepened the consciousness of the differences between Chinese and foreign
languages; 2) availability of multiple translations of the same texts vvhich made comparative study possible; 3) development of a demand, not for paraphrase and general interpretation, but for faithful and carefully modulated translations. See "Chugoku Bukkyo
shoki no honyakuron" ("Discussions concerning the Method of Translation in the Early
Chinese Buddhism"), Y a1naguchi hakuski kanreki kinen I ndogaku Bukkyogaku ronso [Symposium of Indian and B1lddhist Studies 'l~n H ana?' of Dr. Yamag'llchi's Sixtieth Birthday]
(Kyoto, 1955), pp. 221-232.
24

25

30

ARTHUR F. WRIGHT

Buddhist and Taoist terms was sho\vn to be delusive. Through his efforts and
through those of Kumarajiva (in Ch'ang-an, 401-409) and his Chinese collaborators, Indian ideas were made intelligible to Chinese minds, and Buddhism
entered decisively the mainstrean1 of Chinese philosophy \vhich it was to dominate for five centuries to come.
While the metropolitan clergy developed a way of life which was, in a sense,
analogous to that of the Chinese official in its esteem for learning, its hierarchized
bureaucracy, and its direct dependence on the state, the village clergy evolved
along different lines. 26 Recruited from the peasantry, with scant pretensions to
learning, often at odds with state authority, it was responsive to the needs of
peasant life. The Buddhism which these men brought to the villages-against
less opposition from religious Taoism than was encountered in the south-offered
solace and formulas of easy salvation; it fused readily with local cults-particularly local earth and fertility cults; it provided, at the popular level, new and
allegedly more efficacious observances for the repose of the ancestors-a striking
instance of domestication through adaptation. The clergy were not only the local
exorcists; when they were affiliated with an official temple they were also in a
sense the representatives of state po\ver; their influence and protection were often
helpful, and the local temples offered relief grain and shelter in times of disaster.
Though there are instances of gross exactions of labor and money from the
peasantry for the temple building of the rich and powerful,27 the mass of surviving
inscriptions suggests that voluntary co-operation among villagers in pious
building projects was far more common. The inscriptions of the period indicate
the widespread practice of making votive objects which build up spiritual credit
for the donors with the Bodhisattva invoked and seek his intervention on behalf
of the souls of the ancestors and of living family members. Buddhism, then,
became deeply inter\voven with common life in the north, and this was the most
important phase of its domestication at the popular level.
One of the trends which develops in the latter part of this period had farreaching effects on the domestication of Buddhism. This was a trend, among the
northern regimes, toward Sinicization. It was produced by a number of factors,
among which the following seem to be most important: The effort to get maximum productivity out of a Chinese agricultural region inevitably required the
use of Chinese organizational and managerial techniques. The dream of a unified
China under their domination obsessed many of the northern rulers, and this
tended to make them increasingly interested in the Chinese statecraft, strategic
knowledge, and political ideologies which the Chinese gentry monopolized; this
plus the revival of agriculture, increased the power of the gentry. The principal
effort of the rising Taoist clergy-consciously or unconsciously leagued with
See Gernet, pp. 240-250.
See Miyakawa, p. 8. lie cites the instance from Wei shu, ch. 22, of a Northern Wei
official who, -besides supporting famous monks and financing sixty copies of the Buddhist
canon, built seventy-two temples. A monk criticized him for causing the death of men
and oxen in his extravagant building activities. He replied-with scant piety and much
cynicism-that posterity would see and admire the temples and would know nothing of
the men and oxen which had perished.
26
27

BUDDHISM AND CHINESE CULTURE

31

those gentry who sought a revival of Chinese culture and po"ver-\vas to attack
and undermine Buddhism. The trend towards Sinicization "vas accelerated in
the reign of Emperor Hsiao-wen of the Northern Wei (471-499), who decreed
that his own people should abandon the language and customs of their steppe
ancestors, and moved his capital to the historic Chinese site of Lo-yang.
Towards the end of this period, therefore, the patterns of domestication in
north and south tend to converge, and southern Chinese influence on the culture
and the Buddhism of the north increases. The foreignness of Buddhism no longer
commends it to monarchs \vho increasingly try to rule according to ancient
Chinese patterns. Rather, the contradictions between a Chinese all-powerful
state and a strong Buddhist community become clearer. In attempts to resolve
these, one group urges the extirpation of Buddhism, vvhile another stresses the
uses of Buddhism as a sanction and bulwark of state po\ver. Strangely enough
both these views \vere expressed in support of the drastic suppression of Buddhism carried out by the Northern Chou in 579. One group sa\v the extirpation of
Buddhism as necessary to give credibility to the classical Confucian fa~ade which
the Chou was erecting as a means of laying claim to dominion over all China.
'I'he other argued that it was not Buddhism but the church-the imperium in
imperio-that was bad, and that if temples and clergy vvere eliminated, the state
would become one vast spiritual temple, P'ing-yen ta-ssu, with the Chou ruler
presiding over his believing subjects as Tathagata. 28 This second formula was a
recognizable descendant of the N orthern Wei solution to the problem of the
conflict between secular and religious loyalties in an autocratic state: that the
Emperor is the rfathagata. 'l'his solution contrasted \vith the southern pattern;
there the Buddhists-living under an aristocratic rather than an autocratic
regime-went no further than to persuade their monarchs to adopt the sanctified
Indian model of the Cakravartin king who rules by and for the Buddhist faith,
to become a lay patron, mahadanapati, rather than the deified monarch of a
religious state. 'l'hese are two of the solutions proposed to that most intractable
problem of domestication: the relation of Buddhisln to state po\ver.
The t\VO many-faceted processes of domestication in north and south met and
merged in the reunified China of 589, and this begins a ne\v phase in the history
of Buddhism's interaction with Chinese culture.
III.

THE PERIOD OF ACCEPTANCE AND INDEPENDENT GROWTH,

589-c.900

rfhe years 581-589 are another one of the major turning points in Chinese
history. In this period the Sui dynasty consolidated its hold on the north, and
planned and carried out its conquest of the south. With military conquest, its
real task of institutional and cultural unification began. And in this massive and
many-sided effort, the domesticated ideas and institutions of Buddhism were
used and fostered by the dynasty to bring about cultural unity and to sanction
the new Sui ~egemony. We shall see that under the Sui and the T'ang those
elements of Buddhism which had been domesticated in China were accepted28

See Wright, "Fu I and the Rejection of Buddhism," Journal of the History of Ideas,

XII (1951), 34-38 and p. 34 note 1 for references to Tsukamoto Zenryu's three important
studies of the Northern Chou suppression.

32

ARTHUR F. WRIGHT

regardless of the predilections of individual rulers-as integral parts of social,

political, economic, and cultural life; the prevalence of Buddhist belief in all
classes of society made it essential for those in power to take account of this in
formulating state policies at all levels. Acceptance by the populace and by the
state-these are the conditions that make possible the notable development of
Buddhism in this period of independent growth: the creation of a Buddhism by
and for the Chinese. It may be useful to consider the modes of acceptance at
various levels of state and society, and then to turn to some of the specific
manifestations of independent growth. Let us first consider Buddhism in relation
to state power.
The Sui dynasty adopted n1any policies which are characteristic of the state's
relation to Buddhism throughout the T'ang. 29 A few of the more important of
these might be briefly noted. The Buddhist clergy were close to the Emperor,
the center of power. As palace chaplains they ministered to the spiritual needs of
the imperial family; as capital prelates they officiated in the imperially supported
temples at great public services-for the relief of drought, for the peace of the
realm, for the longevity of the reigning emperor (often on his birthday), for the
repose of the souls of the imperial ancestors. In the provinces the Sui and the
T'ang governments endowed special state temples (the Hsing-kuo ssu of the Sui,
the Ta-yiin ssu, Lung-hsing ssu, and K'ai-yuan ssu of the T'ang), and the bonds
bet\veen the benign Buddha-sanctioned ruler and his pious subjects were dramatized for the local population. The Japanese monk-traveler Ennin reported that
of the forty monasteries in Yang-chou, seven were classified as official. 30 The
state advanced the fusion of Buddhism and indigenous cults by appointing
Buddhist clergy to officiate at the shrines of the old tutelary deities of the sacred
mountains, and these became major centers of Buddhist pilgrimage and religious
activity.
The Sui and T'ang governments also reflected in a variety of social policies
their acceptance of Buddhism. The state provided funds for the hospitals and
the refuges for the sick and indigent which were attached to numerous temples.
The suspension of state business ,vas decreed for certain of the Buddhist holy
days, and the state ordered the cessation of all executions, killing, and butchering
during the days of special observances in the three months of Buddhist abstinence. The severity of the penal code "ras somewhat moderated, and the death
penalty used more sparingly. The state also encouraged empire-\vide observance
of such great festivals as the Feast of All Souls.
The great clerics .were given special imperial honors and titles. I>u-k'ung or
Amoghavajra (705-774) enjoyed the confidence of three emperors, was allo\ved
to go in and out of the palace on horseback, was given a special court rank, and
,vas enfeoffed as a Duke; at his death court \vas suspended for three days.:u Yet
29 Some of the following is drawn from my forthcoming paper, "The Formation of Sui
Ideology," in John K. Fairbank, ed., Thought and Institutions in China (Chicago, 1957).
30 Edwin O. Reischauer, Ennin's Travels in T'ang China (New York, 1955), p. 165.
31 On Amoghavajra, see Chou Yi-liang, "Tantrism in China," HJAS, VIII (1945), 284307. On the powerful clerics of the Sui and T'ang, see Takao Giken, Chugoku Bukkyoshiron
[Essays in Chinese Buddh1.:st History] (Kyoto, 1952), pp. 51-53.

BUDDHISM AND CHINESE CULTURE

33

the great monks, besides being conspicuous objects of the government's solicitude
for Buddhism, had a function: to control and regulate the clergy according to
government regulations, and to \varn against the gro\vth of heterodox or divisive
beliefs. The hierarchy of clerical officials developed on the N orthern Wei pattern
vvas a bureaucracy responsible to the state for the maintenance of order, propriety, and conformity among believers, for the official ordination of monks, and
for the chartering of Buddhist establishments. When Emperor Wen of the Sui
said to the high clerical official Ling-tsang, "I, your disciple, am a lay Son of
Heaven, while you, Vinaya Master, are a religious Son of Heaven," this was more
than a flowery compliment; it clearly implied that the ranking clerical official
had full and comprehensive responsibility for the Buddhist church. 32 The trend
in the period we are considering is for Buddhism to become steadily more subordinated to state power. Takao has pointed out a vivid symbolic reflection of
this process. In pre-T'ang times a monk addressing a monarch referred to himself
by his name or as the sramana (P'in-tao or Sha-men) so-and-so. In 760 a monk
first used the word ch'en, "your subject," and by Sung times, the monks were
using ch'en tun-shou, "your subject bows his head."33
Yet one of the indices of the clergy's po\ver and importance in the T'ang was
its ability to maintain its own religious norms. In 662 the great clerics of the
realm were successful in getting the nullification of a government order that
would have forced them to pay ceremonial homage to their parents and to their
prince-acts consonant \vith li but contrary to the provisions of the Vinaya. 34
In the life and culture of the upper class, Buddhism was everywhere accepted.
Despite the revival of the examination system with an archaistic Confucian
curriculum, Buddhism remained the dominant intellectual, spiritual, and aesthetic interest of the educated. Officials and nobles were munificent patrons of
Buddhism, and the pattern of their donations sho\vs the \videspread acceptance
of all the practices developed in north and south during the preceding period: the
giving of alms to the monks and for charitable works, the giving of houses for
temples, the donation of land for the endowment of monasteries and temples, the
commissioning of greater or lesser votive images and paintings, the financing of
special services and religious lectures, the conspicuous outpourings of treasure
in the pursuit of religious merit. Withdra,val to a temple for contemplation and
discourse with a learned monk ,vas a favored "ray to use one's leisure. The prose
and the poetry of the upper class reflect this pervasive interest in Buddhism.
Approximately eight percent of the poems in the most comprehensive collection
of T'ang poetry have Buddhist references in their titles, and internal references
occur in many times that number. 35 To study and collect Buddhist books or to
32 Hsu kao-seng ehuan, eh. 21 (Taisho Vol. L), p. 61Gb-c. Gernet, p. 33 and passiln, points
out that the Vinaya rules ,,~ere favored by secular authority as a means of keeping the
numbers and activities of the Buddhist clergy 'within strict limits.
33 Takao, p. 47.
34 Ibid.
35 The percentage is based on the figure of approximately 48,000 poems in the Ck "uan
1H ang-shih and on the number of titles in the index to Buddhist-related titles in that collection compiled by Kasuga Reiichi in N ikka Bukkyo kenkyukai nernpo [Annual of the SinoJapanese Buddhist Research Society], Vol. II (I(yoto, 1937).

34

ARTHUR F. WRIGHT

become a specialist in Buddhist inscriptions-these were now scholarly avocations as respected as the study of the Chinese classics. Members of leading
families often entered the clergy, sometimes through state-sponsored examinations; the ties between the metropolitan officials and clerics were close-those of
social equals. In short Buddhism was an accepted part of the life of the elite; its
ideas pervaded their thinking and shaped their views of life and destiny.
Among the peasantry too Buddhism was everywhere accepted. Although
Taoist adepts continued to compete with Buddhists among the people as a whole
and received sporadic encouragement from the Taoist-minded emperors of the
T'ang, this is clearly the age of Buddhism as a common faith. Ennin's account of
his travels in the years 838-847 gives a vivid picture of this acceptance of Buddhism among the people. Through the vast area he covered he met pious and hospitable laymen, witnessed mass gatherings for Buddhist festivals and services,
vvatched the hosts of pilgrims on their way to the great shrines, noted the great
crowds of temple visitors in Ch'ang-an and elsewhere. 36
The clergy which served the peasants in the villages were often illiterate and
lax in their religious observances; both in numbers and in the scope of their
activities, they were often beyond the control of secular officials and of the official
Buddhist hierarchy; in the T'ang many entered the clergy through the purchase
of ordination certificates. But they brought a popular, thoroughly domesticated
Buddhism into every aspect of peasant life. They organized local associations
for pilgrimages, for the celebration of Sino-Buddhist festivals, for the building of
votive images, and for the sponsorship of charitable works: the planting of
shade trees along the pilgrimage routes, the building of hostels and bridges, etc.
Many sold their medicinal and magical skills at temple fairs, and others subsisted
on local alms. If these village clergy were a continuous source of official uneasiness,
they helped to make Buddhism an integral part of Chinese rural culture; for the
peasantry as for the gentry, Buddhism became an accepted part of individual
and group life.
Having summarized the modes of acceptance of Buddhism by the state and by
the two main classes of society, we shall turn briefly to some of the varieties of
independent growth which characterize this period. Perhaps the most striking of
these is the emergence of Chinese schools of Buddhism that bear little relation
to the sects of Indian Buddhism. Some of these are culminations of developments
",vhich reach back into the age of domestication; each represents a peculiarly
Chinese interpretation of one or more Buddhist doctrines-adapted to a particular emphasis or interest which already existed in Chinese thought. The emergence of these schools then should be regarded as a further development of the
process of domestication within our period of acceptance and independent
growth.
It should be noted first of all that certain sects and doctrines were outlawed by
the governments of reunified China as "subversive." The growth of the new
schools, then, is limited by what the resurgent and-compared to the Han-more
centralized governments of this period regarded as conducive to the strengthening
36

See Reischauer, pp. 164-216.

BUDDHISM 'AND CHINESE CULTURE

35

of state power and to the docile and submissive behavior of their subjects.
Buddhist apocalypticism, for example, was recognized by the state as likely to
provide an ideol,ogy of revolt, and even when a school was founded by a notable
cleric and taught a number of socially salutary doctrines, the element of apocalypticism could bring suppression and the proscription of its books. An example of
this is the San-chieh chiao. Its founder was an immensely popular preacher in
the early Sui, and his patron was the most powerful minister of the period. It
found a large following, but it taught that San-chieh chiao had the sole formula
of salvation, and this was regarded as socially divisive; it taught that in the age
of the apocalypse-the age of the extinction of the dharma-no government
could exist which was worthy of the respect and co-operation of devout Buddhists,
and this was regarded as utterly subversive. Hence the movement was ruthlessly
suppressed. 37 The growth we shall consider, therefore, is growth within prescribed limits and growth from thoroughly domesticated roots.
The notion that religious faith, the capacity for fervent belief and for action
based on belief, are untypical of the "rational" Chinese is one of those myths
that die hard. The fervor and cohesion of the early communities of religious
Taoism are well documented, and the life of faith was characteristic of mass
culture during the period of disunion. The Pure Land sect which was finally
organized and propagated in the T'ang had behind it centuries of Buddhist
devotional practices and centuries of efforts to build a coherent doctrine of
salvation by faith. Thousands of inscriptions attest the devotion of the Chinese
to Maitreya and Amitabha and belief in the possibility of rebirth in their paradises. Generations of monks, going back to Tao-an and Hui-yuan in the fourth
century, attempted to systematize the vision of salvation they had had. The
work of devoted and brilliant clerics of the T'ang-Tao Ch'o (d.645), Shan-tao
(d.681), and Fa-chao (active 766-805) built on these foundations of faith and
doctrine a religion that was responsive to the spiritual needs of the ordinary
Chinese. Fa-chao spread this faith from Ch'ang-an and from Wu-t'ai-shan in
Shansi, and evidence of its influence has been found at Tun-huang. 3s This
religion-a synthesis of beliefs which had been long accepted by the Chinesehad no scriptural links with primitive Buddhism; its doctrines claimed authority
from those sections of assorted Mahayana sutras which stressed faith as a means
to salvation. Forged sutras-written in Chinese for a Chinese audiencecrystallize Pure Land teaching and testify to the fact of its indigeneity, its
independent growth in China.
While a Sino-Buddhist salvationism was making its way with the people, other
schools arose with more limited ,mass appeal but with influential followers and
far-reaching effects on the development of Chinese culture. Ch'an Buddhism is
one of these, and it is another of those manifestations of independent growth in
37 The most comprehensive study of this movement is Yabuki Keiki, Sankaikyo no
Kenkyu (Tokyo, 1927). The sect later revived and had a large following in the T'ang, but
its fanaticism and exclusiveness brought on four further suppressions.
38 On Pure Land Buddhism in the mid-T'ang, see Tsukamoto Zenryu, To chuki no Jodokyo (Tokyo, 1933).

36

ARTHUR F. WRIGHT

the period \ve are considering. Again, the interest in meditation as a means to
enlightenment and the notion of the immanence of Buddha-nature go back at
least to the fourth century. So does the polarization of Ch'an Buddhism into
"subitist" and "gradualist" schools-which reflects a perennial dichotomy in
Chinese philosophy.39 The Ch'an masters of the T'ang grafted much of their
teaching on Taoist roots; they advocated quietistic withdrawal, the elimination
of dualism, and the discovery of the Buddha-nature within. In their writings the
style, the metaphors, the form of argument bear a closer relation to Chinese
philosophic traditions than to any Indian Buddhist text or school. And the
methods of imparting their doctrine-the homely analogy, the concrete metaphor,
the paradoxical question, the bibliophobic directness-all lack any Indian
prototype. Indeed, as Jacques Gernet has suggested, the notion of enlightenmentsalvation as being attainable in one lifetime or in one moment may be interpreted
as the product of the relatively mobile society of China where, unlike caste-bound
India, a man of merit could by his own efforts achieve status and recognition. 40
The Ch'an interest in natural phenomena and its glorification of intuition were
two of the fundamental ingredients of the Chinese aesthetic outlook from T'ang
times onward. Ch'an ,vas to prove the most durable and influential of the SinoBuddhist philosophies of this age of independent growth.
T'ien-t'ai Buddhism ,vas another school whose interests and emphases were
notably Chinese. Its founder \vas honored by the second Sui emperor, and its
prelates were, in the T'ang period, clerics of great influence. It commended
itself to the Sui rulers partly because it \vas gaining influence in the south where
the Sui had great difficulty in \vinning consent or support for its rule. But it had
a further and broader appeal: this was its doctrine of "levels" of Buddhist
teaching-a doctrine \vhich reconciled the various and apparently contradictory
Buddhist formulae of life and salvation \vhich had come into China. This theory
\vas responsive to a \videspread and age-old Chinese predilection for harmony
and dislike of conflict and exclusiveness. And it \vas particularly appealing to
Chinese rulers ,vho felt that only a harmonious and united society-riven neither
by inter-personal conflicts nor by sectarian divisions-could testify to the success
of their regimes. The means by which the T'ien-t'ai arrived at its reconciliation
of eonflicting doctrines seems to Ine Chinese in its appeal to historical principles of
explanation: one doctrine was true for one period and one clientele, while another
,vas suited for a second period, etc. This might be interpreted as a Chinese
historicist theory inspired by, but going far beyond, suggestions made in the
Lotus Sutra.
See Den1ieville, "La penetration du Bouddhisme," pp. 33-35.
Jacques Gernet, Entret1:ens du Maitre de Dhyana Chen-Houei de IIo-tso (IIanoi, 1949),
p. iv. rfhis applies, of course, lnore to the "subitist" school of Ch'an than to the "gradualist." At the risk of pushing an analogy too far, one might suggest that the "gradualist"
viewpoint, ,vhether in Ch'an, Confucianism, or neo-Confucianism, reflects the strong
persisting Chinese interest in heredity, status, and hierarchy which is perenially in conflict
with ideals of mobility. That the Ch'an Buddhism of the T'al1g struck contemporary
Indian Buddhists as outlandish and heterodox is attested by the eighth-century SinoIndian debates at Lhasa. See Paul Demieville, Le concile de Lhasa (Paris, 1952), pp. 34850 and passim.
39

40

BUIJDHISM AND CHINESE CULTURE

37

Other schools ,vere based on a metaphysical position or on a special emphasis

on one text or a group of texts. An analysis ,vould show that both groups developed a range of interpretations which was to a large degree independent of the
Indian texts that inspired them, as Chinese as the language in which they wrote.
The study of particular texts produced a scholasticism fundamentally little
different in temper from that which characterized Han Confucianism. It was
perhaps in the study and use of Vinaya. texts that the Chinese developed the
least independence; the failure to free themselves fronl Indian monastic rules
and to develop a code specifically adapted to China, ,vas, in Tsukamoto's view,
one of the reasons for the inflexibility and the resulting decline of the Buddhist
clergy.41 But in general Buddhism in this period responded to a variety of political, spiritual, intellectual, and aesthetic needs. How then does this period of
,videspread acceptance and independent growth come to an end?
A number of developments slowly but certainly undermined Buddhism's
dominant position. After the An Lu-shan rebellion, T'ang self-confidence and
governmental effectiveness were not fully restored. The cosmopolitanism of the
great days of T'ang slo,vly gave way, under the influence of barbarian attack and
internal decay, to a cultural defensiveness which occasionally broke out into
xenophobia. A foreign religion obviously suffered from this change. The T'ang
economic order also vveakened after An Lu-shan, and arguments as to the wastefulness of non-productive clergy, tenlple building, tax exempt temple lands, and
the like began to be given a more sympathetic hearing at court. Gernet suggests
that social change in the course of the eighth century involved a realignment of
economic and social groups, the gro,vth of a Inoney economy and a trend to\vards
more impersonal relations bet,veen employer and eJnployed, and that these
changes ,vere catastrophic for Buddhism ,vhich had adapted itself to an older
social order. 42 No doubt there lies in the social changes of this period a part of the
explanation for Buddhism's subsequent decline, but I should have to kno,v more
of the social history of the period to give these factors their proper ,veight.
Yet it is doubtful if any or indeed all of these factors ,vould by themselves have
brought the decline of Buddhism in China. The decisive factor was the revival
of the native tradition of Confucianism by an important segment of the Chinese
elite. The Sui founder regarded Confucian teachings as arid and boring; Inany
of the T'ang monarchs ,vere personally Buddhists or Taoists. yT"et fronl the time
of reunification onward the rulers adopted luore and lnore of those measures of
traditional Chinese statecraft v\Thich are usually associated '\vith Confucianism;
neither Taoism nor Buddhism had developed any such arsenal of social and
political formulae. And one of the measures \vhich ,vas taken ,vas the restoration
of the examination system for the recruitment of officials. The content of the
exalnination questions ,vas, throughout most of the T'ang, intellectually trivial,
anachronistic, and-since Confucian texts represented many stages of China's
philosophical development-remarkably heterogeneous. Yet from the beginning
of the seventh century, young men ,vere studying these texts in the hope of
41 Tsukamoto Zenryu, chapter on Chinese Buddhism in Shina shukyoshi [History of
Chinese Religions J, Vol. XI of the Shina chil'i rekishi tat/ad (Tokyo, 1942), p. 195.
42 See Gernet, Les aspects cconomiques, p. 298.

38

ARTHUR F. WRIGHT

advancement, even though their intellectual interests might be in Buddhism or

Taoism. And the people who studied and took examinations had been used by all
the rulers from Emperor Yang of the Sui onward as a useful counterweight to
the power of the old entrenched aristocratic families. This new group therefore
had access to power, and it sought ideological sanctions for the maintenance and
expansion of that power. The result of this-together with some of the factors
noted above-was the gradual effort to bring coherence and consistency into the
Confucian tradition, to make it intellectually competitive with the entrenched
foreign religion. Another imponderable factor in the revival of Confucianism is
that universal but seldom studied phenomenon: the obsolescence of ideas; ideas,
after centuries in circulation, tend to become worn out, less interesting, and men
long for something new. Perhaps this was beginning to happen to Buddhist ideas.
Han Yu's anti-Buddhist memorial of 819 contained few arguments that had
not been heard before. But the arguments were put forward with a new confidence
because there was now a growing body of people in power who shared its rationalistic and xenophobic sentiments. In his writings Han Yu put forward several of
the ideas that were later to be central in organized neo-Confucianism; he began
to glean from the Confucian tradition those ideas and formulae which answered,
on the authority of native philosophers, many of the questions which Buddhism
had raised in men's minds. The beginnings of the Confucian revival represent, in
my view, the beginning of the end of the great age of Buddhism.
The persecution of 845 brought a massive empire-wide destruction of Buddhist
establishments, the wholesale secularization of the clergy, and the loss of land,
wealth, power, and prestige. Buddhism was later allowed to revive, but it never
again was regarded as an essential adjunct of state power. The Chinese state
which had made its peace with this imperium in imperio in the age of acceptance
once again-with the help of revived Confucianism-reasserted its direct control
over all institutions, nlores, and ideas within the realm. As the educated elite
turned towards the new Confucianism, Buddhist ideas ceased to be the common
coin of intellectual life. And the power of nativist Taoism made slow but steady
inroads on the following which Buddhism had won among the masses. All these
are aspects of the transition to what I have called the age of appropriation. This
is a gradual shift, but sometime in the years between 900 and 1000 the shift to
this new and final mode of interaction between Buddhism and Chinese culture
comes about.
IV.

THE PERIOD OF ApPROPRIATION,

900

TO THE PRESENT

In calling this the period of appropriation, I mean to suggest that the dominant mode of interaction between Buddhism and Chinese culture was the
appropriation by the latter of those Buddhist elements which had, in the course
of many centuries, been adapted and accepted in China. This is not to deny the
sporadic revivals of Buddhism, e.g., that in the late tenth and early eleventh
century ,vhich was stimulated by the last Buddhist relations with India. Nor is
it to deny the limited state sponsored revivals of Buddhism in the Yuan and
early Ch'ing dynasties-revivals motivated partly by considerations of Inner

BUDDHISM AND CHINESE CULTURE

39

Asian policy and partly by the ideological requirements of alien rule. Throughout most of this period there were innumerable temples and millions of believers.
But the trend was for Buddhist ideas to be appropriated by the revived Confucian orthodoxy of the official class and for Buddhist elements at other cultural
levels to be appropriated by indigenous traditions.
One need not argue the fact that the neo-Confucian orthodoxy of the state
and upper class from the Sung onward appropriated those Buddhist ideas which
had by the tenth century become part of the intellectual heritage of educated
Chinese. I am inclined to agree with the recent opinion of G. E. Sargent that
Chu Rsi's effort was to consolidate the neo-Confucian position against that of
Buddhism by proposing substitutes for Buddhist ideas, and that neo-Confucianism constitutes less an autonomous system than a complex of responses to
Buddhist theories. 43 Yet the neo-Confucian effort to up-date the Chinese philosophic tradition, to give it, by reinterpretation and carefully disguised appropriations from Buddhism, a new coherence, consistency, and completeness, was a
considerable success. It was a success because it was the first native movement
in eight hundred years to provide a set of answers to those increasingly complex
and sophisticated questions about life, time, history, and destiny which educated
Chinese had asked themselves. Its answers were socially, politically, and morally
oriented, and, if neo-Confucianism had ended with Chu Rsi, the tradition of
Ch'an Buddhism-which Chu Rsi regarded as the most baneful of all-might
have continued to be the sole recourse of those with a mystical, individualistic,
or intuitionist bent. But another variety of neo-Confucianism, usually associated
with the name of 'Vang Yang-ming but beginning long before him, developed as
a native response to just those bents and interests which Ch'an Buddhism had
served so long. Wang was attacked by the rationalist neo-Confucians as a
Buddhist in disguise. Indeed he was, but the disguise was all-important, for in
his neo-Confucianism Buddhist ideas are appropriated, given a native sanction
and a cloak of respectability. These two major schools of neo-Confucianism,
maintained at the level of basic education and elite culture by the examination
system, effectively eliminated Buddhist ideas from the spectrum of intellectual
choice. Ch'an Buddhism, it is true, showed some continuing vitality, but it
tended more and more to service the strictly aesthetic requirements of the upper
class, and in this role it ,vas tamed and academicized; as Levenson puts it,
" ... the Ch'an intuitive nature-cult of the Ming painters ,vas not an antithesis
to Confucian humanism, but a tame, learned element in the Confucian humane
culture-not a bold challenge to didacticism, but a cultural possession of didactically educated men."44
The appropriation of Buddhism at other levels can only be suggested here.
The secret societies-organized for mutual aid and protection and often with a
political purpose-show in their doctrines and practices the almost total amalgamation of popular Taoism and Buddhism. In the countryside, Buddhism's
Galen Eugene Sargent, Tchou Hi contre le Bouddhisme (Paris, 1956), pp. 7-8.
Joseph R. Levenson, "The Amateur Ideal in Ming and Ch'ing Painting," to appear
in John K. Fairbank, ed., Thought and Institutions in China (Chicago, 1957).
43

44

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ARTHUR F. WRIGHT

ability to fuse \vith local folk cults-a valuable quality in its days of vigorslowly but surely brought its absorption into a general popular religion in which
Buddhist elements are identified with difficulty. Father Grootaers' intensive investigation of the cults of an area in Chahar showed that only 19.7 per cent of
the local cult-units were identifiably Buddhist, and a number of the deities in
these were tending to be confused with those of non-Buddhist origin. 45 Buddhist
monks down to modern times have continued to serve as local shamans and
exorcists, but with little organization and less education they have tended to
become scarcely distinguishable from the shamans of popular religion.
Even as Buddhist words and phrases have long been appropriated as part of
accepted Chinese vocabulary and its symbols for the meaningless decoration of
ordinary objects, a number of Buddhist ideas linger on as part of the prevailing
outlook on life. Karma \vith its associated belief in some sort of retribution beyond the grave is one of these. Two examples will show how, at different social
levels, this notion has been appropriated. The first is the story of a peasant family. An old lady dies, and after a time her family inquires through a medium
(not a Buddhist priest) as to her fate in the after life. She replies through the
medium that she has now expiated her evil karma and has applied to the proper
authorities for reincarnation in human form, that her papers are in order, and
that she expects an early decision. 46 In this instance a Buddhist idea has been
appropriated in such a way as to be almost unrecognizable. Popular belief in the
supreme desirability of human life on earth and the Chinese-type bureaucratization of the nether "rorld form with karma a complex that is more Chinese than
Buddhist.
At the intellectual level karma has been so appropriated that even philosophers may be unaware that it is part of their outlook. Hu Shih, in a long essay
in which he disposed of all foreign notions of immortality, reasserted what he
felt to be the proper Chinese view: "Everything that we are, everything that we
do, and everything that we say, is immortal in the sense that it has its effect
somewhere in this world, and that effect in turn will have its effects somewhere
else, and the thing goes on in infinite time and space."47 Here is an unwitting
but unmistakable restatement of the idea of karmic cause and effect!
The process of appropriation as it has proceeded down to yesterday may,
finally, be illustrated by a statement from a recent political writer. Liu Shaoch'i, in his essay on the training of a party member, paints the picture of the
ideal Communist; in doing this he draws heavily on traditional moral idioms.
At one point in the discourse he says that the true party member "grieves before
all the rest of the world grieves and is happy only after all the rest of the world
45 William A. Grootaers, "Temples and History of Wan ch'lian, Chahar," MS XIII
(1948), 314. A total of 851 temples and shrines were studied.
46 Francis L. K. Hsu, Under the Ancestors' Shadow (New York, 1948), p. 173.
47 Hu Shih, "The Conception of Immortality in Chinese Thought," The Peiping Chronicle, Feb. 12, 1947. It should be pointed out that tripartite immortality (literally "nondecay")-of virtue, service, and wise words-was specified by an official of the State of

BUDDHISM AND CHINESE CULTURE

41

is happy."48 A Confucian scholar might say that Liu was quoting the Sung
statesman Fan Chung-yen (989-1052), but what he is really re-stating as an
ideal of Communist conduct is the Bodhisattva ideal which Fan had appropriated into Confucianism 900 years ago.
The survey we have made of the four stages of Buddhism's interaction with
Chinese culture makes it possible for us to draw, however tentatively, some
general conclusions, and to point to some specific lines of further study that
would shed light on the process. A first and obvious conclusion is an underlining
of Sylvain Levi's statement with which this paper opened that an understanding
of Buddhism in Chinese history helps to explain and clarify the whole of China's
development, that without such an understanding, much remains inexplicable.
A second general conclusion is that the observation of Buddhism in interaction
with Chinese cultural elements serves to bring into bold relief those institutions,
points of view, and habits of mind which are most intractably and intransigently
Chinese. Or, to use a chemical analogy, Buddhism is a precipitant which clarifies
and brings to clearer notice, the elements of the complex amalgam that is Chinese
civilization.49 A third general conclusion relates to the old problem of China's
capacity to "absorb" foreign invaders-alien rulers and foreign cultures alike.
Recent studies have shown that "absorption" does not describe the diverse fates
of alien invaders. This paper suggests that it is equally inapplicable to the
complexity of relationships through time between Chinese civilization and the
invading Buddhist culture.
Modern scholarly knowledge of Buddhism in Chinese history is so uneven that
it would be futile to attempt to list the unexplored fields and the unsolved problems. But it is possible to specify a few studies which would, at the present stage
of knowledge, throw maximum light on the process with which this paper has
been concerned. One is the study of the history of the relationship between
Buddhism and Chinese law. Another is the history of the state policies and institutions for the control of Buddhism. A third is the history of the relation
between Buddhism and religious Taoism-admittedly an enormously difficult
undertaking even with the considerable amount of preliminary work that has
been done. A fourth is the history of Buddhism in relation to Chinese philosophy;
here the task is complicated by the Confucian apologetic bias of some of the
sources, and by the Buddhist bias of the others. A fifth is not the study of a
problem, of a facet of interaction through time, but rather the study of all asLu as early as 549 B.C. See Legge, The Chinese Classics, V, 507. But two elements in Hu
Shih's statement show the absorption of Buddhist ideas: the idea of the chain-reaction
(karma) and the un-Chinese notion of infinite time and space.
48 Liu Shao-ch'i, Lun kung-ch'ang-tang-yuan ti hsiu-yang (Hongkong ed. of 1949), pp.
30-32. Discussed by David S. Nivison in "Communist Ethics and Chinese Tradition,"
JAB, XVI (1956),60.
49 This approach has been extensively used by Nakamura Hajime in his Toyojin shiihoho [Ways of Thinking of East Asian Peoples] (Tokyo, 1948). Nakamura's methodology
was discussed at length by him and a Stanford University faculty seminar in 1951-1952.

42

.ARTHUR F. WRIGHT

pects of Buddhism in relation to the total culture of a specific period. This is a

plea to those historians ,vith particular period interests to give fuller accountsas Eberhard began to do in his sociological study of the Northern Wei-of Buddhism in the life and culture of an age.
The challenge is great, the obstacles formidable, but I hope I have been
able to suggest some of the great increment of understanding that would come
from a fuller and deeper knowledge of Buddhism in Chinese history.