Buddhist literature in Chinese history—Editors’ introduction

Beginning in northern India in the fifth century BCE and gradually making its way to China through the Silk Roads via Central Asia in the first century CE, Buddhism had a wide-ranging and significant impact on the advancement of Chinese culture. So much so that during the first half of the twentieth century, Hu Shi 胡適 (1891–1962), arguably the most illustrious scholar in modern China, coined the term “Indianization” to describe Buddhism’s profound influence in shaping the culture of China over the previous two millennia. “Indeed, nowhere in the world,” Hu proclaimed, “with the only possible exception of the Christianization of Europe, can one find another source of historical materials equal in extent and in length of time.” Moreover, according to him, the extent to which Buddhism influenced Chinese culture extended beyond the religious realm. Indeed, “It [Buddhism] continued to Indianize China long after it had ceased to be a vital and powerful religion in China,” Hu emphasized. In other words, Buddhism eventually evolved into a complex historical force that influenced the development of Chinese culture, despite initially drawing many Chinese as a novel religious belief. The Indianization of China, if we want to borrow Hu Shi’s wisdom again, went through four phases: mass borrowing, resistance and persecution, domestication, and appropriation. There is not enough room here to go into the specifics of Hu’s four phases of analysis. Suffice it to say that Buddhism had a wide-ranging impact because its teachings were infused with Chinese native philosophical, literary, and religious traditions, resulting in a localization of Buddhism that transformed it from its Indian roots into a native Chinese faith. When foreign Buddhist missionaries from India and Central Asia arrived in China in the mid-second century CE and began translating Buddhist scriptures into Chinese, the development of Chinese Buddhist literature began. Initially, the Chinese had little understanding of Buddhism, and its religious icon and practice were frequently mixed with Daoist or other indigenous religious practices. After the fourth and fifth centuries, Buddhist monks, such as Kum arajīva (fl. 385–409 CE), who had more advanced knowledge of Buddhist teachings and Indic languages, produced more accurate and elegant translations, replacing the previous ones, and had a profound impact on both the content and form of Chinese literature. In addition to translation, Chinese monks wrote their own treatises on philosophical problems, commentaries on translated scriptures, historiography and hagiography, poetry, and popular narrative. Some of these writings were intentionally or mistakenly attributed to Indian authors and labeled by Buddhist scholars as “scriptures of doubtful authenticity” (疑經 yijing) or “spurious scriptures” (偽經 weijing). The existence of and debates over apocrypha inspired Chinese monks to embark on a perilous journey to India in search of “true” scriptures and bring back updated Buddhist teachings. The most famous was Tang dynasty monk Xuanzang (602–664 CE), who spent 17 years in India before returning to the capital Chang’an in 645 CE and establishing a large translation bureau to translate some of the Sanskrit texts he brought back from India. The travelogue The Great Tang Records on the Western Regions (大唐西域記 Da Tang xiyu ji) chronicled Xuanzang’s pilgrimage along the Silk Roads, and the stories and legends associated with his journey inspired Ming Dynasty novelist Wu Cheng’en’s (c. 1500–1582) Journey to the West (西遊記 Xi you ji), one of the four most famous traditional Chinese novels.