Abstract
Historical China represents a cultural, and, most of the time as well, a political unity. But the country was not completely ignorant of, or entirely untouched by, outside influences. There had always been contact with Central Asia and with India, the centre of another great civilisation. And this happened especially through the spread of the Buddhist religion. But India, in contrast to China, had been more often politically fragmented than unified. For this reason India never posed a real threat to China and her sense of self-importance.
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Notes
Edward Conze, Buddhism: Its Essence and Development, 3rd edition (Oxford: Bruno Cassirer, 1957);
Richard H. Robinson, The Buddhist Religion (Belmont, Calif.: Dickenson, 1970), chs 1–2;
E. Zürcher, Buddhism: Its Origin and Spread in Words, Maps and Pictures (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1962), chs 1–3.
Donald Swearer, Buddhism (Niles, I11.: Argus Communications, 1977), Parts I–II.
Alfred North Whitehead, Religion in the Making (New York: New American Library, 1960), p. 50.
See Donald S. Lopez Jr. and Steven C. Rockefeller, eds, The Christ and the Bodhisattva (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1987).
Arthur F. Wright, Buddhism in Chinese History (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1959).
E. Ziircher, The Buddhist Conquest of China: The Spread and Adaptation of Buddhism in Early Medieval China (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1959).
For more information, consult Kōgen Mizuno, Buddhist Sutras: Origins, Development, Transmission (Tokyo: Kosei, 1982).
As this is an edition by scholars and for scholars, the collection includes numerous commentaries, and even non-Buddhist texts mistaken to be Buddhist, such as texts of Manichaean or Nestorian origin. Consult Kenneth Ch’en, Buddhism in China: A Historical Survey (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1964), ch. 13.
Zenryū Tsukamoto, A History of Early Chinese Buddhism: From Its Introduction to the Death of Hui-yüan, trans, from Japanese by Leon Hurvitz (Tokyo: Kodansha International, 1979), vol. 1, pp. 78–112.
James Legge, A Record of Buddhistic Kingdoms: Being an Account by the Chinese Monk Fa-hien of His Travels in India and Ceylon (A.D. 319–414) in Search of the Buddhist Books of Discipline (Oxford, Clarendon, 1886 edn, New York, Paragon reprint, 1965).
This includes his biography in Chinese. Consult also Latika Lahiri, Chinese Monks in India (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1986).
Hans Klimkeit, ‘Christian-Buddhist Encounter in Medieval Central Asia’, in G. W. Houston, ed., The Cross and the Lotus: Christianity and Buddhism in Dialogue (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1985), pp. 9–24.
See Anthony Yu’s translation, The Journey to the West (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1977–83), 4 vols.
Consult W. Liebenthal, trans., Chao hum The Treatises of Seng Chao (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2nd rev. edn, 1968);
Richard H. Robinson, Early Madhyamika in India and China (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1976).
For more information on Buddhism in recent times, see Holmes Welch, The Practice of Chinese Buddhism, 1900–1950 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1985).
Kenneth Ch’en, op. cit., pp. 309–11; David W. Chappell, ed., T’ien-t’ai Buddhism: An Outline of the Fourfold Teachings (Tokyo: Daiichi Shobo, 1983).
See Garma C. C. Chang, The Buddhist Teaching of Totality: The Philosophy of Hwa Yen Buddhism (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1971), p. 24.
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© 1993 Julia Ching
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Ching, J. (1993). Scripture and Hermeneutics: Buddhism’s Entry to China. In: Chinese Religions. Themes in Comparative Religion. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-22904-8_8
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