Buddhism reaches China
A foreign religion arrives by trade route and takes three centuries to be accepted.
- When
- —
- Duration
- 433 years
- Known to
- ± 50 years
- Era
- Classical, Holocene
Buddhism enters China along the Silk Road in the first century CE, traditionally dated to a dream of Emperor Ming in 67. It sits awkwardly with Confucian family obligation — monks do not marry or serve their parents — and translation is a serious problem, initially solved by borrowing Daoist vocabulary. It grows rapidly during the disorder after the Han fall, and eventually becomes one of the three teachings alongside Confucianism and Daoism.