标签：rfs dram cas within events begin one pid equal
By far the most important gift that China received from India was neither cotton, nor sugar, nor the knowledge of saltpeter, but a religion, Buddhism. The gradual assimilation(同化) of this South Asian religious tradition into Chinese culture illustrates the process of cultural encounter and adaptation and invites comparison with the spread of Christianity into Europe. Until the adoption of Marxism in the twentieth century, Buddhism was the only large-scale cultural borrowing in Chinese history. It also made China into a launching pad for Buddhism’s dispersion to Korea and from there to Japan as well. Thus, as Buddhism faded in the land of its birth, it became solidly rooted in much of East Asia, providing an element of cultural commonality for a vast region (see Map 8.5).
Buddhism initially entered China via the Silk Road trading network during the first and second centuries c.e. The stability and prosperity of the Han dynasty, then at its height, ensured that the new “barbarian” religion held little appeal for native Chinese. Furthermore, the Indian culture from which Buddhism sprang was at odds with Chinese understandings of the world in many ways. Buddhism’s commitment to a secluded(隐居的) and monastic(寺院的) life for monks and nuns seemed to dishonor Chinese family values, and its concern for individual salvation(救赎) or enlightenment appeared selfish, contradicting the social orientation of Confucian thinking. Its abstract philosophy ran counter to the more concrete, “this-worldly”(世俗的) concerns of Chinese thinkers; and the Buddhist concept of infnite eons of time, endlessly repeating themselves, was quite a stretch for the Chinese, who normally thought in terms of finite family generations or dynastic cycles. No wonder that for the first several centuries c.e., Buddhism was largely the preserve of foreign merchants and monks living in China. (佛教中不断重复的“永恒的时间”的概念，对中国人来说是一种延伸，他们通常以有限的家族世代或王朝周期来考虑问题。难怪在公元前的头几个世纪里，佛教仅是生活在中国的外国商人和僧侣的领地。)
Map 8.5 The World of Asian Buddhism Born in India, Buddhism later spread widely throughout much of Asia to provide a measure of cultural or religious commonality across this vast region.
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In the half millennium between roughly 300 and 800 c.e., however, Buddhism took solid root in China within both elite and popular culture, becoming a permanent, though fuctuating, presence in Chinese life. How did this remarkable transformation unfold? It began, arguably, with the collapse of the Han dynasty around 200 c.e. The chaotic, violent, and politically fragmented centuries that followed seriously discredited Confucianism and opened the door to alternative understandings of the world. Nomadic rulers, now governing much of northern China, found Buddhism useful in part because it was foreign. “We were born out of the marches,” declared one of them, “and though we are unworthy, we have complied with our appointed destiny and govern the Chinese as their prince. . . . Buddha being a barbarian god is the very one we should worship.”37 Rulers and elite families provided patronage for Buddhist monasteries, temples, and works of art. In southern China, where many northern aristocrats had fed following the disastrous decline of the Han dynasty, Buddhism provided some comfort in the face of a collapsing society. Its emphasis on ritual, morality, and contemplation represented an intellectually and esthetically satisfying response to times that were so clearly out of joint.
Meanwhile, Buddhist monasteries increasingly provided an array of social services for ordinary people. In them, travelers found accommodation; those feeing from China’s many upheavals discovered a place of refuge; desperate people received charity; farmers borrowed seed for the next planting; the sick were treated; children learned to read. And for many, Buddhism was associated with access to magical powers as reports of miracles abounded. Battles were won, rain descended on drought-ridden areas, diseases were cured, and guilt was relieved — all through the magical ministrations of charismatic monks.
Accompanying all of this was a serious efort by monks, scholars, and translators to present this Indian religion in terms that Chinese could more readily grasp. Thus the Buddhist term dharma, referring to the Buddha’s teaching, was translated as dao, or “the way,” a notion long familiar in both Daoist and Confucian thinking (see Chapter 4). The Buddhist notion of “morality” was translated with the Confucian term that referred to “flial submission and obedience.” Some Indian concepts were modifed in the process of translation. For example, the idea that “husband supports wife,” which refected a considerable respect for women and mothers in early Indian Buddhism, became in translation “husband controls wife.”
As Buddhism took hold in China, it was primarily in its broader Mahayana form — complete with numerous deities, the veneration of relics, many heavens and hells, and bodhisattvas to aid the believer — rather than the more psychological and individualistic Theravada Buddhism (see Chapter 4). One of the most popular forms of Buddhism in China was the Pure Land School, in which faithfully repeating the name of an earlier Buddha, the Amitabha, was sufcient to ensure rebirth in a beautifully described heavenly realm, the Pure Land. In its emphasis on salvation by faith, without arduous study or intensive meditation, Pure Land Buddhism became a highly popular and authentically Chinese version of the Indian faith.
China’s reunifcation under the Sui and early Tang dynasties witnessed growing state support for Buddhism. The Sui emperor Wendi (ruled 581–604 c.e.) had monasteries constructed at the base of China’s fve sacred mountains, further identifying the imported religion with traditional Chinese culture. He even used Buddhism to justify his military campaigns. “With a hundred victories in a hundred battles,” he declared, “we promote the practice of the ten Buddhist virtues.”39 With state support and growing popular acceptance, monasteries became centers of great wealth, largely exempt from taxation, owning large estates; running businesses such as oil presses, water mills, and pawn shops; collecting gems, gold, and lavish works of art; and even employing slaves. But Buddhism, while solidly entrenched in Chinese life by the early Tang dynasty, never achieved the independence from state authorities that the Christian church acquired in Europe. The examinations for becoming a monk were supervised by the state, and education in the monasteries included the required study of the Confucian classics. In the mid-ninth century, the state showed quite dramatically just how much control it could exercise over the Buddhist establishment.
The impressive growth of Chinese Buddhism was accompanied by a persistent undercurrent of resistance and criticism. Some saw the Buddhist establishment, at least potentially, as a “state within a state” and a challenge to imperial authority. More important was a deepening resentment of its enormous wealth. One ffth-century critic, referring to monks, put the issue squarely: “Why is it that their ideals are noble and far-reaching and their activities still are base and common? [They] become merchants and engage in barter, wrangling with the masses for proft.”40 When state treasuries were short of funds, government ofcials cast a covetous eye on wealthy and tax-exempt monasteries. Furthermore, Buddhism was clearly of foreign origin and ofensive for that reason to some Confucian and Daoist thinkers. The celibacy of the monks and their withdrawal from society, the critics argued, undermined the Confucian-based family system of Chinese tradition.
Such criticisms took on new meaning in the changed environment of China af ter about 800 c.e. Following centuries of considerable foreign infuence in China, a growing resentment against foreign culture, particularly among the literate classes, increasingly took hold. The turning point may well have been the An Lushan rebellion (755– 763), in which a general of foreign origin led a major revolt against the Tang dynasty. Whatever its origin, an increasingly xenophobic reaction set in among the upper classes, refected in a desire to return to an imagined “purity” of earlier times.41 In this setting, the old criticisms of Buddhism became more sharply focused. In 819, Han Yu, a leading fgure in the Confucian counterattack on Buddhism, wrote a scathing memorial to the emperor, criticizing his willingness to honor a relic of the Buddha’s fnger.
Now the Buddha was of barbarian origin. His language difered from Chinese speech; his clothes were of a diferent cut; his mouth did not pronounce the prescribed words of the Former Kings. . . . He did not recognize the relationship between prince and subject, nor the sentiments of father and son. . . . I pray that Your Majesty will turn this bone over to the ofcials that it may be cast into water or fire.
Several decades later, the Chinese state took direct action against the Buddhist establishment as well as against other foreign religions. A series of imperial decrees between 841 and 845 ordered some 260,000 monks and nuns to return to normal life as tax-paying citizens. Thousands of monasteries, temples, and shrines were either destroyed or turned to public use, while the state confscated the lands, money, metals, and serfs belonging to monasteries. Buddhists were now forbidden to use gold, silver, copper, iron, and gems in constructing their images. These actions dealt a serious blow to Chinese Buddhism. Its scholars and monks were scattered, its creativity diminished, and its institutions came even more frmly under state control.
Despite this persecution, Buddhism did not vanish from China. At the level of elite culture, its philosophical ideas played a role in the reformulation of Confucian thinking that took place during the Song dynasty. At the village level, Buddhism became one element of Chinese popular religion, which also included the veneration of ancestors, the honoring of Confucius, and Daoist shrines and rituals. Temples frequently included statues of Confucius, Laozi, and the Buddha, with little sense of any incompatibility among them. “Every black-haired son of Han,” the Chinese have long said, “wears a Confucian thinking cap, a Daoist robe, and Buddhist sandals.” (See photo, p. 164.) Unlike Europe, where an immigrant religion triumphed over and excluded all other faiths, Buddhism in China became assimilated into Chinese culture alongside its other traditions.
The rapidity of change in modern societies is among the most distinctive features of recent history, but change and transformation, though at various rates, have been constants in the human story since the very beginning. Explaining how and why human societies change is perhaps the central issue that historians confront, no matter which societies or periods of time they study. Those who specialize in the history of some particular culture or civilization often emphasize sources of change operating within those societies, although there is intense disagreement as to which are most signifcant. The ideas of great thinkers, the policies of leaders, struggles for power, the confict of classes, the invention of new technologies, the growth or decline in population, variations in local climate or weather — all of these and more have their advocates as the primary motor of historical transformation.
Of course, it is not necessary to choose among them. The history of China illustrates the range of internal factors that have driven change in that civilization. The political conficts of the “era of warring states” provided the setting and the motivation for the emergence of Confucianism and Daoism, which in turn have certainly shaped the character and texture of Chinese civilization over many centuries. The personal qualities and brutal policies of Shihuangdi surely played a role in China’s unifcation and in the brief duration of the Qin dynasty. The subsequent creation of a widespread network of canals and waterways as well as the country’s technological achievements served to maintain that unity over very long periods of time. But the massive inequalities of Chinese society generated the peasant upheavals, which periodically shattered that unity and led to new ruling dynasties. Sometimes natural events, such as droughts and foods, triggered those rebellions.
World historians, more than those who study particular civilizations or nations, have been inclined to fnd the primary source of change in contact with strangers, in external connections and interactions, whether direct or indirect. The history of China and East Asia provide plenty of examples for this point of view as well. Conceptions of China as the “middle kingdom,” infnitely superior to all surrounding societies, grew out of centuries of involvement with its neighbors. Some of those neighbors became Chinese as China’s imperial reach grew, especially to the south. Even those that did not, such as Korea, Vietnam, and Japan, were decisively transformed by proximity to the “radiating civilization” of China. China’s own cuisine, so distinctive in recent centuries, may well be a quite recent invention, drawing heavily on Indian and Southeast Asian cooking. Buddhism, of course, is an obvious borrowing from abroad, although its incorporation into Chinese civilization and its ups and downs within China owed much to internal cultural and political realities.
In the end, clear distinctions between internal and external sources of change in China’s history — or that of any other society — are perhaps misleading. The boundary between “inside” and “outside” is itself a constantly changing line. Should the borderlands of northern China, where Chinese and Turkic peoples met and mingled, be regarded as internal or external to China itself ? And, as the histories of Chinese Buddhism and of Japanese culture so clearly indicate, what comes from beyond is always transformed by what it encounters within.
Between roughly 300 and 800 c.e., however, Buddhism took solid root in China within both elite and popular culture.This transformation unfold with the collapse of the Han dynasty around 200 c.e. The chaotic centuries that followed seriously discredited Confucianism and opened the door to alternative understandings of the world. Nomadic rulers, governing much of northern China, found Buddhism useful because it was foreign. In southern China, Buddhism also provided some comfort in the face of a collapsing Han dynasty.
Later on, China’s reunifcation under the Sui and early Tang dynasties witnessed growing state support for Buddhism. The Sui emperor had monasteries constructed, further identifying the imported religion with traditional Chinese culture.
Then, Buddhism, solidly entrenched in Chinese life by the early Tang dynasty.
The conflict between Buddhism and Confucianism became mitigatory in Song dynasty: at the level of elite culture, Buddhism played a role in the reformulation of Confucian thinking that took place. At the village level, Buddhism became one element of Chinese popular religion, which also included the veneration of ancestors, the honoring of Confucius, and Daoist shrines and rituals. Several factors caused this transformation: In terms of the theoretical system, Confucianism absorbed the thoughts of Buddhism to enrich its theory, and Buddhism also absorbed the thoughts of Confucianism to complete the process of assimilation, so as to adapt to the feudal patriarchal hierarchy at that time in China. In general, the ideas of great thinkers, the policies of leaders, struggles for power, the confict of classes — all of these and more can be the reasons of this religious transformation.
History 4 : China and Buddhism
标签：rfs dram cas within events begin one pid equal
原文地址：https://www.cnblogs.com/JasperZhao/p/13326245.html
