Buddhism was first introduced into China during the first century CE, during the Han Dynasty. At the time of its introduction, it would have had influence only as the practising faith of a small community of foreign traders. As Confucianism was the dominant ideology during the Han period, Buddhism did not have much influence on the lives of the majority people in China, nor was it given serious consideration by Chinese scholars and officials. However, the period during the third and fourth centuries CE, when China was once again divided by ethnic and territorial wars and Confucianism lost its footing as the state-sponsored ideology, was also a time when Buddhist religious and philosophical notions were considered, in the first instance by non-Han Chinese tribes. The tenets of Buddhist thought underwent intensive scrutiny and those who sought to promote this ‘foreign’ ideology primarily articulated its ideas in terms of existing concepts in Chinese philosophies, especially those of religious Daoism. It was not until the sixth century that doctrinal differences in strands of Chinese Buddhism began to take shape, establishing Chinese Buddhist doctrine as both separate from Indian Buddhism, and distinct from Confucianism and Daoism.

Given this long period of development of Chinese Buddhism and its eventual division and definition into different strands, the discussion in this chapter will be necessarily brief and to some extent disjointed.