History of Buddhism
How Buddhism spread across Asia
From Ashoka's India to Sri Lanka, China, Korea, Japan, Tibet and Southeast Asia.
The spread
Emperor Ashoka (third century BC) promoted the Dhamma in his inscriptions and, by tradition, sent missions to Sri Lanka. Buddhism entered China along the Silk Road by the first century AD; the translator An Shigao worked at Luoyang in the mid-second century. It reached Korea in the fourth century, Japan in the sixth (538 or 552), and Tibet from the seventh. In India itself it had largely disappeared by the thirteenth century.
The gospel in Asia
The gospel is not a Western religion. It began in Asia, and by the seventh century Church of the East missionaries had reached China, as the Xi'an Stele of 781 records. Today millions of Christians in Korea, China, Myanmar, Sri Lanka and beyond came from Buddhist families.
8But you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you. You will be witnesses to me in Jerusalem, in all Judea and Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth.”
Acts 1:8 (WEB) · context
9After these things I looked, and behold, a great multitude which no man could count, out of every nation and of all tribes, peoples, and languages, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, dressed in white robes, with palm branches in their hands. 10They cried with a loud voice, saying, “Salvation be to our God, who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb!”
Revelation 7:9-10 (WEB) · context
Sources
- Erik Zurcher, The Buddhist Conquest of China (Leiden: Brill, 1959).
- The Xi'an (Nestorian) Stele, 781 AD, Beilin Museum, Xi'an.