This course provides an introduction to the study of the history, major teachings, and practices of the major Chinese religions and spiritual practices and is deigned to give conceptual tools to appreciate diverse religious practice in East. It covers the development of Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism and wide range of popular and local religions. From historical perspective we will also explore the development of key theological, religious and philosophical doctrines as well as associated practices. An effort will be made to spend time on each tradition according to its importance to Asia as a whole. We will explore the role of religions in politics and social relations in East and South, South East Asia and China in particular, and will analyze the origins, central teachings, divisions and branches, rituals and practices, influences on culture, and responses to modern challenges for each tradition. The emphasis throughout the course is on the hermeneutic difficulties attendant upon the study of religion in general, and Asian religions in particular. We will explore new Asian religions as dynamic, ongoing forces in the lives of individuals and in the collective experience of modern societies.
Transition to China: Ways and Problems
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En provenance du cours de National Research University Higher School of Economics
Religions and Society in China
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À partir de la leçon
Buddhism in the Chinese Tradition
This module's content describes the basic notions of Buddhism and explains its principles. The module gives an outline of the process of Buddhism's transition to China.
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Aleksey A. MaslovHead
School of Asian Studies
And right now we'll speak about the first missionaries
and first translators of Buddhist text.
It will be the first stage of the development of Buddhism in China.
First of all, let's remind,
let me remind you about the way how Buddhism arrived into China.
Actually, in reality existed three different ways, in these three different traditions.
The first one, its way through Xinjiang, so it means the western part of China.
It's a, it was a part of Silk Road from Central Asia.
So it means that not Indians but, first of all, Parthians arrived to China
and brought a very specific Buddhist tradition from the Silk Road.
It was a mix of Buddhist and local traditions sometimes called Greek Buddhism.
So, we can find some in remains of early Christian tradition
that were incorporated into Buddhism.
Another way was called the Southern way, through Yunnan,Guizhou, Sichuan provinces
which called usually the Tea Road or Chama dao.
It was the second stage of the development
that established a little bit later, usually after the third century.
Finally, we can find a new way that were discouraged in the fourth and fifth centuries,
the way through Guangdong , the most southern part of China.
It means that several Indian, Indian travelers arrived by sea to Guangdong
and to the port that we, that they call Hong Kong.
And from Hong Kong, from Guangdong, they arrived to China.
Speaking about three weeks to China,
it means that at least three groups of teachers arrive to China.
For example, Guangdui was a way of Lankavatra tradition.
The Lankavatra tradition finally developed into to the Chan Buddhism
or meditation Buddhism.
The way from Central Asia from Saigon developed mainly to these are called the Lui Zun,
the school of regulations or the school of all, so it means different teachers,
different traditions, and first of all different texts.
What was the main idea and one of the main problem of China for Buddhism?
The main problem was what text, what kind of text,
what kind of canon should be considered as most important?
Each teacher brought his own text.
Not all batch of Buddhist texts.
So, and all these teachers promoted their texts,
some sutras as a main most important text.
So, it means that different schools was laid on different text tradition as consequences,
different ways, different approach over the Buddhist practices.
So, it means different school Buddhist was, at one instant, established in China.
That was the first problem so Buddhist was much scattered in China by the idea,
by the teachers.
There were a lot of contradictions about where Buddhism put the first words in China.
Let's speak about the legend first.
Legend told that one day it was in the first century.
Two monks from India decided to visit Luoyang, that time a capital of China.
They put the sutras, Buddhist text, on the two horses and moved toward Luoyang.
Suddenly, it was just 17 miles away from Luoyang.
These two horses just stopped because they were too tired.
So these two Indian monks they said that they should,
I wait for a moment to get relaxed and to get, to give a rest to these horses.
But, suddenly they recognized that horses were much wiser than monks and it was a sign.
And these two monks decided to establish in this place a new monastery.
It was the first monastery in the history of humankind.
And this one event today is called Monastery White Horse, white horses.
You can see even the figure of one of these horse just on the main doors of the monastery.
That time, this kind of monastery that you can see on this picture, didn't exist.
That time it was just a wooden,
wooden houses, very small and I told that it was the first monastery.
Because in India people that time didn't live in the monasteries, in the temples.
They used, Buddhist communities lived in the forest
because the climate in India is much better than the climate of China.
When we speak about this religion in Henan Province in which this monastery is located.
A lot of snow by the winter.
Is very hot by the summer time so you should have some shelter.
That's why monasteries, very compact shelters.
For Buddhist, where for a first time in the human kind, raised in China.
And, usually the first monasteries reproduced the Taoist monasteries
and Confucius temples.
So, for the first time, it cannot distinguish between a Taoist or Buddhist temple.
That the first monastery in China.
So it's just a legend,
the legend about the exceptional Buddhist in the first century in China.
But there are a lot of other, other legends and other stories.
One of the stories speak about, it's called the golden figure.
Golden figure, it's very widespread,
the story that day one of the Chinese emperor drew his dream so very strange golden figure
or golden statue.
He could not understand what this mean.
And finally he had a sign that this figure, this golden figure,
came from some part of Central Asia.
So, he decided to send one of his official to bring this figure
or just to understand what has happened.
This official visited several places in Central Asia
and discovered a lot of standards of Buddhism.
So, it was the first official who brought back Buddhists statues and Buddhists images
or images of Buddha to the Imperial Court.
So, it was one of the, one of the legends, how this Buddhism was introduced by, to China.
So, the first legend that we spoke about, the legend about two white horses,
it was the legend about that it was an Indian's dream to Indian monks came to China.
Right now, about this story about the golden figure,
speaks about that it was a Buddhist from Central Asia that came to China.
Anyway, we think that in reality it was a combination of different factors
and diverse streams that existed in China.
So, it's very hard to say what, what legend, what,
what kind of idea, what kind of story was true and which was a fake.
I think it was a real combination different streams and different teachers.
One of the problem that a Chinese faced on it
was the problem of the translation of the texts.
We know that the, the body of Buddhist texts were written in Sanskrit or in Pali,
which is even earlier than Sanskrit text.
But how to translate?
One of the idea was that we should translate a character by character
and just to find in Chinese language the notions or the meanings
that it was decoded to Sanskrit means.
But, let's think about it.
How can you translate karma?
Today we translate it as fa law but a law in Chinese
and karma in Sanskrit had different meanings.
How could you translate Buddha?
Just to translate this word in Chinese is translated.
Is it for?
And the name of Buddha is translated as Shakyamuni, just a translated ration of his name.
So it means that even today, a lot of experts, a lot of scholars,
argue that all the initial meanings were just lost due to this translation.
Of the pictures you can see the same text.
It's called the Heart Sutra.
Xinjing, in Chinese.
The first picture, it's a picture in Sanskrit.
The second one, in Chinese.
Actually the text is the same but if we compare
the translation, for example, to plain English,
we can find that the real meanings is completely different.
It means that we can say that some very important meaning was lost in translation.
And a lot of text were abridged, a lot of text were translated in the wrong way,
and a lot of text was just interpreted, not translated.
Not translated in a literal way so it means word by word.
And that's was one of the reason why Indian Buddhism
and Chinese Buddhism was interpreted in the different way
because at that time not any bridge existed between Indian meanings
and Chinese meanings or meanings from Central Asia and meanings in Chinese language.
So, the problem of translation between one of the most important problem
during the first stage of Buddhism
and the idea was how to find a right meaning, a right way,
right ideas to bring Indians or Buddhists or real Buddhist genius meanings
to Chinese life if not Chinese language.
So, and we will speak later how translators,
how interpreters decided to resolve this problem.
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