Buddhism found its way from India into China in the first century AD by taking the Silk Road. At first, it was taken as a sort of witchcraft. Despite that, the religion was able to steadily build up its influence in the country with support of the Han Dynasty rulers. It boomed in a historic period spanning from the fifth century to the sixth, a period when the country was tom apart by incessant wars and social upheavals.

    That period, known to historians as "period of the North and South Dynasties" (420-589), saw Buddhist temples spring up everywhere and Buddhist monks and nuns grow rapidly in numbers. According to historic records, the Liang, one of dynasties that ruled areas south of the Yangtze River, had 2,800 Buddhist temples and more than 50,000 monks and nuns. The Wei, one of the North Dynasties, had 30,000 temples and the number of monks and nuns exceeded two million.

Buddhism enjoyed an even greater boom in the Tang Dynasty when full religious freedom was guaranteed. Under imperial decrees, translation of Buddhist texts became institutionalized, done at

government-sponsored centers by Chinese and foreign monks who doubled as experts in Buddhism.

    Buddhism was able to exert a profound influence on every aspect of social life in feudal China but never was it able to become the state religion. In fact none of the religions was. This is because Confucianism,as a complete system of philosophy and norms for social conduct, had already established itself as the dominating ideology. Meanwhile, ancient China was tolerant to all religious beliefs, irrespective of their origins, indigenous or alien, and people were quite indifferent toward

the differences in doctrines of different religions. A person could be a believer of both Taoism and Buddhism while a faithful follower of Confucian teachings. In the course of its dissemination in China, Buddhism, constantly influenced by Confucianism, became a part of the Chinese culture, or Buddhism with Chinese characteristics. And so did Buddhist buildings, which came to assume the most striking characteristics of traditional Chinese architectural style.