SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Buddhism brought to China from India not only its conception of its own identity as a religious message superior to all others but also a conception of the place of other forms of religion in relation to that message. This type of analysis had not existed in China before, though there were Chinese ways of relating different traditions of thought to each other that Buddhists did adapt to their own purposes. Whatever language was used, however, the development of Buddhist conceptions of religion within the Chinese context was chiefly determined by the polemical context within which Buddhists operated.