Chinese Buddhism across History

From medieval China to the early twentieth century, this book unpacks the complex relationship between Buddhism and Chinese culture.

Guo Wu situates Chinese Mahayana Buddhism within a broader transregional context, highlights the deep Iranian influences and analyzes the integration of Buddhism with local deities in South and Southeast Asia. Building on this perspective, the book presents five case studies that illustrate diverse modes of Buddhist assimilation into Chinese cultural life. These include: the transmission of Indian Buddhist animal narratives into China; the empirical and scholarly practices of Chinese monks in documenting the peoples and flora of Central Asia; the formation of early medieval Chinese Buddhist historiography; debates over Buddhist precepts and attitudes toward animals in late imperial Chinese secular society; and the efforts of modern reformist monks to address the civilizational crisis of the early twentieth-century.

This book reimagines Chinese Buddhism by challenging common perceptions and presenting it as a fluid, adaptive, and contextually embedded tradition. Wu argues for a decolonized and global approach to Chinese Mahayana Buddhism—one that recognizes all Buddhist traditions as historically contingent reinventions shaped by local conditions.