Question

How did Buddhism politically influence the Tang Empire?

Answer 1

Buddhism played a dominant role in Tang dynasty China, its influence evident in poetry and art of the period. A universalistic religious philosophy that originated in India (the historical Buddha was born in c.a. 563 BCE), Buddhism first entered China in the first century CE with traders following the Silk Route. Buddhist teachings spoke to the concerns of salvation and the release from suffering and flourished during the period of political disunity in China (220-581) after the fall of the Han dynasty. Various schools of Buddhism spread after the reunification of China under the Sui (581), and Buddhist influence reached its height during the three-hundred years of Tang rule (618-907). The monk Xuanzang (Hsuan Tsang), whose travels to India to bring back Buddhist sutras, or discourses, became the basis for the popular 16th century novel, Monkey or Journey to the West, followed the Silk Route during this period (629-645). Buddhism, religious Daoism, and Confucianism all coexisted as the “three teachings” under the Tang. Compromise between the Confucian emphasis on family and filial responsibilities and the demands of Buddhist monastic life was maintained to varying degrees until 845, when the Tang emperors moved to limit the wealth and economic power of landed Buddhist monasteries. The influence of Buddhism declined in China after the Tang, and Buddhism, as Rhodes Murphey notes, “entered the stream of folk religion, especially for the non-literate, and its beliefs and practices further mixed with peasant traditions of magic, as was also the case with Daoism.”
Buddhist religious art of the Tang period is today seen in Japan, where it spread over the course of the Tang period.