ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to contextualize Hsuan-tsang's general project in order to locate with some clarity the place of the Ch'eng wei-shih lun in that project. It looks the important trajectories in Indian and Chinese Buddhism which can be seen intersecting in the Ch'eng wei-shih lun. As Buddhism trickled into China via the Central Asian trade routes and by sea, it came dressed in a variety of garbs. If there is one Dharma, why are there so many conflicting schools, texts and doctrines. This was the underlying, pressing question that all Chinese Buddhists in the sixth and seventh centuries attempted to resolve. Hsuan-tsang's project, should be seen in the light of that agenda. The first was the synthetic, syncretistic conflation of doctrine, most notably as proffered in the text Ta-ch'eng ch'i hsin lun. The second 'answer', related to the first, deploys a hierarchical Classification of doctrines that are often correlated with the presumed chronological order in which Buddha taught those doctrines.
