ABSTRACT

The narratives of Indian Buddhist scholars/monks, who went to China to teach and preach are both fascinating as well as praiseworthy. The story of Buddhism in China has to be told in a nutshell. The conquest of Buddhism in China was a very ‘different’ kind of conquest. It was a conquest without any arms, without any force, without any coercion, so to speak. When Buddhism started striking roots in China, it was not a simple transplantation of the Mahayana bodhi tree. Initially, the Chinese adopted Buddha as a human being, who had attained sagehood though Indian Buddhists told them that he had attained divinity. Buddhism was India’s greatest soft power, which conquered almost the entire Asia. The introduction as well as the spread of Buddhism in China was very spontaneous and without much schema. China never felt that she was being ‘invaded’ ideologically by India.