44 China in World History
rendered in Chinese as xiaoxun, or fi lial piety, making Indian morality
appear to be very Chinese and very compatible with Confucianism.
Many Chinese after the fall of the Han were in search of some alter-
native to Confucianism, and Buddhism met a number of different needs
in the traumatized society of the time. Some of the eccentric followers
of Daoism after the fall of the Han had emphasized the need for emo-
tional detachment in order to deal with the profound uncertainties of
the age. To many Chinese, Buddhism seemed to be a variation on this
Daoist theme of having few desires and fi nding contentment in small
pleasures. As some intellectuals turned against Confucian doctrines and
undertook abstract debates on the nature of being and nonbeing, they
were strongly attracted to the rich intellectual tradition of metaphysi-
cal speculation in Indian Buddhism. And some missionaries and early
Chinese Buddhist converts were very adept at presenting Buddhism in
terms familiar to Confucians and Daoists alike.
The greatest translator of Buddhist texts into Chinese was Kumara-
jiva (344–413), a half-Indian monk who lived in the oasis town of
Kucha in what is today Xinjiang Province. Kumarajiva’s Indian father
had come to Central Asia to study Buddhism, and when Kumarajiva
was seven, his mother, a native Kuchean princess, decided she wanted to
become a nun. When her husband objected, she refused to eat; after six
days he relented, and she and her son entered the Buddhist clergy. The
young Kumarajiva was brilliant at languages, and he and his mother
traveled to Kashmir, where he studied with one of the great Buddhist
teachers. Later, back in Central Asia, he studied both Theravada and
Mahayana doctrines and became convinced of the superiority of the
Mahayana teachings. When a Chinese warlord in the region captured
him and held him captive for a number of years to prevent his spreading
his doctrines more widely, he quickly became fl uent in Chinese. In 401,
a regional Chinese ruler heard of his brilliance, defeated the general who
had held Kumarajiva captive, brought him to the city of Chang’an, and
set him to work supervising as many as a thousand monks in translating
the major Buddhist scriptures into Chinese. The results were spectacu-
larly successful. From 402 until his death in 413, Kumarajiva oversaw
the accurate translation of more Buddhist scriptures into Chinese than
any other translator ever.
Buddhist followers and Buddhist institutions seemed well designed
to meet a variety of social and political needs in China. In south China,
where civil wars were frequent and banditry was widespread in the
countryside, walled Buddhist monasteries offered protection and the
promise of food and safety to otherwise destitute people. Buddhists