56 China in World History
clearest understanding yet of a number of important Buddhist schools.
Xuanzang’s pilgrimage was later immortalized in one of the master-
works of Chinese fi ction, Journey to the West (also known as Mon-
key, the title of Arthur Waley’s abridged but very effective translation).
This sixteenth-century novel combines folklore, poetry, and imagina-
tive tales in a gentle, comic satire of Chinese government, society, and
religion.Journey to the West is one of China’s most famous novels, and
the comic adventures of Xuanzang have been popularized for centuries
in innumerable operas and plays and, today, in animated cartoons and
television serials.
By the eighth century, Buddhism was well integrated into almost
every aspect of Chinese life; it had become a thoroughly Chinese reli-
gion with its own major schools, doctrines, and emphases. At Dun-
huang, where the Silk Roads began, some thirteen monasteries housed
nearly one-tenth of the entire area’s population. Starting in the North-
ern Wei and continuing through Tang times, Buddhist artisans created
the Caves of a Thousand Buddhas at Dunhuang, leaving fi ve hundred
cave temples with plastered walls fi lled with sculptures and paintings.
Among the unlettered masses, Pure Land Buddhism promised the
faithful that one sincere appeal to Amitabha Buddha (the Buddha of
Infi nite Light) would guarantee one’s eventual rebirth in the Pure Land
of the Western Paradise where Amitabha presided. The upper classes
were more drawn to the school of Tiantai Buddhism, named after the
Tiantai Mountains where its sixth-century founder, Zhiyi, lived and
wrote. With typical Chinese concern for universality and order, Zhiyi
developed a systematic theory incorporating every known school of
Buddhist doctrine and practice into one complex whole, on the grounds
that every school had a valid, if different, meaning and purpose.
The most popular Buddhist movement among the educated elite
came to be the Chan School (known in the West as Zen, after the Japa-
nese pronunciation of Chan which means meditation). Chan Buddhism
was introduced into China in the sixth century by the eccentric Indian
monk Bodhidharma (which means the teaching of enlightenment). All
people, he asserted, have the Buddha-nature within themselves, and
the only effective way to fully realize their Buddha-nature is through
meditation. The Chan school grew rapidly in China, and in many ways
it combined elements of philosophical Daoism with Buddhism. Chan
temples were usually built in beautiful mountain settings, with mag-
nifi cent gardens where the peacefulness of nature was an aid to medita-
tion. Chan masters following Bodhidharma emphasized that “the Dao
lies in chopping wood and carrying water,” meaning that the truth of