174 CHAPTER EIGHTTaoist sage Lao-tzu, who had gone west at one point in his career to teach the
barbarians. The Buddhists may have originally welcomed this story, for it made
their religion seem less of a foreign import. Eventually, as they began asserting
their own separate identity, they found the story more and more objection-
able, but not until the thirteenth century were· they able to establish once and
for all that it was a fabrication.
The first reference to a Buddhist monastery in China, dating from the
middle of the second century c.E., also contains the first explicit description of
one of the Buddhist rites practiced during these first centuries: the washing of
a Buddha-image, a rite that was to enjoy long-term popularity in east Asia
(see Section 8.7.2). The second century was also when the first Buddhist texts
were translated into Chinese. The Parthian monk An Shih-kao reached the
Chinese capital of Loyang in 148 and began translating a set of texts dealing
with meditation practices, such as breath awareness, and numerical lists of
Dharma topics, including the Wings to Awakening. An Shih-kao was not
himself fluent in Chinese, so a strategy was devised whereby he would recite
the text to a bilingual interpreter, who would then transmit it to a group of
Chinese, who would then discuss points of interpretation and produce a pol-
ished final copy. This was the procedure that similar teams of translators were
to follow until the seventh century. Another translator, Lokak~ema, was the
first known Mahayana missionary. Working in Loyang between 168 and 188,
he effected the first translation of a Prajfia-paramita text into Chinese and re-
cruited the first Chinese monk.
The quality of the first few generations of translations was rather poor,
partly due tothe inherent difficulty of translating into a sophisticated language
such as Chinest, whose technical terms already packed a heavy load of conno-
tations picked up from native philosophical traditions. For instance, in the
early years, nirval).a and asa1]1skrta (the Unconditioned) were rendered as wu-
wei, literally nonaction, which in Taoism referred to the effortless spontaneous
action of the Sage in harmony with the essence of nature. Tao, the Way, which
in Taoism meant the underlying essence of all things, was used to translate
bod hi, yoga, Dharma, and miirga (path). Other inaccuracies in translation were
products of simple misunderstanding: Skandha (aggregate) was rendered as
yin, the passive or receptive principle of nature; right exertion was rendered as
idea-severance, foundation of mindfulness as idea-stop. Many of these mis-
takes remained unrectified until the early fifth century. We can only conjec-
ture as to what the early Chinese Buddhists made of these texts in the
meantime.
Because no Vinaya texts were translated for well over a century, the Chi-
nese Sangha was hampered in its organization and development. Not until the
early fifth century were complete Vinaya texts made available through the ef-
forts of Tao-an and Kumarajiva in the north, and Fa-hsien, Gul).avarman, and
Sanghavarman in the south.
The Later Han regime fell apart during the latter half of the second cen-
tury and ended in 220, to be followed by a period in which three kingdoms
vied unsuccessfully to reunite the empire. During this period, Buddhism began