We examine first the organizational growth of Buddhism in China and its
social effects. Moving from outside toward the inner intellectual field, we take
up next the foreign relations of Buddhism with its rival religions. After this we
come to the inner patterns of creativity within the networks of Buddhist
philosophers, culminating in the grand visions of T’ien-t’ai and Hua-yen meta-
physics, followed by the iconoclasm of Ch’an. Finally, as the material base of
Buddhism crumbled under political attack, we arrive at the outburst of Neo-
Confucianism bound up with Buddhism’s fall and the rise of a new organiza-
tional base of intellectual life.Buddhism and the Organizational Transformation of Medieval China
Buddhism entered China in the Han dynasty and underwent tremendous
growth during the period of disunity that followed.^1 If the figures are even
approximately accurate, around 550 c.e. as much as 4 to 6 percent of the
Chinese population were practicing Buddhist monks, along with their novices
and slaves (and even more in the northern states); around 830 c.e. the figure
must have been about 2 percent, in the late Sung (ca. 1220) the numbers were
still very large, but the overall population of China had grown, so that the
Buddhist sector had declined to about 1 percent. During the T’ang, it is
estimated that the annual money expenditure of the monks for subsistence
alone was equal to one half of the state’s total revenue, and this did not include
building and investment expenditures by the Buddhists. For a time, Buddhist
organizations were bigger than the state.
As the first universalistic mass religion, Buddhism brought a huge change
in the structure of religious organization in China. Confucianism was a class-
specific cult, the privilege and badge of the Chinese gentry. It might best be
characterized as a meta-religion, an elite policy of patronizing and administer-
ing court rituals and traditional local cults; it was especially concerned to
enforce the ancestral cult within families, using governmental punishments and
rewards to ensure that the populace was continuously involved in the round
of rituals which bound them to family hierarchies, and through them to local
government (CHC, 1986: 552–553). Confucian officials deliberately regulated
traditionalism and localism for purposes of central state control. The tendency
to deify Confucius merely added one more cult observance to this predomi-
nantly particularistic structure.
Buddhism as a proselytizing religion of mass recruitment created a new
kind of organization, breaking the ties of kinship and patrimonial house-
hold. Potentially such organizations could mobilize huge numbers of people.
Whereas local cults kept the ongoing status order in place, mass religious
movements could unleash waves of emotional enthusiasm for political up-274 • (^) Intellectual Communities: Asian Paths