Buddhism reaches China

Tradition says the Han emperor Ming dreamed of a golden man, and the envoys sent west brought back from India two monks with sutras on a white horse; for them the country's first monastery was built at Luoyang. Behind the legend stands a real process: along the caravan roads from Central Asia, preachers and translators move into China. The hardest part proves to be the language — the concepts of the foreign faith are rendered with Daoist words, and for the first centuries Buddhism is taken for a variety of the native teaching of the immortals. Later it will become one of the three pillars of Chinese culture.