First imported from India and Central Asia around the first century CE, Buddhism in China is an evolving hybrid of Chinese and foreign elements. As a social organization with significant implications for the proper ordering of the world, Buddhism has had a long, complicated relationship with the Chinese state, both the imperial dynastic system and the modern Republican and Communist states that began in the twentieth century. Buddhist conceptions of rebirth and salvation, mythologies of buddhas, bodhisattvas, and other figures as well as Buddhist art and temple life have attracted people from all social classes. Philosophers have wrestled with Buddhist understandings of emptiness, enlightenment, and sagehood. Buddhist rituals, formed partly in relation to Daoist traditions, are diffused throughout much of Chinese popular religion. Even during those eras when the institutional presence of Buddhism in the form of temples, monks, and nuns has been small...