Around the beginning of the fifth century, Kumārajīva, who was born near the western boundary of China, became a centrally important figure in Chinese Buddhism. His translation and introduction of many Buddhist sutras and commentaries marked a great turning point. It would be no exaggeration to say that he contributed to a revolution in thought in the Chinese Buddhist world. There were two main points involved in this change.

The first has to do with the correction of a misunderstanding of the fundamental Buddhist idea of truth—emptiness or sunyata—that had existed up to that time. When Buddhist sutras and commentaries were still not well known in China, the idea of emptiness was understood through the medium of ideas that already existed in China, especially the idea of nothing drawn from the works of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu. For example, in chapter forty of the Lao-tzu we find: “All things emerged from being, and being emerged from nothing.” Early Chinese Buddhists used the “nothing” found here to interpret the Buddhist idea of emptiness. This way of understanding Buddhism according to prior Chinese thought was later criticized for being too dependent on native terminology and structures of thought.

Even before Kumārajīva’s time Sinicized Buddhism had come under criticism. But he translated and introduced many sutras and commentaries to China, especially those that centered on explanations of emptiness, thereby making more evident the prior misunderstanding. There suddenly arose movements to correct such misunderstandings and to bring Buddhist thought into conformity with what Buddhism actually was. Sengzhao (384-414) who was first among Kumārajīva’s disciples in understanding emptiness, was the leading figure in this movement. His writings were later edited as The Treatise of Zhao. By reading this book we can understand what Sinicized Buddhism was, how Sengzhao criticized it, and how with that act of criticism, he tried to clarify the true meaning of emptiness.

The second point is that once the various sutras and commentaries had been translated and introduced, there arose a demand that they be arranged and systemized—that is, that they be doctrinally interpreted. Historically speaking, the Buddhist sutras and commentaries were developed in India. If we trace them back we can sometimes come to understand their contextual relationships and historical order. But such procedures were not known in China, and those sutras that were first discovered were introduced and studied in a disorderly way. The need for doctrinal interpretation was born out of this disorder. Such interpretation involved appraising and ordering the sutras and commentaries according to the views of various Buddhist scholars.

This kind of interpretation flourished in the fifth and sixth centuries, during the period of the Northern and Southern dynasties.