One of the great themes in the history of Eastern Asia is the transformation of Chinese culture by Buddhism. This process can be traced across nearly two millennia and can be seen at work in almost every aspect of Chinese life and thought. This study was undertaken with the object of showing how Buddhism has influenced Chinese culture, and in the hope that it may provide some insight into the role of the religion as a carrier of elements from one great civilization into another. It also deals with the interesting question of the nature of Buddhism as a world religion, and of the ways in which it resembles or differs from the other great faiths.

Born in Hungary, trained in Chinese studies in Germany, Etienne Balazs was, until his sudden and premature death in 1963, a professor at the Sorbonne and an intellectual leader among European specialists on China. In this book, a selection of Dr. Balazs' essays are presented for the first time in English. Arthur F. Wright, professor of history at Yale, and John K. Fairbank, professor of history at Harvard, have written a joint Preface and Mr. Wright has written an Introduction. Scholars and interested laymen will find a rich feast here in essays ranging over two thousand years of China's social, economic, political, and intellectual history. A wealth of data supports the various theories Dr. Balazs develops, in a graceful translation by Hope N. Wright. Because Etienne Balazs regarded the Chinese past not as a curiosity but as a repository of relevant human experience, his essays are significant for anyone interested in the past and future of civilization. "If a reader should disagree with some of the brilliant points, he would still find them challenging and refreshing."-Journal of Asian Studies.