East Asian Buddhism

[7][8] The spread of Buddhism to East Asia was aided by the trade networks of the Silk Road and the missionary work of generations of Indian and Asian Buddhists.

[9] These schools developed new, uniquely East Asian interpretations of Buddhist texts and focused on the study of Mahayana sutras.

[10] The texts of the Chinese Buddhist Canon began to be translated in the second century and the collection continued to evolve over a period of a thousand years with the first woodblock printed edition being published in 983.

[13] One major exception is some schools of Japanese Buddhism where Buddhist clergy sometimes marry, without following the traditional monastic code or Vinaya.

This developed during the Meiji Restoration, when a nationwide campaign against Buddhism forced certain Japanese Buddhist sects to change their practices.

[16] Such religious transmissions were able to be afforded to enable the inexorable percolation of Buddhism into East Asia over a millennia due to the vibrant cultural exchanges that were able to be made at that time as a result of the Silk Road.