Buddhism reaches China: the court of Liu Ying at Pengcheng

The Book of the Later Han records that in 65 Liu Ying, Prince of Chu and a half-brother of Emperor Ming, combined the Huang–Lao cult with devotion to the Buddha and kept Buddhist monks and lay followers at his court in Pengcheng (modern Xuzhou) — the first documented Buddhist practice in China. The faith had probably arrived earlier with merchants coming along the Silk Road from the Kushan lands of Central Asia; one tradition speaks of Yuezhi envoys teaching Buddhist sutras to a student in the Han capital as early as 2 BC.

According to a later legend, Emperor Ming dreamed of a tall golden man with a glowing head; told that this was the Buddha, he sent envoys to the west, who came back with the Indian monks Kasyapa Matanga and Dharmaratna and with scriptures and images carried on white horses. In 68 he is said to have founded for them the White Horse Temple, 12–13 km east of Luoyang, where the Sutra of Forty-two Chapters, traditionally the first Buddhist text in Chinese, was translated. The story is known from texts of the 3rd–5th centuries, the temple is not recorded in contemporary sources before 289, and most modern scholars regard the account as a pious legend. Regular translation of Buddhist scriptures began in Luoyang with the Parthian monk An Shigao, who arrived in 148.