How much did India influence ancient Chinese civilization? I definitely know that Chinese culture was influenced greatly through Buddhist teachings from India, and I believe China picked up on cooking with spices and curry from India. Does anyone have anymore information on these Indian influences? What other Indian influences are there as well?

Also, how did the ancient Chinese view India? Was India considered a holy land since it was the birth place of the Buddha? It seems that way, since so many renowned monks made pilgrimages there, and many desired to go get scriptures from India.

well, the Monkey King came from india..... other than that, i havve no idea..

actually, monkey king didn't, there are plenty of evidence the indian monkey god has nothing to do with the journey to the west, Wu Chen En very well copied it from the dong huang painting of a Hu Ren(foreignors in China) who accompained Xuan Zang and thought of it as Hu Sun(monkey) and created Sun Wu kong.

"Ancient India and Ancient China", a 1988 book by Liu Xinru, has some good information on the cultural and commercial exchanges, including why Mahayana Buddhism rather than Theravada Buddhism spread to China from India via Central Asia. But the maritime trade aspect is neglected, and Liu did not have much of the newer material from the Silk Road that has been found since the 1990s.

A new and up-to-date book on the interesting relations between ancient India and ancient China has yet to be written. But it does seem that India was the only neighbouring culture that the Chinese were willing to regard as being non-barbaric, and almost as civilised as themselves. That was mainly because of Buddhism. India wasn't regarded as a Holy Land like Israel to Christians or Mecca to Muslims, however - the fact that the Buddha had been born there was not so significant to Mahayana Buddhists. They instead made pilgrimages to India because some sutras were not available in China, especially in the original Sanskrit, so it was like a trip to the library (albeit a very tough one) more than a trip to visit the holy places.

perhaps Wu Chen En got his inspiration from both sources.

Karate/Kung-fu originated in India too. It was brought to east Asia by many of the same monks who brought Buddhism. In India it's called Kalari Payattu (or just Kalari). It's probably the oldest of all martial arts.

That's the first time I've heard such a claim

Care to show some evidence?

As far as Karate goes, it was passed to Japan from Ryukyu.

No documented evidence no. Just legends. According to tradition it was brought to China by the Indian Buddhist sage Bodhidharma, who taught it to the monks of the Shaolin temple in the 5th/6th century. Wall murals from the period do depict Indians teaching some sort of martial art to the Shaolin monks.

While Bodhidharma, or otherwise known as Damo in Chinese, has certainly contributed to the 少林工夫 Shaolin Gongfu, he certainly did not invented it.

Our own Indian member who goes by the name "Damo" has more information regarding this.

I most certainly do.



The wall murals only depict Indian and Chinese monks sparring with each other.

While Indians may certainly influenced the development of Chinese martial arts, this influence was neither the beginning nor the end of said development. Chinese martial arts have a history that long predates Bodhidharma, and continued to evolve long after his time.

Ah ok. My mistake then.

China was influenced by India mainly through buddhism culture and philosophy. Other than that, I don't think, there is much influence.

I've heard that too.

Pacifist beliefs breed the world's greatest A** kickers.

That's why the friendly nation of Thailand produced Muay Thai, mightiest of striking arts!

"That's why the friendly nation of Thailand produced Muay Thai, mightiest of striking arts"


Here is an article that you may think otherwise.
http://crane.50megs.com/index6u.htm

Yet the author of this site seem to critisize kung fu itself. Yet he fail to realize that the many bouts in the past are between professional fighters and part time participants, thats like piting a professional army vs. a conscript of equal level, what do you think will win under equal equipment?(oh did I say equal? The way that Thai fighters train make their bones like metal, they have superior equippment, only shaolin monks could match their fighting ability) and also read about the fun part of Taichi master beating Mas Oyama

btw, Kyokushin karate has won more fights against Muay thai than the other way around. In the 70s it was considered the ultimate striking art, but now it has really degraded. Then in the end, the mightiest is really bull, if there really is one, every body woul be practicing it now. Also, realize chinese Kung fu(which is not even a style it just mean martial art) is watered down alot since the collapse of imperial structure, they use to train full contract and bone hardening just as the Thai fighters do. It also require far longer time tom aster the hard ones, but there are still skilled student who could defend themselves well even after just two years. btw my teacher from Malaysia who does Tai Chi, Bagua, Xingyi has won all the full contact fighting from his area, he beat Muay thai fighters from thailand, and also grapplers, the crucial difference between him and those that are defeated is that he also conditioned his bones. My friend whose father teaches black tiger, could defend himself well and have also beaten Thai guys(not professional ones though), the guy roundhoused, he just steped in and triped him.

India was known to produce very fine quality steel and produce skilled metallurgists. Indian miners travelled with the treasure fleets of Zheng He.

I believe the concept of "zero" was also Indian in origin.

And Zheng He's fleet was truly international, weren't they?

There's a bit of debate on this.

The first incidence of a decimal system was in the 14th Century BC. The Chinese wrote with characters instead of an alphabet. When writing with a Western alphabet of more than nine letters, there is a temptation to go on with words like eleven. With Chinese characters, ten is ten-blank and eleven is ten-one (zero was left as a blank space: 405 is 'four blank five'), This was much easier than inventing a new character for each number (imagine having to memorize an enormous number of characters just to read the date!). Having a decimal system from the beginning was a big advantage in making mathematical advances. The first evidence of decimals in Europe is in a Spanish manuscript of 976 AD.

But of course the Chinese never wrote the number "0'. That was an arab invention which came with the other number 1,2,3, etc. However, with the concept of decimals, it would be inevitable that the concept of zero would also arise.

The ancient chinese used counting boards which were divided into squares where pebbles could be dropped in to denote a number. The zero was an empty square.

During the Han dynasty, they invented the counting rods which denoted 1 when the rod was stood upright, 10 when laying horizontal and a blank space represented zero. The counting-rods could be used for addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and extraction. The system used was decimal.

The concept of negative numbers as already known around the 2nd century B.C. which would mean the ancient chinese knew about zero which is the transition from positive to negative and vise versa.

Jieming

tibetan buddhism had some tie with indian religion (hindu?) .

The greatest influence of India on China would be Buddhism. Xuan Zang travelled in the 7th century on a pilgrimage to India just to get all the important sutras and later that helped to develop and further the chinese buddhism studies in China.

there is another theory that the Mayan Indians in Central America invented the concept of "0"

some of the carvings in the Mayan ruins actually show their symbol for zero.

If that is true, then it would be a parallel development since the symbol for "0" invented by the Arabs was already in use by the Europeans before the 15th century when the Spanish "discovered" the new world.

Even if there was some contact between the Mayans and East Asia, this is not likely to have spread through East Asia to reach the Middle East without any of the East Asian cultures adopting the symbol for zero.

Interesting. I do believe the Mayans, Aztecs, Inca were a lot more advanced than what most people believe. They were unlucky to fall to old world germs, practically emptying the land of people for the conquistadors. I doubt the Spanish would have had such a great time if they had to contend with the full healthy populations of each empire. Central and South America would now be very, very cool places to visit too instead of mixed-up spanish/portuguese speaking 3rd world countries with pseudo-european culture and traditions.

Jieming

I forgot where I read this, but wasn't sculpture art heavily influenced by Indian sculpture (which was influenced by Hellenistic sculpture), during the Sui and Tang dynasty? All those sculptures of heavily muscled warriors and realistic bas reliefs were influenced from India, or so I've heard...

Hey, I think this question of who invented the symbol "0, 1,2,3.." was actually posted during the quiz shows "Who wants to be a millionaire?" and the answer was actually the Indians, and not the arabs. I have no idea why the chinese tends to say the number system of 1,2,3 came from Arabs. I believe, they must have got it wrong or confused. The arabs probably learnt it from the Indians and then passed it on to the chinese, that's why chinese thought it came from the arabs.

Really? Hmm... didn't know that. My old history books attributed it to the Arabs. Must be a new discovery then. Have to look it up.

Jieming

In recent months as I began renewed my interest in ancient Chinese history,I discovered Ne Zha ( Na Zha in Cantonese ) and a few Chinese cultural aspects we hold dear for generations have origination in India many centuries ago.

I encountered one Hindu forumer on another Asian forum brought to our acknowledgement Kung Fu probably also imported from India,my reaction was it's possible since martial arts had roots in Shao-Lin and some other Budhhist religious sects in ancient times.

I would like to learn more as to what Chinese practice in our culture in fact influenced by India and her culture.

Buddhism was probably the most influential religion/philosophy/culture imported into China from India.

The Dunhuang region had lots of buddhist artwork that in part was a result of Indian buddhist influence. Also, during the Tang dynasty, buddhism was at its golden age of development. There were many Indian monks who settled in China to spread buddhism.

Sanskrit, an ancient Indian language, was a pre-requisite for monastery community specilizing in translating Buddhist scripture into chinese.

The Indian buddhist architecture of Stupa also found its way into China. In China, architects combined the structure of stupa and gate tower to build the pagoda (in buddhist temple). This was largely influenced by buddhist architecture.

not sure about nezha but sun wukong definitely had a predecessor in hanuman ....



actually the concept that kungfu originates from shaolin is closely connected to the idea of kungfu being introduced from india too..... it is often credited to the venerable bodhidharma (达摩祖师) , 1st patriach of zen buddhism in china, an indian who came to china to spread buddhism and might also have spread indian style martial arts too..

just through buddhism alone, many concepts , ideas and materials were passed from india to china

I've merged this thread with a much older one on the same topic that started when CHF was just a few months old.

For the question of whether Shaolin martial arts came from India, see http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php...ndian+influence

For the question of whether Sun Wukong is based on the Indian monkey-god Hanuman (discussed briefly on the older thread), see also http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php...&hl=Hanuman

For Nezha's origin from India, see http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?showtopic=12996

For King Yanluo (the 'king of hell'), see http://www.chinahistoryforum.com/index.php?showtopic=13016

One book I would recommend for examining Indian Buddhism's influence on Chinese material culture (e.g. food, clothing, furniture) is John Kieschnick's "The Impact of Buddhism on Chinese Material Culture": http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/069109676...TF8&s=books

Another good recent book that deals with why Indian influence on China through Buddhism gradually ended after the Tang dynasty is Tansen Sen's "Buddhism, Diplomacy, and Trade: The Realignment of Sino-Indian Relations, 600-1400": http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/082482593...TF8&s=books

Another recent book, Anthony C. Yu's "State and Religion in China" ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/081269552...TF8&s=books ) has a useful summary of the impact of Sanskrit on Chinese mythology and linguistics. I will quote some parts:

Major themes and topics such as "the rabbit in the moon" (yuetu), the use of the watermark on a boat to weigh an elephant, the belief in the dragon (naga) as the parent of the horse, and such mythic phrases as sweet dew (ganlu) and deathless liquid (busi shui) that Chinese frequently take for granted as native ideas are, according to knowledgeable scholars in China and elsewhere, actually imported materials from India. In that regard, Sanskrit as the most authoritative, classical literary language of India has had such a profound and far-reaching impact on China that its full effect has yet to be adequately studied and measured.

....

It was estimated by Liang Qichao, the reformer and modern scholar, that Indian languages, directly or indirectly, had helped to enlarge Chinese vocabulary by at least 35,000 words, surpassing the thirty-some-odd thousand that Shakespeare bequeathed to the English language. The impactof Sanskrit on Chinese culture, moreover, extends beyond translation and diction, for the recent investigations by Professors Rao Zongyi (Hong Kong), Tsu-lin Mei (Cornell), and Victor Mair (University of Pennsylvania) have demonstrated conclusively that tonal metrics (shenglu), the exceedingly complicated scheme of prosody built on the juxtaposition of different tones (perhaps better termed as pitches) that governs forms of pre-modern Chinese poetry such as regulated verse (lushi), lyric (ci), and song (qu), all derived from the earnest attempt of the Chinese to imitate certain phonetic properties of the Sanskrit language.

just curious, did anything chinese made its way into india? Or did anything chinese went into other cultures such as malaysia, indonesia, cambodia, thailand and burma?

yes i think i posted it somewhere else...

limited influence in architecture language food for malaysia and indonesia

thailand yes alot considering that slightly more than 12% of the population is chinese.

I wasn't talking about who is actually chinese, i meant actual culture on india, like religion, beliefs or art.

nor was i talking about what you assumed i was toking about.

limited influence in architecture language food for malaysia and indonesia

thailand yes alot considering that slightly more than 12% of the population is chinese.(MEANING INFLUENCE ON RELIGION FOOD LANGUAGE ARCHITECUTRE understand?

Geographically, China and India are very close to each other, but there doesn't seem to have been a lot of contact between the two countries directly. In fact the only thing I can think of that has been passed between the two is Buddhism. Why is this? Is it the fact that the Himalayas are between them that caused this? That's the only thing I can think of.

What about the contact they did have? What did Chinese envoys and traders have to say about India? Indians about the China?

Judging from Journey to the West, it appears that in deed, little have pass between these two nations, I think most people could not cross the Himalayas directly, thus they probably took a far longer route and mayhaps have to enter India from the Persian side.

I think that there must have been much earlier Indian influences rather than Buddhism as, for example, the similarities concerning the olistic views on how the human body works in both indian and chinese medicine are striking. Anyway I think that the major reason why India has had relatively small influence over China is that China has long been a sophisticated place with a strong and solid cultural base which has always made accepting foreign influences difficult, notwithstanding the fact that for a great deal of its history China has looked down on neighbour countries considering them sort of barbarian (before buddhism could become more widespread in China it encountered the same kind of problems).

Physical barrier between China and India (namely the Himalaya and Tibetan plateau) was what hindered the interaction between China and India. Influence from India on China came namely from buddhist monks who travelled from India to China through central asia and western region. In fact that was the only way to go into China.

From what little I know there is some influnce of China in India. I first learned about it by seeing some travel show a few years ago. I believe in Kerala (South west coast of India) there are Chinese drop style fishing nets that werer brought there by early Chinese fishermen. They still use them thier today.
http://www.cochin.org/tourism.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_fishing_nets_(of_Kochi)
-
Possibly Chinese tiles in Kerala India as well (as depicted in a small picture here)
http://www.davidsanger.com/stock/kerala

Synagogue in Kerala decorated with Chinese tiles is mentioned here:
http://www.indiasafaris.com/destinations/kerala/cochin
"The Synagogue is magnificently decorated by Chinese tiles and Belgian chandeliers."

Now I dont know if there are other Chinese influence in India? Maybe Indian martial arts in Kerala perhaps??? (I'm just speculating)

There are some major differences.
The 5 elements varies slightly.
Chinese: Fire, water, earth, metal, wood
Indian: Fire, water, earth, air, akasha


The Indian system recognizes "chakras" centres. Which are energy centres down the body.
For picture see site:
http://www.kheper.net/topics/chakras/chakras.htm

Chinese medicine on the other hand sees energy centres but differently than Indian chakras and also much more points all over the body. Indian system sees them as wheels. The recognition of meridians also varies between the two systems of medicine.

The Indian system recognizes the 3 "Dosha" (body type) of people. (vatta, pitta, kapha)
The Chinese system doesnt.

I could go on.


The similarities are:
both system uses pulse diagnosis.
both system uses tongue diagnoses (less so for the Indian system)
etc.

Actually, more prevalent speculation goes in the opposite direction - that martial arts from India influenced some forms of martial arts in China.

In the ancient times, the influence was almost entirely in one direction - Indian Buddhist monks travelling to and working in China, practicing, preaching and translating Buddhist teachings. Both had their own and very different linguistic, spiritual, philosophical, culinary and artistic heritages, so there was not that much of a gap to fill. Today, the two countries are rivals (and former wartime opponents), and that is getting in the way of further cross-cultural influence. The only major way China has influenced India culturally is perhaps in terms of culinary influence, and that is more recent and specialized. That and the paper lanterns that compete with traditional clay diya lamps at Diwali.

Yes I am aware of this speculation for long time. With Buddhist shaolin arts this is certainly true.
I'm just throwing the possiblity in Kerala at least, it may have been the opposit due to the ancient Chinese presence there.

Yes I tend to agree its mostly in one direction (from India to China).

I forget now who was that monk from China who travel to India to bring back Buddhist scriptures. "Xuan Zang" or something like that was his name. It was the only case I know where a monk traveledfrom China to India.

There has been some efforts in trying to bridge the gap over the last number of years.


I believe China last year declare "India friendship year".
They even had antiterrorist wargames together not too long ago and are planning future co-operations.
I believe a famous India poet had a statue made in his honour was erected in CHina no too long ago.
According to some article I read it stated China & India are becoming number one trading partners.
India gave a civilian award to a Chinese Indologist - Ji Xianlin
etc.

India to open first tourism office in China
http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/001200804061121.htm


Among other things.

If elements of Indian culture have arrived in China only through Buddhist monks that would imply that this kind of process has started in Han dynasty times, isn't it possible that there have been earlier cultural penetrations?

It is possible (from India to China) and vis verse (from China to India).
What is lacking currently is enough archeological evidence to draw a more substantial conclusion (we may never know of course). There are still some major differences between ancient Indian and ancient Chinese cultures.

in what time period do you mean?
during the past 40 yrs they had a war, in which China destroyed India

going further back in history, not mentioning Buddism,

Xiangqi(象棋) was transfered to India in which it developed into Chaturanga(恰圖蘭卡), to take it futher, westerners took the concept and developed Chess from Chaturanga

I believe the word is "defeated".

Some history books about Southeast Asia say that although both the Chinese and the Indians were active in this area, the Indians have left more permanent influences - e.g., words, political concepts (raja) - versus Chinese pottery shards. If this is true, I wondered if any one could help explain this.

I think this could have something to do with the fact that the Chinese influence in SE Asia was in the form of traders and voyagers, who only MINGled (hahaha) with the locals and traded, with very little intent or sense of building anything permanent. Of course I'm sure, like with anything, there are some notable exceptions.