In India during the classical era, Indo-European Aryans introduced Hinduism to the natives which started social disparity and patriarchy. In response to this, Siddhartha Gautama founded a new religion that was more egalitarian called Buddhism that spread to Central Asia, China, and Southeast Asia. Monks and merchants used the Indian Ocean trade network that connected China, India and many other countries for the first time to spread Buddhism. However, while it was spreading Buddhism branched into two Mahayana Buddhism in East Asia and Theravada Buddhism in Southeast Asia. In China Mahayana Buddhism was greatly excepted by people who didn’t have a lot of stuff or people who wanted to reach nirvana but was greatly hated by others no only because it went against everything Confucianism believed in but also since it wasn 't a native religion. However, some people didn’t care if the two religions co-existed or blended together.
Mahayana Buddhism in China was profoundly accepted by the lower class people who didn’t have much and liked the idea of giving up materialistic things to reach nirvana. In document 2 Zhi Dun supports Buddhism and talks about how Buddhism was the way to reach
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In China Mahayana the nirvana aspect of Buddhism was greatly appealing to some people but the idea of a foreign religion dominating in China made some people hate Buddhism. However, in this mix of people there were some people who were in the middle and felt neutral about Buddhism and its beliefs. There was a similar reaction in Rome with Christianity and its beliefs. Some people, mostly the lower class and Jews, found Christianity a way of escape and some even thought of as safety. On the other hand some people hated the beliefs of Christianity because it went against their norms and old traditions. However, Christianity was eventually made the enforced religion of the Roman empire and Confucianism was never made the enforced religion in China even though a lot of people believed in