Yogacara's Transmission into East Asian Buddhism

Yogacara philosophy reached China well before it reached Tibet, carried chiefly by two waves of translation activity centered on individual scholar-monks rather than on institutional missions. The earlier wave was led by Paramartha (Zhendi, 499–569 CE), an Indian or Central Asian monk who arrived at the southern Chinese Liang court in 546 CE and, working amid the political instability of the Liang-Chen transition, translated Asanga's Mahayanasamgraha along with Vasubandhu's commentary on it into Chinese; this translation became the founding scripture of the short-lived but historically significant Shelun school ("Compendium school"), named directly for the Mahayanasamgraha (She Dasheng Lun in Chinese) and active through the 6th and early 7th centuries before being largely absorbed into later Yogacara developments.