Much of the momentum for the spread of Buddhism from India to distant regions of Asia was generated by the patronage of expanding empires. After the historic Buddha's (Śākyamuni's) teachings were embraced by India's first empire builder, the religion began to assume the character of a “world religion” as emperors of the Mauryan empire became believers and practitioners. Then when Buddhism moved, in the first century A.D., across central Asia to China, Chinese emperors of the Han dynasty welcomed Indian monks bearing Buddhist scriptures, patronized ambitious translation projects that produced a great corpus of sacred literature, and took an active interest in Buddhist statues made in a Greek or northwest Indian style.

Following the demise of the Later Han empire early in the third century, China was torn by internal strife for more than three centuries. A new empire was not formed until the rise of the Sui dynasty in 589. Meanwhile, Buddhism continued to prosper as Chinese kings vied with one another in supporting Buddhist monks. They even sponsored contests in the translation of Buddhist sutras. Two especially famous monks enjoyed royal patronage during these years of disunity: Kumārajīva (350–414), an eminent translator of Buddhist texts, and Tao-an (312–85), known as the earliest Chinese systematizer. Tao-an was the compiler of China's first comprehensive catalogue of Buddhist texts (Tsung-li-chung-ching-mu-lu) that reportedly contained 639 titles in 886 volumes. A second catalogue containing 2,211 titles in 4,251 volumes was compiled by Seng-yu (445–518) a century later.