Buddhism And Science From Han Dynasty To Tang Dynasty

Buddhism had become an essential part of Chinese traditional culture from a foreign religion. The impacts on our inherent culture, were immense especially in the first kilo-year from Han dynasty to Tang dynasty, which our ancient science and technology were included.Until 20^th century, there was no one had specially studied the question about Buddhism and science. Now, the study is still lack, incomprehensive and not thorough, and is mostly from the view of philosophy and religion. The attitudes to the question include: Buddhism is anti-science, science and independent of science. We will check the Chinese Tripitaka(Buddhist canon) before the Tang dynasty thoroughly, study the relationship between Buddhism and the every subject of science with the viewpoint of history, and the attitude must be practical and realistic.The contents about mathematics, physics and chemistry are little in the Chinese Tripitaka. There was a complete account system, and it was a decimal system. The series and power also were mentioned. The Buddhist considered that the matter was formed and composed by four essential factors: Earth, Water, Fire and Wind. The matter was not infinitely separable; it would be Emptiness at last. The tune and space were inseparable, and the time was relative. There are many descriptions about physics units such as time, length and so on in the sutra. The Buddhist knew some characters of light and had attempted to explain the phenomena of the lightning. It is indicated that there were consanguineous relations between Buddhism and the invention and improvement of the calculagraph, which could give the correct time.The knowledge about crystal, distillation, brewage, dye and so on existed in the Vinayapitaka(rules collection) separately. There were a few clues, which proved that some Buddhists had abundant knowledge about chemistry and mineralogy, and they had participated making pills of immortality.The contents of astronomy in the Chinese Tripitaka are abundance. Buddhist considered that the universe was made of countless but finite "worlds". The little "world" was the basic unit of the universe, whose central axes was the Sumeru(a wonderful towering mountain), additionally it included nine mountains, eight seas, four continents, the sun, the moon, other stars and so on. And their composing and conditions were depicted in detail. Buddhist believed that the orbits of sun and moon changed all the time,and that's why the temperatures of whether and the lengths of daytime and nighttime varied along with the seasons. The questions how to measure off the day and night, the seasons, and make a calendar and so on had been discussed. The reasons of nature calamity, how the rivers came into being, why the seas were salt, and so on were mentioned. The Buddhist believed that the universe was in the cycle of engendering, developing, ruining and emptiness, and thought the universe was an organic body. The space of universe not only could be distinguished by up and down, but also by good and bad. Another characteristic of Buddhism astronomy is that it was connected with the horoscopy firmly. It was probably that it had impacted to Chinese primary astronomy.The content of biology in the sutra is little. The Buddhist considered that the assortment of all sentient beings were being born from egg, zoogony, wet and convert. And this sort system was quite different from Chinese primary one. The Buddhist had known some of the food chain among the life-forms. The depictions of the bugs were very detailed, and caused us to think that they might be associated with the microbe. There were also some depictions about the plants, include their roots, stems, leaves, flowers and fruits.The Buddhism medicine content is abundance, and its system is integrity. It includes basic theories, clinic practices, health caring and medical curses dealing with internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, midwifery and so on. The sutras involved with medicine are more, and a lot of information about medicine is in the medicine part of Vinayapitaka.The Buddhist knew the structure of our body very well, and had an integrate pathology theory. The attitudes to the patient, doctor and nurse were original, and the analysis to the pathogen was particular. The medicine was classified into daytime-medicine, nighttime-medicine, seven-day-medicine and all-time-medicine, and plant medicine was the main. The familiar kinds of illness were wind-illness, cold-illness and fever-illness, and the oil, crisp, honey and sugar were the medicines in common use. The pregnancy mechanism, gestation period care and child diseases were discussed especially. There were also many contents about bite and sup and hygiene, such as how to keep clean with the mouth. There were also many stories about Buddhist medical practices and examples about clinic. Anyway, the all of Buddhism medicine are related with the Buddhist teachings firmly.As an example of the relationship between Buddhism and technology, some evidences indicated that it was the Buddhists who were likely to invent the engraving-typography, and promoted to popularize it. Although the Buddhist proportionin the ancient Chinese scientists is small through the statistic, the facts proved that the Buddhism had had important impacts on Chinese ancient science and technology, which included promoting effects and restraining effects. We need to re-study the relationship between Buddhism and science from a new point of view. On the basis of thoroughly understanding the relations between Buddhism and Chinese ancient science and technology, we should study Buddhism and science with human nature and give an expectation to their future.