On The Influences Of Buddhism On The Ancient Chinese Legal System

Confucianism, Buddhism and Taoism have profoundly influenced on Chinese society for thousands of years. Among them, Confucianism exerted the most influences on the ancient Chinese legal system. As one of the three major religions around the world, Buddhism has been disseminated in China for nearly two millennia. It came to China since the Eastern Han Dynasty and actively integrated into Chinese culture and society, which profoundly influenced on Chinese religion, literature, architecture, art and so on. So did the ancient Chinese legal system. As the mainstream, Confucianism showed profound influences on the ancient Chinese legal system, which did not mean that Buddhism had no important influences on it. There were important influences of Buddhism in the evolutionary of the ancient Chinese legal system, which was not an individual case or a coincidence, but to some extent played an important role. The thesis attempts to study the influences of Buddhism on the ancient Chinese legal system and analyze relative problems in a systematic and targeted way by building a system including as follows: premises, performances and features.The thesis consists of three parts: Introduction, Main Body and Conclusion.The Introduction is a lead-in part including as follows: the motive of the thesis, the study status quo, the purposes and significances of the study, the study methods used in the thesis, the main contents of the study.The Main Body is divided into three chapters:Chapter One discusses the premises of the influences of Buddhism on the ancient Chinese legal system. Firstly, the dissemination of Buddhism to China. Secondly, the formation of the universal folk belief. Thirdly, the emperors' Buddhist faith and their utilization of Buddhism.Chapter Two discusses the performances of the influences of Buddhism on the ancient Chinese legal system. Subchapter One comes to draw the influence of Buddhism on the ancient Chinese orthodox legal thought on the basis of discussing the evolutionary process of the issue whether or not the Buddhist monks and nuns had to worship the emperor and their parents in the Tang Dynasty. Subchapter Two discusses the influences of "Stop-killing Months" and "Ten Vegetarian Days", coming from the Buddhist compassionate thought, on the system of the execution of death penalty. Subchapter Three analyzes the positive and negative influences of Buddhist precepts on the crime prevention. Subchapter Four discusses the influences of Buddhism on the legislation. Subchapter Five discusses the influence of the monk management system on the administrative legal system.Chapter Three discusses the features of the influences of Buddhism on the ancient Chinese legal system. Subchapter One analogies the influences between Buddhism and Confucianism and finds out their similarities and fusions. Subchapter Two compares the influences between Buddhism and Confucianism and concludes five features of the influences of Buddhism on the ancient Chinese legal system.The Conclusion summarizes the whole thesis and looks forward to the future.