Architecture

The pagoda is derived from the Indian stupa, a shrine built around supposed relics of the Buddha and his principle disciples. The stupa is architecturally related to the pyramid, and both are in effect man-made mountains. Symbolically this is the central mountain at the hub of the world, and each of its ascending levels corresponds to a stage in the process of gaining enlightenment. The layout is also related to the mandala, a diagram designed to instruct and lead one into more profound meditative understanding. One "worships" at a stupa by walking around and up it in a set pattern. At the center and top most level is a spire. The numbers involved have a mystical and esoteric meaning to the adept. This form and its associated symbology are a product of Mahayana Buddhism. The pagoda, a wooden building of ascending stories topped by a spire, is quite removed from the stone monuments of India. The pagodas of Korea and Japan were copied from the Chinese, and further adapted to local ideas of what a religious shrine should be.

The development of Mahayana Buddhism greatly increased the popularity of Buddhism and there was an explosion of missionary activity. One stream found its way deep into the Himalayan mountains of Nepal and Tibet, where it amalgamated with the native Bon-pa shamanistic religion of the area. A second stream went to the West where it came into contact with Hellenistic Greek culture in and around Gandara. This branch then doubled back to the East over the Silk Road and into Northern China. The Missionary Monks found the Chinese very open to Buddhist ideas that were perceived as being a "more mature" and complete form of Taoism. Buddhist relics and statuary that owed much to Greek aesthetics also found their way over the Silk Road and were easily assimilated into Chinese cultural patterns.

A third wave of Buddhist expansion arrived in China via a southern sea route. This stream of Buddhism was a bit more conservative than the Tantric forms or the more iconographic forms that entered Northern China. The semi-legendary patriarch to South China was Bodhidharma, and if was from his school that the Zen (Chinese, Chan) sects of Japan developed. Religious shrines in Southeast Asia are more closely related to the Indian stupa form than the Chinese adaptation.