China

Foreign religions

Tibetan Buddhism always remained outside Chinese civilization, as did other imported religions. A certain number of Muslims came to China, all from the Middle East or from Central Asia. The Turkic Öngüt tribe was largely Nestorian Christian. Many tombstones with a bilingual Turkic and Chinese inscription have been preserved, but none of these believers seems to have been Chinese by origin; a census taken about 1300 in Zhenjiang (in the present-day province of Jiangsu) lists the Nestorians together with foreign nationalities. The number of Nestorian Christians in China was so great that in 1289 a special agency for their supervision was established in Dadu. Manichaeism, which had spread to China under the Tang, became extinct as an organized religion under the Yuan, but some Manichaean communities were probably absorbed by messianic Buddhist sects, such as the White Lotus sect, a group that attracted many followers among the Chinese lower classes.