Abstract
In recent years, scholars have shown that the well-known rubric of the Three Teachings distorts the complex institutional, social, and even conceptual realities of medieval China’s religious landscape. Yet discourse relating, comparing, and contrasting commensurable (proto-) Teachings amenable to prospective translation as Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism can be found extensively in documents surviving from the fourth century through the sixth. By tracking this discourse, this essay argues that discussions regarding the interrelationships between these (proto-) Teachings developed according to a dialectical series of shared structural paradigms partially detached from the facts on the ground. Eventually, these paradigms came to exert an influence on institutional, social, and conceptual history.
Keywords
interreligious debate, Buddhism, Daoism, Confucianism, religion and the state, pluralism, discursive paradigms
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