n the history of Buddhism, it would turn out, occurred in when Kumarajiva was captured by Chinese raiders along the Silk Road, one of the most important of the ancient trade routes. This "road" which was in fact a series of interlinked paths, passages and proper roads, ran between China and Rome. After his capture by Chinese traders, Kumarajiva was taken to the capital Chang-an. Despite the fact that he had come to the city now called Xi'an as a prisoner, he quickly earned the favor of the imperial court and, with the help of imperial patronage founded a school of translators whose primary task was to translate a number of important religious texts into Chinese.
The primary religion practiced in China at this time was Daoism (or Taoism), but the country was experiencing one of its not-infrequent bouts of political upheaval. The result of this unsettled political state was that the established temples, which were connected to the political power structure, found their own power weakened as Gernet (1985) argues. This allowed Kumarajiva, who was an impassioned believer in the virtues of Buddhism, to introduce a number of Buddhist texts to the Chinese imperial court and, through these texts (and his translations of them) he was able to establish a foothold for Buddhism in China.
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