Zen Buddhism: Did you mean...?

Taoism (also known as Daoism) is a Chinese philosophy attributed to Lao Tzu (c. 500 BCE) which developed from the folk religion of the people primarily in the rural areas of China and became the official religion of the country under the...

Shinto means 'way of the gods' and it is the oldest religion in Japan. Shinto's key concepts include purity, harmony, family respect, and subordination of the individual before the group. The faith has no founder or prophets and there is...

The Edo period refers to the years from 1603 until 1868 when the Tokugawa family ruled Japan. The era is named after the city of Edo, modern-day Tokyo, where the Tokugawa shogunate had its government. It is also sometimes referred to as the...

Charvaka (also given as Carvaka) was a philosophical school of thought, developed in India c. 600 BCE, stressing materialism as the means by which one understands and lives in the world. Materialism holds that perceivable matter is all that...

The Asuka Period (Asuka Jidai) of ancient Japan covers the period from 538 CE to 710 CE and, following on from the Kofun Period (c. 250-538 CE), so constitutes the latter part of the Yamato Period (c. 250-710 CE). For some scholars the period...

The anthropomorphic god Indra was the most important god in the Vedic religion and he later became a major figure in Hinduism and an important deity in Buddhism, Cham and Chinese tradition. For the Aryas he was their national god and he was...

Angkor Wat is a temple complex in the province of Siem Reap, Cambodia originally dedicated to the Hindu god Vishnu in the 12th century CE. It is among the largest religious buildings ever created, second only to the Temple of Karnak at Thebes...

The House of Worship or the Ibadat Khana was established by Mughal Emperor Akbar (1542-1605 CE) for conducting religious debates and discussions among theologians and professors of different religions. Abu'l-Fath Jalal-ud-din Muhammad Akbar...

Xuanzong (birth name, Li Longji, l. 685-762 CE, r. 712-756 CE) was the 7th emperor of the Tang Dynasty of China, whose domestic and foreign policies established the Tang Dynasty as the Golden Age in Chinese history. Many of the most important...

Tokugawa Tsunayoshi (1646-1709) governed Japan as the fifth shogun of the Edo period (1603-1876). He has often been ridiculed as the 'dog shogun' because of the laws he enacted to protect the lives of animals. Economically, however, the period...