Buddhism enters Han China via the Silk Road, beginning in the first or second century CE.

The first documented translation efforts by Buddhist monks in China (all foreigners) are in the second century CE, possibly as a consequence of the expansion of the Greco-Buddhist Kushan Empire into the Chinese territory of the Tarim Basin.Direct contact between Central Asian and Chinese Buddhism continues throughout the third to seventh century, well into the Tang period.

From the fourth century onward, with Faxian's pilgrimage to India (395–414), and later Xuanzang (629–644), Chinese pilgrims start to travel by themselves to northern India, their source of Buddhism, in order to get improved access to original scriptures.

Much of the land route connecting northern India with China at this time is ruled by the Buddhist Kushan Empire, and later the Hephthalite Empire, see Gandhara.

During these centuries, the combination of Indian Buddhism with Western influences (Greco-Buddhism) gives rise to the various distinct schools of Buddhism in Central Asia and in China.China is later reached by the Indian form of "esoteric Buddhism" (Vajrayana) in the seventh century.

Tibetan Buddhism is likewise established as a branch of Vajrayana, in the eighth century.

From about this time, the Silk Road transmission of Buddhism begins to decline with the Muslim conquest of Transoxiana, resultiing in the Uyghur Khaganate by the 740s.By this time, Indian Buddhism itself is in decline, due to the rise of Hinduism on one hand and due to the Muslim expansion on the other, while Tang-era Chinese Buddhism is repressed in the ninth century, but not before in its turn giving rise to Korean and Japanese traditions.