NON-CHRISTIAN MISSIONS. — In the history of religions, a mission is the charge that a person vested with religious authority—either personal, as the founder of a religion, or delegated to him by the founder or by his legitimate representatives—entrusts to appointed emissaries (missionaries), so that they may spread the message proclaimed by him.
Religions proper to tribal and national groups do not foster missions, because in them religion is the exclusive expression of the group, and outsiders are rigorously excluded; indeed, they are always invited to withdraw at the moment of the rite. Supranational or universal religions, on the other hand, which address individuals beyond the barriers of nation, race, and social status, require missionaries to propagate their message. The major missionary religions are Christianity (v. SORA), Buddhism, Mazdaism, and Manichaeism.
I. BUDDHISM
Following the example of its founder, who went about preaching his doctrine throughout the regions of northern India, Buddhist monasteries sent forth monks into eastern (China, Korea, Japan) and central Asia (Tibet and Mongolia), bringing there a religious current (Mahayana) more suited to the understanding of the masses, while in southern India and in Burma, Siam, and Ceylon, preaching more closely adhering to original Buddhism (Hinayana) prevailed.In China, Buddhism entered in A.D. 67 with a mission led by the monks Kāśyapa, Mātana, and Dharmaraksa, who brought statues of the Buddha and sacred writings, which were subsequently translated into Chinese in 148.
In 374, Buddhist missionaries passed from China into Korea, whence, in 538, the king of the country sent a special mission to Japan, where it was well received by Prince Shototsu (d. 622), owing to the greater civil and moral elevation of its message compared with the animistic feudalism of Japan. From the ninth century, Buddhism developed a life of its own there, partly merging with Shinto, the indigenous religion of the country (vioba-shinto = bilateral Shinto), until in 1868 it was officially, though fruitlessly, suppressed in favor of the indigenous religion (v. SHINTO).
In Tibet, the first appearance of Buddhism was due to the marriage of Prince Srongbtsan Gam ho
(d. 698) to a Chinese Buddhist princess. Its greatest diffusion occurred in the eighth century through the monk Padma Sambhava, and in the fifteenth century it assumed a more strictly hierarchical form through the work of the monk Tsong-Khapa (d. 1417; V. LAMAISMO).
II. MAZDEISM
It too had its missionaries, who under the Sassanid dynasty (224–651) reached as far as China. The fall of the dynasty in the face of the Muslim invasion of Persia caused the dispersion of this religion, whose survivors now live in a prosperous but small community of 100,000 believers in Bombay.III. MANICHEISM
It spread through missions organized by Mani himself and reached Egypt, Africa, Rome (3rd century), Gaul and Spain (4th century), and in the East as far as India, Turkestan and Mongolia (the discoveries of Turfan and Kan-su); active survivals remained in medieval Europe in the sects of the Cathars, the Albigensians, the Bogomils (Balkans) and the Paulicians (Anatolia).There is also an unorganized missionary proselytism, carried out opportunistically from individual to individual. This was the case with the Jews in the Hellenistic diaspora, and with the adherents of the various mystery religions (Isis, Mithra, the Syrian Goddess), who lived in the commercial, rural and military centers of the Empire.
Islam has no priests and spread through military conquest and the material advantages offered to converted populations; it extended through Syria, Egypt and then Mesopotamia, Turkestan, India, China and Malaysia. Its diffusion in centers of lesser culture was likewise due to individual action, since Islam lacked any missionary organization. Nicola Turchi