The Chinese Buddhist canon refers to a traditional collection of Chinese language Buddhist texts which are the central canonical works of East Asian Buddhism. The traditional term for the canon is Great Storage of Scriptures (traditional Chinese: 大藏經; simplified Chinese: 大藏经; pinyin: Dàzàngjīng; Japanese: 大蔵経; rōmaji: Daizōkyō; Korean: 대장경; romaja: Daejanggyeong; Vietnamese: Đại tạng kinh). The Chinese canon is a major source of scriptural and spiritual authority for East Asian Buddhism (the Buddhism of China, Korea, Japan and Vietnam). It is also an object of worship and devotion for Asian Buddhists and its reproduction is seen as an act of merit making. The canon has also been called by other names like “Internal Classics” (neidian 内典), “Myriad of Scriptures” (zhongjing 眾經), or “All Scriptures” (yiqiejing 一切經).
The development of the Great Storage of Scriptures was influenced by the Indian Buddhist concept of a Tripitaka, literally meaning "three baskets" (of Sutra, Vinaya, and Abhidharma), a term which referred to the scriptural canons of the various Indian Buddhist schools. However, Chinese Buddhists historically did not have access to a single Tripitaka from one school or collection. Instead, the canon grew over centuries as various Indian texts were translated and new texts composed in China. These various works (4,878 individual texts according to the Chinese scholar He Mei) were later collected into a distinct Chinese canon.
