In the early Eastern Han Dynasty (25-206), Buddhism was introduced into China from India and many Buddhist books were translated into Chinese. Since Buddhism is a complete foreign religious system, many contents do not have equivalents in Chinese dictionaries. In order to solve this problem, many new characters were created. As a result, many coinages were added to the Chinese vocabulary.

People nowadays do not have any idea about genesis of these words. For example, in Chinese, the character (fo, Buddha) means assisting a ruler in governing a country and the word (fang fu, as if) has nothing to do with (fo, Buddha) in Buddhism. While  (fo tuo, also Buddha) is usually used as the honorific title of Sakyamuni in Buddhism and is the shortened form of .

(shi) came from Sakya (Shijia in Pinyin) in Sanskrit and is a clan name. After the Eastern Jin Dynasty (317-420), Chinese Shamans were all surnamed(shi) and thus (shi zi) and (Sijia Zi) became the collective name of Buddhism adherents.

(fan) was simplified from the pronunciation of Brahman in Sanskrit.  originally meant quiet and away from desires and later referred to objects related to Buddhism such as  ( fan dian, Buddhist books ) and  (fan cha, Buddhist temples), and objects in India such as  ( fan tu, Indian land) and  (fan zi, Indian characters).

Other words include (tan), which was from Dharma in Sanskrit;  (mo, devil), from Mara in Sanskrit;  (ta, tower), from Tupa in Sanskrit; ( bi an, Faramita) from Para in Sanskrit; and so on.