| A | B |
|---|
| Buddhism | a religion founded in India and based on Siddharta Gautama's teachings |
| Four Noble Truths | the major principles of Buddhism, which recognize the inevitability of suffering and encourage individuals to achieve a state of "not wanting" and practice moderation in order to reach enlightenment |
| nirvana | the Buddhist term for a state of enlightenment |
| ahimsa | a Buddhist doctrine of noviolence that stresses the sacredness of human and animal life |
| Sanskrit | an Indo-European language used in India for literature |
| Taoism | Chinese philosophy based on discovering the tao, or "way," of the universe and living in harmony with nature |
| Legalism | a Chinese philosophy of the third century B.C. that assumed that people were evil and selfish and lived well only under strict rules |
| Great Wall | a 1,500-mile stone wall stretching across northern China |
| dynastic cycle | the rise and fall of dynasties in a regular pattern |
| Silk Road | in ancient China, the route the silk merchants traveled as they headed westward throguh China to India, Persia, and Roman provinces along the Mediterranean |
| Age of Disunity | the period (A.D. 220-589) following the fall of the Han dynasty when China was beset by warfare and political unrest |
