Long before its decline in India, Buddhism spread to other parts of the world. During the reign of King Ashoka it spread to Ceylon which later became a great centre of Teravada Buddhism.
It also spread to Burma and Thailand in the fifth century and Buddhism is still practised there. It further spread to China, Central Asia, Japan and Korea. Buddhism that was introduced in China was the Mahayana Buddhism where it further corrupted by admixture with the elements taken from the native Taoism.
Two new schools of Mahayana Buddhism developed in China. The first was the Pure Land School. It is also called as Amitabha School and was founded by Hui-yuan on the basis of the Sukhavati Sutra.
The second was the Chan School which developed in China in the sixth century as a result of the teaching of Bodhidharma, an Indian Buddhist from Madras. Another important Buddhist country is Tibet.
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Buddhism was introduced in Tibet by King Strongtsen Gampo in the middle of the seventh century. Tibetian Buddhism, sometimes called Lamaism is a mixture of Tantric Buddhism and the local Bon religion.
An attempt was made in the eleventh century to reform the Tibetian Buddhism by removing from it the Bon elements and the result was the birth of the Gelugpa Sect to which both the Dalai Lama and the Tashi (Panchen) Lama belong.