 Buddhism was brought to China by missionaries some time during the first century CE. Indian scriptures and expositions arrived in China piecemeal, with the result that early Chinese adherents to Buddhism did not perceive contributions from different Indian traditions as fundamentally inconsistent. Chinese Buddhism is thus eclectic in its use of concepts from what were originally distinct Indian Buddhist schools. This, in turn, led to the practice of (Ch.) panjiao (doctrinal classification), according to which different philosophical systems are treated not as exclusive, but as partial conceptions of the truth, which can be arranged hierarchically in terms of how complete (literally, “rounded,” Ch. yuan) their grasp of the truth is. To use Western terminology, one might say that panjiao is a form of inference to the best explanation, since the more comprehensive teachings are shown to offer a more plausible and comprehensive interpretation of the relevant ethical, metaphysical, and empirical assumptions. 