Painting on the wall inside a tomb (397-439)
depicting a performance by dancers and musicians

BRIEFLY

For 370 years following Han's collapse, a number of kingdoms and dynasties emerged and fought each other for domination.  The regimes emerged in this period include: the Three Kingdoms of Wei, Shu and Wu (220-280), the Jin Dynasty (265-420), and the Southern and Northern Dynasties (420-589).  Prolonged fighting caused much suffering among the people.  Against this background, popularity of Buddhism and Taoism grew substantially.

- Buddhism, P. B. Ebrey

- Taoism