「佛教中國化」過程，也許可從當年進入中國的並非印度製佛教義理一事講起。也就是說，佛教在中國的永續發展與否，很少取決於它與印度傳統的關聯。而佛教對於中國文明的影響，既顯著又令人印象深刻。這是為何「佛教中國化」是一項能夠提供給研究者的有用的概念工具，藉以瞭解佛教從玄學傾向到禪宗（佛教自主性於焉建立）的發展歷程。然而，當「佛教中國化」的生產力愈加顯著，概念的問題也就愈形模糊。正如我們將要指出的，概念使用愈是頻繁，吾人就愈看不到一種意願，即想要瞭解誰是早期構思者或代表人物的意願，因為這將會涉及候選人的資格認定。誰有能力制訂這個概念？我們想到的是既研究哲學史也涉獵中國佛教史的學者。其中， 胡適（尤其是他關於禪宗史的研究）也許屬於對「佛教中國化」概念之起點有所貢獻的第一批學者。此種辨識同時牽涉到另一個問題：胡適的相關研究想要表達什麼？不同於吾人過去所認為的，其研究特徵並非滿足他個人的反宗教心態，他的提問是在三種層次上展開，即禪宗史、中國文藝復興以及中國印度化。胡適的禪宗史研究原本是要區分中國／印度宗派的嘗試，卻在無意間告訴我們「佛教中國化」概念的一個可能故事。

The process of “sinification” would have an origin in the fact that what entered China as Buddhist ideas were not made in India. The sustainable development of Buddhism in China hardly has any relationship with the Indian tradition. And the Chinese influences on Buddhism are as obvious and impressive as Buddhism affected Chinese civilization. The word “sinification” thus provides the researchers a very useful conceptual instrument to capture the main part of the Buddhist movement, from the Taoist tendency to the Chan school where Chinese Buddhism establishes its autonomy. The problem which follows is that the birth of the “sinification”, treated as a concept, remains all the more vague when this term becomes more productive. As we shall observe, in the frequent uses of this term, there is not a will to know its early designer or representative. The task of this article is to trace the formation of this concept and understand its implication. It asks: Who is capable of elaborating this concept? A scholar that studies the history of Chinese philosophy and that of Chinese Buddhism, Hu Shih, in particular, with regards to his studies on the Chan School, is among others a possible candidate for taking on sinification as a concept. This identification implies simultaneously another question: what does Hu intend to express in this study? Against conventional understanding of Hu’s work, the problem of his study is not characterized by his antireligious mentality, but rather lies in his conception of Buddhism in three stages, the history of Chan, the Chinese Renaissance and the “Indianization of China”. Distinguishing essentially the Chinese school of Buddhism from what is Indian, Hu’s study tells us a possible story of how the idea of “sinification” was first conceived.