Excerpts from Books and Wikipedia
"Described as 'part of an era of political turbulence and intense social and cultural change', the Northern Wei Dynasty is particularly noted for unifying northern China in 439: this was also a period of introduced foreign ideas, such as Buddhism, which became firmly established." [Wikipedia] "But Confucianism and Buddhism provided the Bei Wei throne with much more useful tools for rule. As it had for centuries in China, Confucianism supplied a model for a state hierarchy; it provided a picture of the world in which properly ordered, properly structured government was an essential part of an orderly and moral universe. Buddhism offered something else entirely: a model for kingship. . . . Instead of simply honoring those who withdrew into solitude, Mahayana Buddhism praised those greater and more accomplished believers who worked on behalf of the less powerful." [Bauer: Medieval World, p. 159-61] By 534 there was civil war between the Eastern Wei and the Western Wei. "Confucian order and Buddhist resignation were a thing of the past." [Bauer: Medieval World, p. 170]