MOUNT OMEI AND CHINESE BUDDHISM

The forests and ravines of Mount Omei23 teem with mystery and marvel, for there are legends that carry its story far back into the dim days when the threads of history meet together in the knots of myth. There is hardly a peak un-garlanded with the flowers of romance, hardly a moss-grown boulder that is not the centre of an old-world legend. The many stories of wonderful visions and wizard sounds that have come to the eyes and ears of the pilgrims to the shrines of Omei may raise a smile of amusement at human credulity, yet they are easily enough explained when we remember how strangely both sights and sounds may be affected by mountain-mists; and it is seldom that the giant bulk of Omei is bathed from peak to base in clear sunshine.

It is, indeed, true that "many-fountain'd" Omei would lose a great part of its spell if the mists were to melt away into garish daylight. No more could the pilgrim pour into the ears of wondering listeners tales of how, when ascending the mountain amid gloom and silence, he had suddenly heard his own praises of the Lord Amitabha re-chanted by spirit voices; how a rift in the curtain of white cloud had suddenly disclosed landscapes of unearthly loveliness, with jewelled palaces and starry pinnacles such as were never raised by the hands of men; how he had caught glimpses of airy forms that passed him with a sigh or a whisper, but left no traces in the forest or the snow and made no sound of footfall; or how when approaching unwittingly the edge of some terrible abyss he had felt the touch of a ghostly finger that led him back to safety.

It is believed that the Lolos, who are not Buddhists, worshipped on Mount Omei a triad of deities of their own, and it is at least certain that men of that race are sometimes met on Omei's slopes. But the earliest legendary associations of the mountain are in Chinese minds naturally connected with those mythical progenitors of the Chinese people—Fu Hsi and NÜ Wo. This carries us back to the twenty-ninth century B.C. Both these mysterious persons have their "caves" on Mount Omei, but they are in such inaccessible situations that no mortal eye has ever seen them. The first of the legendary hermits was a holy man named T'ien ChÊn Huang JÊn,24 the Heavenly Sage and Imperial Man. He lived in the age of phoenixes and unicorns; and on Mount Omei he once received a visit from Huang Ti,25 the Yellow Emperor, who flourished in the twenty-sixth century B.C. Though one of the few of the world's monarchs who appear to have lived long enough to celebrate the centenary of their succession to the throne, Huang Ti wished to attain the crowning distinction of immortality. It was to acquire the elixir of life from the Heavenly Sage that Huang Ti paid him his memorable visit. A short record of the conversation between the Sage and his imperial disciple has been preserved, and we may gather from it that Huang Ti derived from the interview a good deal of sound practical advice, but the Sage seems to have skilfully evaded the main point. He kept his secret, but made such excellent personal use of it that he is supposed to have lived for at least a millennium or two, and indeed his death has not yet been recorded. In order to keep count of time he acquired the useful habit of changing his name with each successive epoch,26 and his name in the Chou dynasty—which occupied the throne about a millennium and a half after the Yellow Emperor's time—was the singularly appropriate one of The Old Man.

Omei-shan—like other sacred mountains in China—has always been famous for the medicinal value of its roots and herbs, and the monks still derive no little benefit from their sale. Perhaps it was among these herbs that The Old Man found his elixir of life, and if so he did not remain in exclusive possession of the secret. The records of Omei are full of accounts of recluses and others whose span of life extended far beyond the normal. One of them is known to legend as Pao Chang,27 but more popularly as Ch'ien Sui Ho Shang,28 or "The Monk of a Thousand Years." The period of his long and useful life is given in the records. He was born in the twelfth year of Wei Lieh Wang of the Chou dynasty, and died in the eighth year of Kao Tsung of the T'ang dynasty at the ripe old age of precisely one thousand and seventy-one. He was a native of India, but came to China in the Chin dynasty (265-419 of our era) and went to worship at the shrine of P'u Hsien Bodhisattva on Mount Omei, where he spent the declining centuries of his life. According to another account his arrival at Omei was a good deal earlier than the Chin period, for his name is connected with the most famous of all the Omei stories—one which refers to the reign of Ming Ti of the Han dynasty.

This story relates to the foundation of what may be called the Buddhistic history of Omei and the beginning of its long religious association with its patron saint, P'u Hsien Bodhisattva. We are told that in the reign of Ming Ti (58-75 of the Christian era) a certain official named P'u29 happened to be on Mount Omei looking for medicinal herbs. In a misty hollow he suddenly came upon the footprints of a deer. They were shaped not like the footprints of an ordinary deer but like the flower of the lotus. Amazed at the strange sight, he followed the tracks up the mountain. They led him continually upwards until at last he found himself on the summit, and there, at the edge of a terrible precipice, they disappeared. As he gazed over the brink he beheld a sight most strange and wonderful. A succession of marvellous colours, luminous and brilliant, gradually rose to the surface of the vast bank of clouds that lay stretched out below, and linked themselves together in the form of a glorious iridescent aureole. P'u, full of wonder at so extraordinary a spectacle, sought the hermitage of the famous "Monk of a Thousand Years" and told him his strange story. "You are indeed happy!" said the monk. "What you have seen is no other than a special manifestation to you of the glory of the great Bodhisattva P'u Hsien: fitting it is, therefore, that this mountain should be the centre from which his teachings may be spread abroad. The Bodhisattva has certainly favoured you above all men." The end of the whole matter was that P'u built, on the spot from which he had witnessed the sublime manifestation, the first of the Buddhist temples of Mount Omei, and dedicated it to P'u Hsien Bodhisattva; and the present monastic buildings known as the Hsien Tsu Tien and its more modern neighbour the Chin Tien occupy in the twentieth century the site chosen for the original P'u Kuang Tien, or Hall of Universal Glory,30 in the first century.

This story is interesting as carrying back the Buddhistic traditions of Omei to the very earliest days of Buddhism in China. My readers will probably remember that it was in the same epoch—the reign of Ming Ti—that the emperor had his famous vision of the Golden Man, which is supposed to have led to the introduction of Buddhism into China under direct imperial patronage. The story is also of interest as embodying the first record of the remarkable phenomenon known as the Glory of Buddha, which has always been one of the principal attractions of the mountain and may well have been the real cause—as the story itself indicates—of its special sanctity.

The other curiosities of Omei are so numerous that most of them cannot even be referred to. Near the foot of the mountain is a scooped-out rock which is said to have once formed a bath in which pilgrims were required to go through a course of purification before ascending the mountain. This, if true, is curious and suggestive. There is a spot shown where a miraculous lotus-plant—the lotus is sacred to the Buddha—used to blossom in every season of the year. There is a flying bell, the tolling of which has been heard in many different parts of the mountain, though it is never moved by human hands. There are rock-inscriptions written by emperors and empresses and by the great Sung dynasty poet, Su Tung-p'o. Not far from the Wan-nien monastery—perhaps the second oldest on the mountain—is a stream called the Black Water. In the T'ang dynasty a wandering monk, looking for a home, came to this stream and wished to cross it, for he espied on the further bank a spot which he thought would make an excellent site for a hermitage. But the stream was turbulent and violent and he could not cross. Suddenly out of the midst of the torrent came a huge tiger. The tiger looked at the monk, and the monk, unabashed, looked at the tiger. The wild beast recognised a teacher of the Good Law, and lay down at his feet, tamed and obedient. The monk mounted on his back and was carried safely across the water. The tiger has gone and the monk has gone, but the story must be true, for a bridge was built to span the Black Water at the spot where the miracle occurred, and it is known as the Tiger Bridge to this day. In another place there is a great split rock inside which a mighty dragon slumbered for untold ages. One night in a terrible thunderstorm the rock was cleft asunder by lightning. The dragon flew away and was never seen again, but the story is true, because the sundered rock is still there and can be touched.

The numerous caves on the mountain have endless stories connected with them. One is supposed to be the haunt of nine great demons. Once upon a time some audacious monks determined that they would probe its mysteries. They advanced some distance into the interior without accident, when suddenly they were met by a prodigious bat that breathed fire. The monks turned round and walked away, wiser and sadder. Another cave—the Thunder Cavern—is the haunt of a ghostly dragon, who lurks in the depths of a gloomy tarn. This cave, with its lake, has probably a very ancient history, for it seems to be associated in some way with animistic worship, of which there are many traces on Omei.31 In seasons of drought it is or was formerly the custom to go to the cave with offerings of rich silks. If rain did not speedily fall as a result of the offerings, the correct procedure was to insult the dragon by throwing into his cave a dead pig and some articles of a still more disagreeable nature. This infallibly raised the wrath of the dragon, who immediately issued forth from his damp and gloomy home and roared. This meant thunder, and then the rain fell and all was well.

Mount Omei has several famous trees. Of one of them this story is told. In the Hui Tsung period (1101-25) of the Sung dynasty there was a very old tree, which about the year 1112 was torn open by a violent storm. Inside it was found a Buddhist monk, alive, in a state of ecstatic trance. The whole of his body was covered with his long hair and whiskers, and his nails were so long that they encircled his body. The emperor having heard of this living relic of the past, directed that he was to be carefully conveyed to the capital. Having with difficulty induced him to emerge from his tree, the messenger asked him his name. "I am the disciple," he replied, "of YÜan Fa-shih of Tung Lin. My name is Hui Ch'ih. I came to Omei on pilgrimage and entered into meditation in this tree. How is my master Yuan? Is he well?" "Your master Yuan," said the imperial emissary, "lived in the time of the Chin dynasty, and died seven hundred years ago." Hui Ch'ih answered not a word, but turned his back and resumed meditation in his tree. A somewhat similar story is as follows. In the fourteenth century of our era there was a monk who had chosen for the scene of his meditations the hollow interior of an ancient decayed tree. There he sat cross-legged in silent contemplation until he was about eighty years of age. His piety apparently communicated some mysterious vitality to the tree, for suddenly it underwent an extraordinary change: the withered branches put forth fresh shoots, green foliage reappeared, and the gaping fissure in the trunk closed up, leaving the contemplative monk inside. The chronicler goes on to remark with ill-timed levity that the monk had begun by taking possession of the tree, but the tree had ended by taking possession of the monk. It is understood, however, that the accident by no means interrupted his meditations, and that he is still sitting cross-legged in the darkened interior of his sylvan retreat, wrapped in profound reverie.

There is a legend that the Buddha himself visited Mount Omei, and his footprint in a rock is still shown near the summit, though in this age of little faith its outline is scarcely recognisable. As one of the monasteries also possesses an alleged Buddha's tooth it is clear that the fame of Omei ought to be as far-reaching as that of Adam's Peak and Kandy combined; but Ceylon and China are not the only countries that rejoice in the possession of footprints and teeth of the Buddha.

The local myths that have gathered round the name of the patron saint of Omei, P'u Hsien32 Bodhisattva, who is said to have brought the sacred books of Buddhism from India to China on the back of an elephant, and deposited them on the mountain, are quite devoid of historical foundation, for P'u Hsien was merely one of the numerous figures invented by the Mahayana Buddhists to fill up the broad canvas of their vast symbolical system.33 He represents, or rather is, the Samanta Bhadra of Indian Buddhism, and figures as such in that great Chinese Buddhist work, the Hua Yen Ching,34 one of the voluminous productions of Nagarjuna.35 The monks of Omei have invented the famous elephant-ride simply because Samanta Bhadra is always associated with an elephant in such authoritative Mahayana works as the Saddharma-PundarÎka. The third last chapter of that work (in Kumarajiva's translation) deals with P'u Hsien, who is represented as declaring to the Buddha that he will "mount a white elephant with six tusks" and take good monks under his special protection, shielding them from gods, goblins and Mara the Evil One. The monks of Omei say that having come to the mountain on his elephant he established himself there as a teacher of the Law of Buddha, and attracted three thousand pupils or disciples. It is quite possible that one of the original Buddhist hermits or monks of Omei acquired so great a celebrity that he became identified in the popular imagination with P'u Hsien. Something of the kind certainly happened in the case of other Bodhisattvas—Manjusri and AvalokiteÇvara, for instance. But all trace of historic truth soon vanished in myth. In a Buddhistic work that relates to Omei, P'u Hsien is described as the eldest son of the Buddha himself. "The TathÂgata (Buddha) sits on a great lotus consisting of 1000 leaves. Each leaf has 3000 Universes. Each Universe has a Buddha to expound the Law, and each Buddha has a P'u Hsien as eldest son (changtzu)." This is not an attempt to identify P'u Hsien with Rahula, the son of the historical Buddha; it refers to the Mahayana doctrine that Samanta Bhadra or P'u Hsien is the spiritual son or reflex of the celestial Vairocana, one of the five mythical Buddhas, just as Gautama Sakyamuni (the historical Buddha) was supposed to be the earthly embodiment of the celestial Bodhisattva AvalokiteÇvara, the spiritual son or reflex of the celestial Buddha Amitabha. As regards the significance of the elephant, it need only be mentioned here that in Indian Buddhistic mythology this animal (apart from its sacred association with the well-known dream of the Buddha's mother) is symbolical of self-control.36

The earliest religious buildings on Mount Omei were no doubt solitary hermitages, erected by recluses whose religious enthusiasm impelled them to find in the deep recesses of its forests and gorges a welcome retreat from the noise and vanity of a world that they despised. As time went on, richly-endowed monasteries—nobler and more splendid than any now existing—rose in its silent ravines and by the side of its sparkling water-courses, and opened their doors to welcome those whom spiritual ecstasy or longing for a life of philosophic contemplation, or perhaps the anguish of defeated ambition, drove from the haunts of men. But gradually as religious fervour died away, the mountain recluses and solitary students of early days were succeeded by smaller men, distinguished neither for piety nor for scholarship. It must, indeed, be confessed that no tradition of sound learning has been kept up in the Buddhist Church in China. To some extent the lack of scholarship among Chinese Buddhists may perhaps be traced not too fancifully to the practice and teaching of Bodhidarma,37 the so-called twenty-eighth patriarch of the Indian Buddhists, and the first of the patriarchs of China. He it was who, having landed in China early in the sixth century of our era, at once made it his business to discourage book-learning in the monasteries and to inculcate the doctrine that supreme enlightenment or mystical union with the Buddha can only be achieved by disregarding all exoteric teaching and by passive contemplation. By the recognition of all phenomena, including one's own personality, as illusory, the mind was to be maintained in a condition of intellectual quiescence and receptivity, whereby it would be in a fit state to enter into communion with the Absolute. Of Bodhidarma the story is told that he sat for nine years in one position looking at a wall, which is a crude way of explaining that he was a contemplative mystic. In China his teachings have undoubtedly had a sterilising influence on thought, somewhat similar—though for different reasons—to the baneful influence exercised in Europe by the too-exclusive devotion of the mediÆval schoolmen to Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas.

It may seem a far-fetched hypothesis to attribute part of the present degeneracy of the Buddhist monkhood in China to the teachings of a wall-gazing recluse who died nearly fourteen centuries ago. It might be urged that in searching for the cause of the present state of decay one need only point to the low orders of society from which the monks are recruited, the disfavour with which Buddhism is and always has been regarded by the orthodox Confucian, and the contempt which the thoroughly practical and worldly-minded Chinese layman almost invariably feels and expresses for the monastic profession. That these causes have powerfully assisted in accelerating the corruption that we witness to-day is unquestionably true; but there is a good deal of historical justification for the view that they are results rather than causes of Buddhist decay, and that the first and third would never have come into existence if Buddhism in China had not sunk into a state of intellectual torpor. If it had retained sufficient vigour and independence to reject all esoteric teachings and alien dogmas, even the great controversies with Confucianism would probably never have assumed the bitterness they did. Unfortunately, the extravagances of the later Mahayana doctrines and the foolish eclecticism which led the Buddhist Church to admit into its own system the crudities and banalities of corrupt Taoism, rendered the Buddhist position liable to attack at indefensible points, and compel us to admit that the controversial victories gained by Confucianism over its rival were the victories of light over darkness. It is strange that the repeated defeats and persecutions of Buddhism in China have not had the effect of bringing about either extinction or reform.

Chinese Buddhism is sui generis, and without a qualifying adjective it can scarcely be said to be Buddhism at all. This is no place to attempt a sketch of the history of that great religion in either its orthodox or its heretical aspects, but a few words may be necessary to enable the general reader to judge for himself whether Buddhism in China—quite apart from its present stagnant condition or the corruption of the monkhood—is entitled to the name it bears.

If there is one tenet of real Buddhism—by which I mean the doctrines on religious, philosophical and ethical subjects taught or sanctioned by the historical Buddha—which is more characteristic of that system than any other, it is the doctrine of the non-existence of the atta (Âtman) or "soul." It was this doctrine, among others, which made Buddhism a Brahmanical heresy, for it involved the rejection of the Vedas as the final and supreme authority on matters of religion. The crude impression of some people that Buddhism teaches the "transmigration of souls" is absurd, for the simple reason that in the Buddhist system "souls" in the Western sense do not exist. What survives the death of the individual and transfers itself to another living being is not his soul but the cleaving to existence, a tanha or thirst for life, an unconscious—or semi-conscious—"will to live"; and with this tanha is inevitably associated karma, the integrated results of action or character. Buddhism regards the cleaving to existence as the outcome of the worst kind of ignorance or delusion—the mistaking of the phenomenal for the real, the false for the true; and until this delusion has been completely removed and the character purified from all lusts and all evil tendencies, the reintegration of karma in a world of pain, sorrow, sickness and death cannot by any possibility be avoided. Karma,38 apart from its technical connotation, signifies "action" or "deeds." In the Buddhist sense it represents the accumulated results of the past actions and thoughts which every individual has inherited from countless multitudes of dead men, and which he will hand on, modified by the newly-generated karma of his own life-span, to countless generations yet unborn. It is karma which forms the character of each individual, and determines the condition of life in which he finds himself placed. The man dies, and his conscious individuality ceases to be; but his karma continues, and determines the character and condition of life of another individual. Each individual may make or mar the karma that he has inherited: if he spoils it he may literally sink lower than the beasts; if he improves it he may literally rise higher than the gods. But to the Buddhist the final goal to be aimed at was not a continued personal existence, either in this world or elsewhere: it was the total extinction of reproductive karma by the attainment of Arahatship or Nirvana, and final release from the ever-circling wheel of existence, with its endless rotation of birth, disease, sorrow and death.39

On the question of a primum mobile—the force which produced the conditions under which arose the will-to-live with its illusions, and which brought into being the first appearance of karma —Buddhism is agnostic or silent,40 just as it is on the question of the existence of a supreme God. What Buddhism emphatically teaches is that karma once produced, continues ceaselessly to reproduce itself, carrying with it the modifications impressed upon it by the successive individuals through whom it has "transmigrated"; that the only way to release karma from the wheel of phenomenal existence is to eradicate the desire for a continuance or renewal of conscious personality; and that this end can only be attained by following the Noble Eightfold Path,41 leading to Nirvana, which was pointed out by the Buddha. Mystical and fanciful interpretations of the meaning of Nirvana were forthcoming at an early date, but the canonical scriptures know nothing of such interpretations. It is quite clear that Nirvana was not the infinite prolongation of individual existence in a state of spiritual beatitude nor an absorption into a pantheistic Absolute; nor was the word intended to be a euphemism for death. It was simply a release from the thraldom of sense and passion; a "blowing-out" of personality and selfishness, of ignorance and delusion; an enfranchisement which in this present life would confer the boon of "the peace which passeth all understanding," and after this life would prevent rebirth, or rather reintegration of karma, in a world of pain and sorrow. To the Buddhist the whole world of sense, in which while subject to karma we live and move and have our being, is an illusion and unreal,—far more so than to the Platonist, to whom the phenomenal world is the reflexion, though an imperfect one, of an ideal archetype; and as the early Buddhist believed that the idea of self or personality was closely interwoven with the net of illusion, he was quite consistent when he held that the destruction of the one must involve the destruction of the other, and that release from the net is a desirable consummation. Nirvana may thus be described as full enlightenment as to the unreality and impermanence of phenomena, the removal of delusions about the self, and the eradication of the cleaving to life. Those who attained this enlightenment were the saints or "arahats" of primitive Buddhism.42 The Buddha himself, it must be remembered, never laid any claim to godhead or even to personal immortality. His disciples reverenced him as the Fully Enlightened Sage, the Blessed One, the Teacher of gods and men, and he was the expounder of truths by the grasp of which men would be enabled to realise the condition of arahatship; but in the last resort it was to themselves and not to Buddha that men must look for salvation. "Therefore, O Ananda," said the Buddha in one of his last discourses, "be ye lamps unto yourselves. Be ye a refuge to yourselves. Betake yourselves to no external refuge. Hold fast to the truth as a lamp. Hold fast as a refuge to the truth. Look not for refuge to any one besides yourselves."43

How vastly different are the teachings of Chinese Buddhists from those of the simple creed promulgated by the Buddha is obvious to all who have visited a Chinese monastery, or glanced at the wearisome sutras, in which the unorthodox dogmas are so elaborately set forth. The Brahmanical belief in the Âtman or "soul" is practically reintroduced; arahatship is no longer the ideal to be aimed at by the virtuous man; Nirvana ceases to have any intelligible meaning; faith takes the place of works as a means to salvation. Celestial (DhyÂni) Buddhas are invented as heavenly reflexes of the various human Buddhas that are supposed to have lived on earth, and some of them receive worship as immortal gods; arahats are regarded as inferior to a class of mythical Bodhisattvas, who purposely refrain from entering into the state of Buddhahood in order that they may continue to exercise a beneficent influence among the beings who are still bound to the wheel of existence; the most glorious lot attainable by the ordinary man is held to be not a release from delusion and the pains of birth, sickness, and death, but a final rebirth in the glittering Paradise of the West. In this Paradise reigns the Lord of Eternal Life and Boundless Light, the great DhyÂni Buddha Amitabha; on his right and left are enthroned the Bodhisattvas MahÂsthÂma and AvalokiteÇvara,44 the lords of infinite strength and pity, the saviours of mankind. To win utter happiness in SukhÂvatÎ, the Western Paradise, is the object of the longings and prayers of the devout Chinese Buddhist. The name of Sakyamuni Buddha means little to him, and he may even be ignorant of who the Buddha was, and where he lived; but the names of "O-mi-to-fo" (Amitabha Buddha)45 and of Kuan Yin P'u Sa (the Bodhisattva AvalokiteÇvara) stand to him for everything that is holiest and most blissful. To such an extent have Amitabha and his attendant Bodhisattvas taken the place of the "Three Refuges"46 of orthodox Buddhism that one almost feels justified in suggesting that the prevailing (though not the only) form of Buddhism in China should once and for all be differentiated from that of Burma and Ceylon, by the adoption of the name of Amitabhism, just as the corrupt religion of Tibet has rightly been given the special name of Lamaism.

If the Mahayana teachers in China had been satisfied with substituting the doctrine of a more or less sensual heaven for that of the orthodox arahatship or Nirvana on the ground that it was more suited to the comprehension of the ordinary layman, and would be more effective in teaching the people to lead virtuous lives, their distortion of the early teachings might, perhaps, to some extent be justified; but unfortunately the form which the new doctrine took at a very early stage shows that no such theory was in their minds. Instead of exhorting to strenuous lives of virtue and good works, they went out of their way to teach that nothing was really necessary to salvation but loud and frequent appeals to the name of Amitabha Buddha and zealous repetitions of the appropriate sutras. One of the principal sutras of this class contains the following emphatic statement:—"Beings are not born in that Buddha country of the TathÂgata AmitÂyus as a reward and result of good works performed in this present life. No, whatever son or daughter of a family shall hear the name of the blessed AmitÂyus, the TathÂgata, and having heard it, shall keep it in mind, and with thoughts undisturbed shall keep it in mind for one, two, three, four, five, six or seven nights,—when that son or daughter of a family comes to die, then that AmitÂyus, the TathÂgata, surrounded by an assembly of disciples and followed by a host of Bodhisattvas, will stand before them at their hour of death, and they will depart this life with tranquil minds. After their death they will be born in the world SukhÂvatÎ, in the Buddha country of the same AmitÂyus, the TathÂgata. Therefore, then, O SÂriputra, having perceived this cause and effect, I with reverence say thus, Every son and every daughter of a family ought with their whole mind to make fervent prayer for that Buddha country."47 Numerous Buddhist tracts are in existence and widely circulated among the people, in which it is explicitly stated that if a man calls sufficiently often on the name of Kuan Yin, he will be delivered from any danger or difficulty in which he may be placed, quite regardless of his deserts. There are popular stories in which it is told that even if a man be guilty of grave crimes for which he has been imprisoned and condemned to death, the knife of the executioner will break in pieces and do him no hurt provided only he has, with a believing heart, summoned to his aid the "Goddess of Mercy." Stories of this kind, even if educated men do not believe in them, can hardly have a beneficent effect upon morality, and hardly redound to the credit of the monks who invented them.

To blame the Chinese Buddhists, however, for failing to preserve their religion from corrupt influences is hardly fair: for it must be admitted that the stream of Buddhist literature and tradition that flowed for centuries into China from Northern India and Nepal issued from a source that was already tainted. Sakyamuni Buddha probably died in the fifth century B.C. Buddhism did not obtain a foothold in China till five or six centuries later, and it was not till the fourth century of our era that native Chinese began in large numbers to take the vows as Buddhist monks. By this time primitive Buddhism had already been cruelly distorted. Where it was at all possible, the Mahayana dogmas were read into the simple scriptures that formed the Asokan canon; where the utmost ingenuity failed to find the germs of these dogmas in the canon, the doctors of the Mahayana school deliberately set themselves to compile a series of colossal forgeries by putting forth new sutras, purporting to have been uttered by the Buddha himself, but containing an entirely new book of doctrine.48 Part of it was probably brought from Persia and Arabia, and nearly all was totally inconsistent with the primitive doctrine of the Buddha. Like the founder of the Mormons in after-ages, the pious forgers—let us hope they were unconscious of their guilt—pretended to be merely the "finders" of the new sutras. Sometimes they were said to have been discovered in caves guarded by demons. Nagarjuna, for instance, who was one of the worst offenders, is supposed to have found in "the palace of the Dragon" the great Hua Yen sutra, already referred to, a work which justifies us in regarding Nagarjuna as one of the principal inventors or adapters of the Mahayana doctrines, or at least as one of those who grafted them on the original Buddhistic stock. The Chinese admire him so much that they have elevated him into the position of a Bodhisattva, and celebrate his birthday on the 25th day of the seventh moon. Among the principal speakers in the Hua Yen sutra are the Buddha himself and the mythical Bodhisattvas P'u Hsien and Manjusri.

The Mahayana doctrine concerning this order of being is, as I have said, totally unknown to early Buddhism; and out of or beside this central doctrine of the Mahayana system grew up a cluster of dogmas which, like some parasitic weed, could only have the effect of choking and killing the original plant of which the Buddha himself had sown the seed. The Chinese "fathers" were not primarily responsible for all this. The vast mythology that culminates in the doctrine of Amitabha's heaven was accepted in China only too readily, but it was not a Chinese invention. If the history of these fanciful dogmas can be more readily traced in China and Tibet than elsewhere, it is only because Buddhism practically ceased to exist in the country of its origin. What Chinese Buddhism might have been if it had sought to establish itself upon the Asokan canon instead of upon a bundle of crude myths and grotesque allegories may be realised easily enough by comparing it with the Buddhism of Burma and Siam, which—in spite of their tolerance of a system of animistic worship alien to Buddhism—have preserved almost intact the body of doctrine that they inherited through Ceylon from the orthodox Church. What with the growth of the mystic schools derived from Bodhidarma, the Tantra schools with their magic spells and incantations, the Lin Tzu school that teaches religion in the form of enigmas, the Wu Wei school with its doctrine of a Golden Mother, the hideous demonology introduced into Buddhism by a debased wonder-working Taoism, and the innumerable schools that unite in their praises of the bejewelled Western Heaven which can be attained merely by repeating the name of Amitabha Buddha or Kuan Yin P'u Sa, it is no wonder that Buddhism in China has fallen a victim to the fangs of its own grotesque offspring.

In the following chapter some further remarks on Mount Omei will, I trust, serve to emphasise the observations already made, and will perhaps help the European reader who has not visited China to form some conception of the theory and practice of Chinese Buddhism at the present day. I hope I may be excused if I depart so far from the usual practice of travellers in China as to refrain from entering into a discussion of the general question of religion, especially in connection with Christian propaganda. For my own part, I may perhaps venture to express the hope and belief that the missionary question is one which time will solve at no very distant date. As soon as a reformed China has earned for herself—by the reform of her legal codes and judicial procedure—the right to demand the total abolition of foreign consular jurisdiction within Chinese territory, missionaries will cease to be a thorn in the flesh of Chinese officialdom. They may obtain fewer converts, but they will at least have the satisfaction of knowing that such converts as they may then gain will not be actuated by the desire to secure foreign protection against the laws of their own country; whereas the official classes will no longer have cause to regard missionaries as a political danger. There is no doubt that many of the outbreaks of fanatical hatred against foreigners are directly or indirectly traceable to the missionary question.49 In spite of this fact it will be generally conceded that, like most Orientals, the Chinese are, in purely religious matters, inclined to be extremely tolerant: far more so, needless to say, than Western peoples usually are. History proves that the Chinese people are not hostile to foreign religious doctrines as such, but only when foreign religions tend to introduce disintegrating forces into the social fabric. Similarly the official classes are not inimical to foreign religions as such, but only when foreign religions threaten the stability of the political fabric and the independence of the State. These dangers will no longer operate when foreign missionary enterprise absolutely ceases to have even the semblance of a connection with international politics, and foreign missionaries become in all respects amenable to the courts of the country in which they live and work.

Whether the change will tend to spread the doctrines of Christianity in China with greater rapidity, or will, on the other hand, bring about its ultimate extinction, is a question regarding which it would be rash to prophesy. Given fair field and no favour it might well seem that the disorganised forces of a corrupt Buddhism would be ill fitted to cope with such strenuous and well-equipped adversaries as the Churches of Christendom: yet perhaps it is more likely that the ultimate victory will rest with neither. The clashing of forces that must assuredly result from the weakening of the hold of Confucianism on the educated classes and the introduction of new political and social ideals may lead to an intellectual upheaval tending to the destruction of all religion. Even to-day, the only vigorous element in the heterogeneous religious systems of China consists in that expansion of the ideal of filial piety which takes the form of the cult of ancestors: a cult which has done so much in the past to preserve, consolidate and multiply the Chinese people and make them peaceful, law-abiding and home-loving, and which has nevertheless been condemned as idolatrous by the two great branches of the Christian faith. It was this rock of Chinese orthodoxy that shattered the power of the Church of Rome in China, and that rock is still a danger and an obstruction in the troubled waters through which glide the frail barks of the Christian missions. On the whole, it seems improbable that the dogmas, at least, of any of the Christian Churches will ever find general acceptance on Chinese soil. The moral and spiritual regeneration of China is more likely to be brought about by the growth of a neo-Confucianism frankly accepting such adaptations as the social and political conditions of modern times may render necessary; and if this is insufficient to satisfy the spiritual aspirations of the people, there may arise a reformed Buddhism drawing its inspiration either from the simple faith of Burma, Siam, and Ceylon, or—far more probably—from one of the complex systems (near in kinship to those of China but with a vitality of their own) that have evolved themselves upon the soil of Japan.