Buddhist and Shint[=o]ist might quarrel as to his title, and divide, even to anger, on minor points, they would both agree in letting the common people take their pleasure, enjoy the festivals and merriment, and preserve their reverence and worship.

(4) Still another spectator studied with critical interest the swaying figure high in air. With a taste for archaeology, he admired the accuracy of the drapery and associations. He was amused, it may be, with occasional anachronisms as to garments or equipments. He knew that the original of this personage had been nothing more than a human being, who might indeed have been conspicuous as a brave soldier in war, or as a skilful physician who helped to stop the plague, or as a civilizer who imported new food or improved agriculture.

In a word, had this subject of the ancient Mikado lived in modern Christendom, he might be honored through the government, patent office, privy council, the admiralty, the university, or the academy, as the case or worth might be. He might shine in a plastic representation by the sculptor or artist, or be known in the popular literature; but he would never receive religious worship, or aught beyond honor and praise. In this swamping of history in legend and of fact in dogma, we behold the fruit of K[=o]b[=o]'s work, Riy[=o]bu Buddhism.

K[=o]b[=o]'s Work Undone.

Buddhism calls itself the jewel in the lotus. Japanese poetry asks of the dewdrop "why, having the heart of the lotus for its home, does it pretend to be a gem?" For a thousand years Riy[=o]bu Buddhism was received as a pure brilliant of the first water, and then the scholarship of the Shint[=o] revivalists of the eighteenth century exposed the fraudulent nature of the unrelated parts and declared that the jewel called Riy[=o]bu was but a craftsman's doublet and should be split apart. Only a splinter of diamond, they declared, crowned a mass of paste. Indignation made learning hot, and in 1870 the cement was liquefied in civil war. The doublet was rent asunder by imperial decree, as when a lapidist melts the mastic that holds in deception adamant and glass, while real diamond stands all fire short of the hydro-oxygen flame. The Riy[=o]bu temples were purged of all Buddhist symbols, furniture, equipment and personnel, and were made again to assume their august and austere simplicity. In the eyes of the purely aesthetic critic, this national purgation was Puritanical iconoclasm; in those of the priests, cast out to earn rice elsewise and elsewhere, it was outrage, which in individual instances called for reprisal in blood, fire and assassination; to the Shint[=o]ist, it was an exhibition of the righteous judgment of the long-insulted gods; in the ken of the critical student, it seems very much like historic and poetic justice.

In our day and time, Riy[=o]bu Buddhism furnishes us with a warning, for, looked at from a purely human point of view, what happened to Shint[=o] may possibly happen to Japanese Christianity. The successors of those who, in the ninth century, did not scruple to Buddhaize Shint[=o], and in later times, even our own, to Shint[=o]ize Buddhism while holding to Buddha's name and all the revenue possible, will Buddhaize Christianity if they have power and opportunity; and signs are not wanting to show that this is upon their programme.

The water of stagnant Buddhism is still a swarming mass, which needs cleansing to purity by a knowledge of one God who is Light and Love. Without such knowledge, the manifold changes in Buddhism will but form fresh chapters of degradation and decay. Holding such knowledge, Christianity may pass through endless changes, for this is her capability by Divine power and the authorization of her Founder. The now Buddhism of our day is endeavoring to save itself through reformation and progress. In doing so, the danger of the destruction of the system is great, for thus far change has meant decay.

CHAPTER VIII - NORTHERN BUDDHISM IN ITS DOCTRINAL EVOLUTIONS

"To the millions of China, Corea, and Japan, creator and creation are new and strange terms,"--J.H. De Forest.

"The Law of our Lord, the Buddha, is not a natural science or a religion, but a doctrine of enlightenment; and the object of it is to give rest to the restless, to point out the Master (the Inmost Man) to those that are blind and do not perceive their Original State."

"The Saddharma Pundarika Sutra teaches us how to obtain that desirable knowledge of the mind as it is in itself [universal wisdom] ... Mind is the One Reality, and all Scriptures are the micrographic photographs of its images. He that fully grasps the Divine Body of Sakyamuni, holds ever, even without the written Sutra, the inner Saddharma Pundarika in his hand. He ever reads it mentally, even though he would never read it orally. He is unified with it though he has no thought about it. He is the true keeper of the Sutra."--Zitsuzen Ashitsu of the Tendai sect.

"It [Buddhism] is idealistic. Everything is as we think it. The world is my idea.... Beyond our faith is naught. Hold the Buddhist to his creed and insist that such logic destroys itself, and he triumphs smilingly, 'Self-destructive! Of course it is. All logic is. That is the centre of my philosophy.'"

"It [Buddhism] denounces all desire and offers salvation as the reward of the murder of our affections, hopes, and aspirations. It is possible where conscious existence is believed to be the chief of evils."--George William Knox.

"Swallowing the device of the priests, the people well satisfied, dance their prayers."--Japanese Proverb.

"The wisdom that is from above is ... without variance, without hypocrisy."--James.

"The mystery of God, even Christ in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge."--Paul.

CHAPTER VIII - NORTHERN BUDDHISM IN ITS DOCTRINAL EVOLUTIONS

Chronological Outline.

In sketching the history of the doctrinal developments of Buddhism in Japan, we note that the system, greatly corrupted from its original simplicity, was in 552 A.D. already a millennium old. Several distinct phases of the much-altered faith of Gautama, were introduced into the islands at various times between the sixth and the ninth century. From these and from others of native origin have sprung the larger Japanese sects. Even as late as the seventeenth century, novelties in Buddhism were imported from China, and the exotics took root in Japanese soil; but then, with a single exception, only to grow as curiosities in the garden, rather than as the great forests, which had already sprung from imported and native specimens.

We may divide the period of the doctrinal development of Buddhism in Japan into four epochs:

I. The first, from 552 to 805 A.D., will cover the first six sects, which had for their centre of propagation, Nara, the southern capital.

II. Then follows Riy[=o]bu Buddhism, from the ninth to the twelfth centuries.

III. This was succeeded by another explosion of doctrine wholly and peculiarly Japanese, and by a wide missionary propagation.

IV. From the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, there is little that is doctrinally noticeable, until our own time, when the new Buddhism of to-day claims at least a passing notice.

The Japanese writers of ecclesiastical history classify in three groups the twelve great sects as the first six, the two mediaeval, and the four modern sects.

In this lecture we shall merely summarize the characteristics of the first five sects which existed before the opening of the ninth century but which are not formally extant at the present time, and treat more fully the purely Japanese developments. The first three sects may be grouped under the head of the Hinayana, or Smaller Vehicle, as Southern or primitive orthodox Buddhism is usually called.

Most of the early sects, as will be seen, were founded upon some particular sutra, or upon selections or collections of sutras. They correspond to some extent with the manifold sects of Christendom, and yet this illustration or reference must not be misleading. It is not as though a new Christian sect, for example, were in A.D. 500 to be formed wholly on the gospel of Luke, or the book of the Revelation; nor as though a new sect should now arise in Norway or Tennessee because of a special emphasis laid on a combination of the epistle to the Corinthians and the book of Daniel. It is rather as though distinct names and organizations should be founded upon the writings of Tertullian, of Augustine, of Luther, or of Calvin, and that such sects should accept the literary work of these scholars not only as commentaries but as Holy Scripture itself.

The Buddhist body of scriptures has several times been imported and printed in Japan, but has never been translated into the vernacular. The canon[1] is not made up simply of writings purporting to be the words of Buddha or of the apostles who were his immediate companions or followers. On the contrary, the canon, as received in Japan, is made up of books, written for the most part many centuries after the last of the contemporaries of Gautama had passed away. Not a few of these writings are the products of the Chinese intellect. Some books held by particular sects as holy scripture were composed in Japan itself, the very books themselves being worshipped. Nevertheless those who are apparently farthest away from primitive Buddhism, claim to understand Buddha most clearly.

The Standard Doctrinal Work.

One of the most famous of books, honored especially by several of the later and larger sects in Japan, and probably the most widely read and most generally studied book of the canon, is the Saddharma Pundarika.[2] Professor Kern, who has translated this very rhetorical work into English, thinks it existed at or some time before 250 A.D., and that in its most ancient form it dates some centuries earlier, possibly as early as the opening of the Christian era. It has now twenty-seven chapters, and may be called the typical scripture of Northern Buddhism. It is overflowingly full of those sensuous images and descriptions of the Paradise, in which the imagination of the Japanese Buddhist so revels, and in it both rhetoric and mathematics run wild. Of this book, "the