Hermits are not uncommonly met with in the vicinity of large Buddhist establishments. They occupy hill-side caves, or a closed apartment, which for a certain term of years they never leave. Their hair is allowed to grow unshorn. Their food is brought them by the monks of a neighbouring monastery. They employ their time in reciting the sacred books, meditation on Buddhist doctrine,

care of their cell, and replenishing the incense urn placed before the image of Shakyamuni.

The preceding pages may be regarded as a sketch of the external history of Chinese Buddhism. A notice of the successive schools into which this religion has subdivided itself will now be presented to the reader.

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NOTE ON INDIAN SCIENCE AND ART.

The Hindoos borrowed copiously from Babylon and other western countries. If in the eighth and ninth centuries they used what we call the Indian arithmetical notation in giving mathematical instruction to the Chinese, it was because they had already learned it from Babylonian teachers. The decipherment of mathematical inscriptions from Mesopotamia shows that long before the age of David and Solomon this notation was in common use there. So in art the Hindoos copied the Greeks. After Alexander's invasion of India the Hindoos became sculptors. They carved Buddhist friezes by the help of Greek suggestion. Vincent A. Smith says in the volume for 1889 of the Journal of the Bengal Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, that the Hindoos followed Greek prototypes when planning buildings, images, and pillars. This is the reason that the metempsychosis appears somewhat late in Indian literature. It too was of foreign origin.

Footnotes

^88:1 He had the dream in A.D. 61. Eighteen men were sent. They went to the country of the Getae, bordering on India, and there they met the two Brahmans. They came riding on white horses, with pictures, images, and books; and arrived in A.D. 67. On the thirtieth day of the twelfth month they saw the emperor.

^88:2 Ta-hia, in old Chinese Dai-he. It was 207 years earlier that the Dale and Getae were defeated in battle by Alexander. Dahistan borders on the Caspian, forming the south-east coast of that sea.

^89:1 He foretold future events by interpreting the sound of pagoda bells as they were blown by the wind. On one occasion he placed water in an empty flower-pot, and burned incense, when a blue lotus sprang into view in full bloom.

^89:2 The syllables Sang-mun are also employed. Shramana means the "quieting of the passions." Sih-sin, "to put the mind at rest," is the Chinese translation of it.

^90:1 See the Ts'in history.