While the reflecting Buddhists hold these views, they encourage the faith of the vulgar in the Hindoo mythology and the more recent inventions of their own system. Their denial of the reality of worldly phenomena, and of the validity of the information afforded by our senses, has not been a check to popular image worship, but rather promoted it, from the license that it gave them to countenance lying legends and invent new additions ad libitum to the Hindoo pantheon.

The special object of the T'ien-t'ai school has been to strike a middle path between the credulous acceptance of the sacred books as literally true, and their entire rejection by extreme idealism. It was thought best to recognise both these modifications of Buddhism as genuine developments of the system, and to add a third reconciling principle which distinguishes the others, compares and combines them, and then chooses the path between them.

In conformity with this view, regulations for the practice of his followers were instituted by Chi-k'ai:--(1.) Constant sitting, to attain the state of samadhi or reverie taught to Manjusiri; (2.) Constant moving, to attain another state of samadhi taught by Buddha; (3.) Partly

sitting and partly moving, to attain the state of samadhi taught by him to P'u-hien; (4.) Neither sitting nor moving, to attain still another form of religious reverie.

The regulations for chanting as followed by this school were elaborated by a priest named Fa-chi who lived some centuries after Chi-k'ai. They are very minute, and are intended to produce more reverential feelings in the minds of those engaging in the ceremonial than is common in Buddhist worship.

Footnotes

^175:1 The "Red wall," so called from its colour and precipitous appearance.

^177:1 T'ien-t'ai-shan-chi.

^177:2 A.D. 575, Biography in T'ien-t'ai-han-chi.

^182:1 Chi-yue-lu.

^183:1 San-kiau-yi-su.

^186:1 Fa-hwa-hwei-i.

^187:1 Regulations of the T'ien-t'ai-kiau, in the liturgical work called Ta-pei-ts'an.