This circumstance throws light on the objects of Lung-shu in composing the Sutras of which he was the author. For this school gives a symbolical interpretation to the mythology of the Buddhist books. The very popular and influential Sutra called Hwa-yen-king came from the pen of Lung-shu. The Chinese preface to that work says that Lung-shu p'u-sa, having exhausted the study of all human literature, entered the Dragon palace to examine the Buddhist "pitaka" (san-tsang). He there found three forms of the Hwa-yen-king. The largest was divided into sections whose number is expressed by the particles contained in a world of dust. The next consisted of twelve hundred sections, and the smallest of forty-eight sections. The last and least he gave to the world with its present title, and he must therefore be regarded as its author.

This and other works of the Great Development class contain a great extension of the mythological element of Buddhism. Many new Buddhas and Bodhisattwas here appear, distinguished by various high attributes of

goodness, knowledge, and magical power. To afford room for the display of these attributes, new worlds are located at pleasure in the boundless regions of space. But the whole of this imaginative creation was probably intended by the authors to be symbolical. According to the explanation of the T'ien-t'ai school, and of the esoteric Buddhists, the whole of this fictitious universe was meant to illustrate certain Buddhist dogmas. It was the extreme scepticism of the Buddhist philosophers that paved their way to this mode of teaching their system. In the T'ien-t'ai commentary on the Fa-hwa-king, the symbolical method of interpreting this mythological creation of the fancy may be seen exemplified.--(See Fa-hwa-hwei-i).

Some specimens of this mythology will now be given.

The Hwa-yen-king says that, on one occasion, Buddha was presiding over an assembly at a place of meeting called Aranyaka, in the kingdom of Magadha. He saw approaching a multitude of Bodhisattwas from distant worlds. They asked to be instructed in regard to the "lands where the Buddhas resided." (Fo "ch'ah," spelled in full in the old pronunciation, ch'a-ta-la; in Sanscrit, kshetra, "land." ) Buddha accordingly entered on a description of the kingdoms of the Buddhas. To the east, after passing worlds equal in number to the dust of ten of these kingdoms, there is one termed the golden-coloured world. The Buddha of "wisdom unmoved" presides there. Wen-shu (Manjusiri) and a crowd of other Bodhisattwas attend his instructions, as he sits on a lion dais surrounded by lotus flowers. To the south, west, and north, and to the north-east, south-east, south-west, and north-west, are other worlds at a distance equally great. Towards the zenith and nadir two other worlds make up the number ten, each having a governing Buddha,