To illustrate these statements more fully, reference must be made to the more popular personages and better-known worlds in the new mythology. Among these fabled worlds located in distant space, the best known is the paradise of Amitabha. In the Wu-liang-sheu-king (Amitabha Sutra), Buddha tells a tale of a king in a former kalpa who left the world, adopted the monkish life, assumed the name Fa-tsang, "Treasure of the law," and became, by his rapid growth in knowledge and virtue, a Bodhisattwa. To the Buddha who was his teacher he uttered forty-eight wishes, having reference to the good he desired to accomplish for all living beings, if he should attain the rank of Buddha. Ten kalpas since, he received that title with the name "Amitabha" (O-mi-to Fo), and now resides in a world far in the West, to fulfil his forty-eight wishes for the benefit of mankind. Ten million kingdoms of Buddhas separate his world from our own. It is composed of gold, silver, lapis-lazuli, coral, amber, a stone called ch'a-ku, and cornelian. There is there no Sumeru mountain, nor iron mountain girdle, nor are there any prisons for punishment. There is no fear of becoming a hungry ghost, or an animal by transmigration, for such modes of life are unknown there. There are all kinds of beautiful flowers, which the inhabitants pluck to present as offerings to the thousands and millions of Buddhas that reside in other parts of space. Birds of the most beautiful plumage sing day and night of the five principles of virtue, the five sources of moral power, and the seven steps in knowledge. The listener is so affected by their music, that he can think only of Buddha, the Law, and the Priesthood. The life-time of this Buddha is without limit, lasting through

countless kalpas, and therefore he is called "Amitabha" (Wu-liang-sheu, "Boundless age"). Two Bodhisattwas reside there, anxious to save a multitude of living beings, who, with Amitabha, are worshipped assiduously by the Northern Buddhists. They are, says the Wu-liang-sheu-king, Kwan-shi-yin and Ta-shi-chi. They radiate light over three thousand great worlds. They attained their rank by good deeds performed in our own world, and were rewarded by birth into the Western paradise of Amitabha.

The Amitabha Sutra, after minutely dilating on this paradise, describes nine other worlds at a corresponding distance from our own, and occupying, as in the former case, the cardinal points and intermediate positions, with the zenith and nadir. Ach'obhya and other Buddhas rule in the East, numerous as the sands of the Ganges, each proclaiming the doctrine that instructs and saves to the inhabitants of his own kingdom. A similar account is given of the other worlds and their Buddhas.