There are only five names, responsible for seven Sutras, and there are, besides, two Sutras by unknown hands. Of the five men, two (Than-ti and An-fah-hien, A.D. 254) come from the country of the Ansi, i.e. Parthia, one (Po-Yen) from the Western Regions (Khotan), one (Dharmakala) from Central India, and a fifth (Sanghavarman) from India via Thibet, or vice versa. Three of these men brought with them the Vinaya of the Dharmagupta School, which I have been explaining in this chapter, and thus laid the foundation on which in later years the Chinese and Japanese orders of monks were erected.

Of other subjects, outside of the Vinaya, they give us two volumes of the dialogues of which Buddhists are so fond, the Questions of Ugra (No. 23) and those of Surata (No. 43), a translation of the Sutra of the Great Decease (No. 5, now lost); one on the Names and Surnames of the Seven Buddhas (No. 626); a treatise on Immortality as contained in the Abhidharma (No. 1278), and three translations of the Sukhavati Vyuha, of which only Sanghavarman's (No. 27) has survived.

It says much for the opinion that the Doctrine of Faith in Amitabha is the true representative of the

[paragraph continues] Japanese Mahayana. We have already seen it dimly in As'vaghosha; we have seen Nagarjuna learning it from the Naga chieftain. In A.D. 147 the book containing that doctrine is taken to China; before A.D. 250 five versions of that book had been made. It looks as though the Han and Wei missionaries were using the historical S'akyamuni as a means whereby to point men to the unhistorical Amitabha and his spiritual son, in whose story there lies enshrined the essence of the story of man's redemption as preached by St. Paul. The story of Amitabha was needed by those early missionaries of the faith of S'akyamuni to give life to the otherwise dead rules of the Dharmagupta Vinaya. Its historical counterpart is now changing and quickening the dead bones of Japanese Buddhism and preparing the way for what will be one of the most remarkable conversions in the religious history of the world.

From the fall of Han in A.D. 220 to the rise of the Tang in A.D. 618, China was rarely united. For the greater part of this period of four centuries, two, three, four, even five or more dynasties ruled side by side, as rivals and competitors, within the empire. It is almost impossible to write a history of the China of the fourth and fifth centuries; it is still more difficult to give anything like an adequate description of the religious policy of the conflicting states, or to trace, step by step, the gradual growth or decline of Buddhist doctrines in the whole empire during this period.

Some of the dynasties were influenced mainly by the