literati, who were, to a man, the followers of Confucius, and the enemies of everything that called itself a religion of the supernatural. Others, again, were Taoists from conviction, and others Buddhists or Taoists from conviction or policy. Occasionally attempts were made to unite these conflicting faiths. Thus we have, about A.D. 240, an attempt at unifying Confucianism and the Mahayana, by introducing the images of the Wuti, or Five Rulers (i.e. the five Dhyani Buddhas), into the Temples of Confucius, made without success. An equally unsuccessful attempt forcibly to effect an amalgamation of Buddhism with the religion of Tao, in A.D. 555, was probably the measure which gave to the Japanese a few years later the idea of the Ryobu-Shinto, or amalgamation of Buddhism with Shinto, which lasted until the restoration of Meiji.

India, in the meanwhile, was undergoing many a political and religious convulsion, and the monks, persecuted by the Brahmans at home, took refuge in China, bringing with them each the books that had affected him in his native land, and translating them into Chinese for the benefit of the native peoples. It is interesting to turn over the leaves of the Appendix to Nanjo's Catalogue and analyse the lists of translators by dynasties, by books, and by the countries from which they came. Thus the translators of the Wei dynasty, which ruled at Loyang from 220 to 265, come either from Central India or Parthia, but all bring with them the Vinaya books of the Dharmagupta sect of the Hinayana. Under the Wu (222-280) at Nankin, we get none but Central Indian monks, and scarcely any but Hinayana books, or at least books which, like the Dharmapada, belong equally to both Vehicles. The Western Tsin at Loyang (265-316), with Dharmaraksha, as facile princeps of the band, give

us mostly theological treatises of the Mahayana, from the pens of translators who come from Ansi, Khotan, and the western provinces of China proper. The former Lian, with capital at Kutsan (302-376), furnish but one book, translated by a man from the Yuetchi country. The Eastern Tsin (at Nankin, 317-420) give us a long list of translators from Kabul, Kharachar, Central Asia--one of them a descendant of S'akyamuni's uncle--and some translate works of a practical rather than a religious character: spells for relieving toothache, bad eyes, crying babies, and people suffering from summer sickness. The Lian (502-557) at Nanking have translators who come by sea from Siam. It would be unprofitable to continue this list any further. Suffice it to say that books came in by the thousand, representing all the conflicting schools of Buddhist thought, and hailing from every country, north, west or south, in which Buddhism was represented. Buddhism itself almost died under the weight of its own books, and of the institutions which it had brought with it from India.