Several practical reforms ought to be noticed. In A.D. 335 a monk named Buddhoganga persuaded King She-hu of the Posterior Chow dynasty to institute ordinations and allow Chinese natives to take monastic vows. This permission greatly changed the nature of Chinese Buddhism. In India it had been the custom for kings to support the Order by their royal bounty, and the custom obtained at first in China also, thus keeping the Order as an exotic and aristocratic institution. But when Chinese natives took the vows, the Order increased very rapidly, and Buddhism became a thing belonging to the people rather than to the sovereign.

In A.D. 401, Kumarajiva was brought to China, and was welcomed at Chang-an by the sovereign of the Latter Tsin Dynasty. Kumarajiva suggested, and carried out, a revision and retranslation of the older works, some of which had been but roughly translated by the earlier missionaries. This secured a large measure of popularity for the revised versions of the Tripitaka. In 520, Bodhidharma, the then patriarch of Mahayanism, left India and came to China to avoid the persecution of the Brahmanists, where, finding the block of literature, he swept the whole of the Tripitaka aside, declaring that the essence of Buddhism is to find the "heart of Buddha" by meditation, as Buddha himself had done. In 399, Fahian started on a journey to India, to investigate Buddhism at its fountain-head.

It is noteworthy, says M. Ch. Pithon, in an article in the China Review (vol. xi.), on the History of China under the Tsin Dynasty, that the Posterior Chow and the Tsin, who did so much for Chinese Buddhism, were really Huns, and ruled over a large proportion of Hiungnu subjects. The Huns all over the world stood by one another, and the chief of all the Huns was Attila (A.D. 445), whose word was law from the frontiers of Gaul to those of China. How much of Buddhist teaching came into Christian folklore and superstition through Hunnish soldiers in the regiments of Attila, it would require a large treatise to investigate.

In 372 a Chinese monk preached Buddhism in the

[paragraph continues] Korean kingdom of Koma, or Kaoli, and thus at length, after a long and eventful history, the Way was brought to Japan in the year 545 A.D.

Footnotes

^131:1 I take this chapter mainly from Gyonen's sketch of the Eight Buddhist Sects in Japan ("Revue de l'Histoire des Religions," vol. xxv. p. 341).

^133:1 The Sacred Books had possibly not yet been committed to writing; they were orally recited, and the oral recitation must have been a frequent cause of inadvertent error.

^133:2 These four were: (a) Jubunritsu, the Vinaya (in Ten Recitations) of the Sarvastivadins; (b) Shibunritsu (Four Recitations), of the Dharmaguptas: (c) Gobunritsu (Five Recitations), of the Mahis'akas; and (d) Soritsu, the Vinaya of the clergy.