Communications with India were restored. The peninsula was now under the sway of the later Gupta sovereigns. Samudragupta (326-375) ruled over an empire larger than any that had acknowledged a purely Indian sovereign since the days of As'oka. He was paramount in the peninsula, and his alliances extended from Ceylon to the Oxus, where he came in touch with the Thsin. Neither he nor his successor Chandragupta II. (shall we call him Vikramaditya?) were Buddhists. They were both worshippers of Vishnu, but both were tolerant men and gave free liberty to Buddhism and Jainism. What wonder is it that, the way being once more open to the Holy Land of Buddhism, devout Chinese pilgrims

should have flocked to visit the places associated with the birth, life, and death of S'akyamuni? And what wonder that the net result of the journeys of these pilgrims was to give them, and, through them, their countrymen, a juster appreciation of the religion of the Master? Much strange matter had come into China by all manner of by-paths and highways. True it all claimed to be Buddhist, but it was not all such as Pataliputra, or even Peshawur, would have recognized.

The first of these pilgrims was Fah-hian, who started in 399 and returned by way of the sea in 414, four years after Alaric had sacked Rome, and the year after the accession of Kumaragupta I., whose reign was likewise to be disturbed by the inroads of the dreaded Huns. Fah-hian found Buddhism flourishing in Khotan, Yarkhand, and Kashgar, in Kashmir, Punjaub, and the valley of the Indus. At Pataliputra he found two monasteries, one for the followers of each Vehicle, but many of the holy places connected with the life of S'akyamuni--S'ravasti, Kapilavastu, Kus'inagara, and even the Bodh Gaya itself--were in decay. Men did not trouble themselves about the historical Buddha; they were too much occupied with his deified aspects. Whilst Fah-hian was still in India, the Buddhist monk Buddhaghosha reached Burma, but there was no sign of Buddhism to be seen in Java.

But before Fah-hian returned to China, there had arrived at Singanfu a man whose activity constitutes an epoch in the history of Chinese Buddhism--the celebrated Kumarajiva.

Kumarajiva came of a family that had long been domiciled at Kharachar, a town and kingdom in Eastern Turkestan, at the foot of the Tien Shan mountains. Entering the Fraternity at the age of seven, he was sent