CHAPTER XIX

BUDDHISM DURING THE NARA PERIOD FROM A.D. 621-782

THE activities of Kumarajiva seem to have led to the dismemberment of the Mahayana, which, in spite of the variety of doctrines it contained within its ample folds, had hitherto contrived to preserve a united front. The sectarianism of Chinese Buddhism was aided by the distracted state of the Chinese Empire, broken up into many kingdoms, each striving for the mastery; and we have seen some of these rival states casting about for supporters, and trying to enlist sympathy for themselves in the Korean peninsula and in Japan. We have seen Korea similarly divided into warring kingdoms, some of which--Kudara and Mimana--looked to Japan for aid, while Shiragi, relying on Chinese support from the kingdom of the Wei, boldly resisted Japanese intervention; and Koma, too weak for independent action, sat on a fence and vacillated between Japan and Shiragi, according to the interests of the hour. And, lastly, we have seen Japan under Shotoku Taishi gradually inclining more and more towards a following of China, and taking the Empire of the Sui (590-618) as its model, both in religion and in secular politics.

Shotoku died in 621. Three years before his death, the dynasty of the Sui, in China, with its costly ambition and magnificence, had been obliged to make way for the family of the Tangs, who ruled till 907, and who inaugurated a period of greatness and prosperity such as China had not known since the downfall of the great House of Han in 220 A.D.

The Tangs began badly for Buddhism. Kaotsu (618-627), their first ruler, broke up Buddhist monasteries right and left, and sent 100,000 bonzes back to lay life where they would be obliged to work, and neither his successor Taitsung nor his wife Ch'angsun had any sympathies for the faith. But the Buddhists knew how to win their way back to favour in the course of a few years, and the Tangs had not been fifty years on the throne in China ere Buddhism was once more in full force, and on a far more splendid basis than before. Under the Tangs it became essentially a Chinese faith; it had, as it were, discarded its Indian waistcloth and adopted the flowing robes of the Celestial.

In the selfsame year that Shotoku Taishi died, there was erected at Singanfu, at that time the capital, the first Zoroastrian temple ever built in China. The Tangs had owed very much to the support of the Turkish tribes on the western frontier of China in the days when they were busy winning their crown, and it was probably due to this