without becoming a Christian, he would still keep the Christmas festival with his Nestorian subjects. There were times of persecution, to be sure; but the Nestorian missions survived them all. In the year 1293 the Franciscans under John of Montecorvino arrived at Peking, and found the Nestorians in full force; in 1304, the Nestorian Patriarch of Baghdad, the head of the whole Nestorian Church, submitted himself to Rome, and the Chinese Nestorians seem to have thought it best to follow his example. In 1305, John de Montecorvino reported very large accessions to his flock, and the Nestorians of China disappear from history.

There was also in Singanfu and its neighbourhood the zeal of Buddhism, aroused by the sense of its new dangers. The luxury of the Sui, and of many of the sovereigns of the illegitimate states, had been suffered by the Buddhists to go unreproved. Nay, they had profited by the distractions and evils of the times, and had secured for themselves wealth, position, and exemptions from taxation as the price of the support they gave to luxurious and ambitious princes. All these things had brought upon them the hatred and contempt of the lettered classes, and the undisguised hostility of powerful sovereigns, like Kaotsung and others, must have warned them to set their house in order if they would continue in their former prosperity. We can see many signs of this movement of reform produced by fear. The new school of translation inaugurated by Kumarajiva, the suggested amalgamation of Buddhism with Taoism, the new revelations (for they amounted to that) of the Hosso and the Kegon, and the wide-embracing system inaugurated by Chisha Daishi of the Tendai, all point to the same conclusion.

Bodhidharma and Zendo alone aimed at simplification,

but the former was not represented at the capital of the Sui and Tang. Zendo, however, was there, and his preaching of salvation by faith was welcomed by the poor. He was the popular preacher of the hour, and the popularity of his preaching drew upon him the hostility of the other sects. Tendai, Hosso, Kegon have always been the enemies of the simple faith preached by Zendo. They have always treated it as something alien to Buddhism, and so perhaps it was. At any rate, there it was in Singanfu, side by side with many alien faiths, during that momentous half-century which meant so very much for the religious development of the Far East.

It was probably about this time also that the Manichaean missions reached China proper. They had long ere this time been in the Turfan and Khotan districts, but probably never reached China itself until the time of the Tangs. The recent discoveries of German and other explorers are likely in a short time to add so much to our knowledge of Manichaeism that it is not worth while here to dilate upon the subject. Let us content ourselves with noting that Manichaeism was in China, and was one of the rivals of Buddhism.