believed with simple credulity. People who live in glass houses cannot afford to throw stones. At the same time no one could possibly hold up the Buddhism of the Nara age as a model for any one's admiration or imitation.

ADDITIONAL NOTE TO CHAPTER XIX.

(Extracted from "Shinran and his Work," as showing the great importance of Zendo in the history of the Jodo Mahayana.)

KoMYoJI ()

In the year 614 A.D. a boy was born in China. By what precise name his parents first knew him I do not know. Judging from the analogy of other men similarly situated, he had many names at different periods of his life. The name by which he was last known was Zendo (), but that was almost certainly not the name of his childhood. His family name was Shu (), and he was born in the district of Shishu ().

When he was born the Sui dynasty was tottering to its fall, and had in fact only four years more of life. Already, we may believe, was the Duke of Tang, on the extreme north-west boundaries of the Empire, conspiring with Turkish and other chieftains, and meditating that great coup d'etat, which put his master at his mercy and seated himself firmly on the Celestial

[paragraph continues] Throne, as the founder of a Dynasty, the most magnificent China had ever yet seen, and which was to continue for well-nigh three centuries. The miseries of the people, heavily burdened and harassed to support the luxurious and ostentatious extravagance of the Sui monarchs, tended to encourage his hopes, and with the practised eye of the statesman he could see that it only needed a strong man at the helm to make China a world-power with very widely extending influence. For the inland states on the Western frontiers were already looking to China for aid against the terror of the Arab, shortly to be kindled to victory by the enthusiasm of the new faith inspired by Mahomet, and only a few years were destined to elapse before Persia, at war with Constantinople, and overrun by the Arabs, should come to China in the vain hopes of an alliance against the new foe. To give another note of time, Shotoku Taishi, the greatest of Japan's early statesmen, and as

great in the religious world as he was in the political, was already busy with his celebrated reforms. The Constitution of the 17 Articles had already been in force some ten years when Zendo was born; the ruler of Japan had already given offence to the vainglorious Sovereign of the Sui by the letter in which the "Eastern Emperor" sent his greeting, as an equal in rank, to his brother the "Emperor of the West," and Korea, which had already done so much for Japan in the way of religious and civilizing influences, was giving Japanese statesmen a good deal of political anxiety.