Saicho was fortunate (we might almost, I think, add long-headed) in his selection of a site for his monastery. Hiyeizan dominates the plain of Kyoto, and it was only five years after the consecration of the chapel with its image of Yakuo that Kwammu Tenno forsook Nara and established his capital at Heian (794). The following year, Saicho, whose fame for sanctity had spread very widely, was the celebrant at a great Dai Kuyo-e, or High Mass, at which the Emperor himself was present, as well as a large number of priests from Nara and the south.

[paragraph continues] Kwammu remained faithful all his life in his admiration for Saicho. He encouraged him to go from place to place lecturing on the Hokekyo, and one of the last acts of his reign was to commission him to go to China to consult the Tendai authorities at their chief seat, and thus to complete what was lacking in the system which he had been the means of establishing in Japan.

Saicho started in 802 as a chaplain (may we call him?) in the suite of Fujiwara Kadomaro, Japanese Ambassador to the Court of the Tangs. Storms delayed the party, and it was not until the following year that he reached China, making straight for the great monastery of Tientai, in the province of Chekiang. Here he prosecuted his inquiries with the energy of a man who knows exactly what he wants and can go straight to the point, and was soon ready to return again to Japan. His studies had touched upon the doctrines of the Zen and Shingon, but his main interest had been the perfecting of his own Tendai system by the acquirement of proper authority under the Vinaya, or Rules of Ecclesiastical Discipline. Here let me digress for a moment to summarize the chief points of the Tendai system.

It will be remembered that the earliest form of Buddhism in China was unsectarian, the early missionaries having been content to call themselves Buddhists without any further sectarian distinctions. From 265 to 589 we get Indian sects, Abhidharma or Kusha, Jojitsu, Sanron, Jodo, and Nirvana, some of which have already been summarized. From the beginning of the Sui, who ruled from 589 to 618, we get Chinese sects, the Kegon and Tendai, which gradually drive the others out of the

field. We have already spoken of Kegon; the Tendai was founded in 538 by Chisha Daishi, who had, however, had predecessors, and who claimed to derive his peculiar tenets from the long-suffering Nagarjuna, who is claimed as the founder of nearly every heresy or sect in Northern Buddhism.