During the Tang Period, in the first half of the eighth century, there arrived in China a certain number of men, mostly from Southern India, and travelling by the sea route, who brought with them a new and evidently very late form of Buddhism, which had practically captured Thibet, then a leading kingdom of Asia, and which, from its very newness, was likely to captivate the imagination of the novelty-loving Japanese. This system Kobo developed in his "Jujushinron," or "Treatise of the Ten Grades of Existence."

All sentient beings, said the Shingon doctors, may be divided into ten classes. The lowest were the sanakudo, or three had classes--the brutes, the demons, and the hungry spirits; next came man, and next above him the

denizens of heaven. These three grades belonged to the natural world. The spiritual world consisted of those who were called out from the natural world to follow after the truth. Its lowest grade was the S'ramana, who strove after, and the Engaku or Pratyeka-buddha, who realized, the salvation of his own soul. That included the whole range of Buddhist believers, but there was an election within the election--the doctrines of Hosso, of Tendai, of Kegon, offered three successive steps, each higher than the last, for their respective devotees, and at the top of all stood the Shingon.

My readers will perhaps remember that in my earlier chapters I spoke of Vairoc'ana, the supreme Buddha--a reflection, as it were, of Osiris, whom we found in the Alexandrian Gnosis. Vairoc'ana is honoured as supreme by the Hosso, Tendai, and Kegon, and the order in which Kobo places these sects seems to depend on the amount of honour which they were disposed to give to Vairoc'ana.

[paragraph continues] I fear I must repeat myself here a little to make things clear.

There are two Buddhisms: one is of a plain, simple sort, quite good enough for the practical purposes of this world; that is the Buddhism taught by S'akyamuni, whether in the Hinayana or the Mahayana. The true spiritual Buddhism is that proclaimed by Vairoc'ana, a Being so high that S'akyamuni (with a pun on his family name) "was not worthy to be his cowherd." This secret teaching had been delivered to Nagarjuna by one who had received it from Vairoc'ana himself, had been secretly handed down during the ages, and had finally been published in the fulness of the times.