had added the more recent foundations of the Jodo and Zen, having pursued his studies at Kamakura and Kyoto, at Hieizan and Onjoji, at Kobo's great shrine on Koyasan, and Shotoku's temple of Tennoji at Osaka. At the conclusion of his studies he had some very bitter things to say about the older sects into which Buddhism, "which should be one," had crumbled.

My readers will have noticed, in the previous chapters of this book, that Buddhism, whether in India, in China, or in Japan, has always shown an inveterate tendency to shield itself under Government favour and patronage. Kings were its nursing-fathers in India, where, under As'oka, Kanishka, and like-minded rulers, it had flourished and become a mighty tree. When royal patronage was withdrawn, and Hinduism asserted itself once more, the zeal of the Indian Buddhist lost its ardour, and the Faith maintained itself only in those lands where the rulers were Buddhists. We see the same phenomenon in China, where the personal creed of the ruling house had very much to do with the ups and downs of the religion of S'akyamuni.

In Japan, Buddhism failed to take root at all until

it came as a personal gift from the King of Kudara to the Emperor of Japan, and it put forth no leaves or buds until watered by the Imperial hand of the Crown Prince, Shotoku Taishi. The Nara priests were nearly all courtiers, who, though they might intrigue at times against the Government, still intrigued only as courtiers, in the interests of one faction against another. The Heian clergy, followers of Dengyo and Kobo, had become the subservient courtiers of the dominant Fujiwara family; the pietists of the Gempei period had been the favoured ones of Emperors like Toba and Shirakawa in their resistance to the gloved hand of the Fujiwara; the Zen had become political tools in the powerful grasp of the Hogo Regents. Nichiren could see no hope of social or political amelioration from the sectwise Buddhism of his time. Religious and political Japan were, in Nichiren's eyes, alike suffering from a dangerous disease.

"Awake, men, awake!" he cried in one of his earliest sermons; "awake, and look around you. No man is born with two fathers or two mothers. Look at the heavens above you: there are no two suns in the sky. Look at the earth at your feet: no two kings can rule a country."

And yet that was precisely what Japan was trying to do. Politically, she was giving her allegiance to Emperor, Shogun, Regent; spiritually, to Amida, Vairoc'ana, S'akyamuni. Politically, the rightful sovereign had been pushed aside to make way for ambitious subjects; spiritually, the rightful Lord of the Buddhist heritage had been thrown "to the moles and bats" to make room for

the ambitious upstarts, Amida and Dainichi, whose claim to spiritual homage rested on no sound rock of Buddhist doctrine.