in one of his voluminous writings, "is the lord of this Saba-world, for three reasons--firstly, because he is the World-honoured One for all sentient Beings; secondly, because he is both Father and Mother of all sentient Beings in this Saba-world; and thirdly, because he is the Original and First Teacher of all sentient Beings in this Saba-world." Everything that the Jodoist said about Amida, Nichiren said about S'akyamuni. S'akyamuni was uncreated, without beginning, without end, unlimited in every aspect. S'akyamuni was the Light of the World, had always been so, would always remain so. Whatever teaching there was in the world, whatever hope there was for man of ultimate perfection, all came to him from S'akyamuni, whose mercies were over all the world, but more especially over the fortunate inhabitants of the ichi-embudai --India, China, and Japan--which had embraced his Faith.

S'akyamuni's teachings are summed up, said Nichiren (following herein the teachings of the Japanese Tendai), in the Hokekyo or Saddharmapundarika Sutra, spoken on the Vulture's Peak during the last few years of his earthly life. But this Sutra he interpreted in a new manner, with great ingenuity.

The Hokekyo, in Nichiren's interpretation, was an Apocalypse containing a forecast of the things which should come to pass in Buddhism after the death of its founder. It deals with the "Millenniums" of Buddhism--the three periods, one of five hundred, and two of one thousand years each, which should cover what might be called the present dispensation--a conception which is quite a familiar one to the whole family of Japanese Buddhism.

In the Hokekyo itself the scene is laid on the Vulture's Peak, the favourite haunt of S'akyamuni in his later years. The Master, now an old man, is weary with teaching and has fallen into a trance. "His body was motionless, and his mind had reached perfect tranquillity. And as soon as the Lord had entered upon his meditation there fell a great rain of divine flowers, covering the Lord and the four classes of hearers, ... and at that moment there issued a ray from within the circle of hair between the eyebrows of the Lord. It extended over eighteen thousand Buddha fields in the Eastern quarter." The trance Nichiren took as denoting the Parinirvana of S'akyamuni. Then comes a period of silence, that period which we have already noticed in our historical review of the Buddhist Church--a period much longer to the Northern Buddhist who knows nothing of As'oka, and passes straight from the Vaisali Council to that held under Kaniskha. At the