^336:2 The French Court was on one occasion hoaxed by a pretended embassy which came professedly from the Khan to ask for Christian instruction.

^337:1 Cf. D'Ohsson, "Hist. des Mongols," vol. ii. chap. 4.

^337:2 D'Ohsson.

^338:1 Dr. Haas, in his "Chronological Notes on Buddhism in Japan," published in the Transactions of the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Natur and Volkerkunde Ostasiens (Tokyo), mentions five or six priests who went over to China during this period, some of whom made very long stays; and there were probably others. Nichiren's information about the doings of the Mongols was so very accurate that he must have had an informant who had seen with his own eyes what he related.

^338:2 "Seigoroku," p. 208. Nichiren seems to have been almost pedantic in his use of Sanskrit words rather than the popular Sinico-Japanese corruptions. Kowalewsky (vol. i. pp. 144, 150) and Schmidt (p. 4, col. a) give a word, connected with the Sanskrit arhat, which seems to be pronounced archaiun, and which means "the saints."

^339:1 See above, Chapter XII. <page 128>.

^339:2 "Seigoroku," p. 681. He says that the Sutra was brought from India by Amoghavajra towards the end of the Tang dynasty, that it was unknown in China until then, that none of the teachers in the period of the "three Southern and seven Northern States" knew anything about it, and that it was inconsistent with the Hokekyo.

^339:3 Murdoch and Yamagata, "History of Japan," p. 67. The licence runs as follows: "This deed witnesseth that I have given permission to the priests (so, a Buddhist term) who have come to this country from the Western regions, in accordance with their request and desire, that they may found and erect a monastery and house, in order to develop the Law of Buddha."

^340:1 Murdoch and Yamagata, "History of Japan," p. 22.

^340:2 It is well to observe the way in which persons and nations, dwelling in remote parts of the world, and apparently without any dealings with one another, become, as it were, simultaneously obsessed by the same ideas. We may find illustrations of this in the development of Greek and Indian philosophies, in the reforms of S'akyamuni as contemporaneous with those of the post-exilic prophets and lawgivers, in the simultaneous realization both in East and West of the need of a personal Saviour who shall be of kingly race and born out of the common way of men. Simultaneously, both in East and West is proclaimed the doctrine of Salvation by Faith, of the approaching end of the age, of the need of using the temporal sword for the suppression of heresy. We cannot always trace an actual contact; it is perhaps enough to recognize the fact that these thoughts were in the air.