The White Horse in the Apocalypse was followed by others, red, black, pale, the symbols of War, of Famine, of Death. Nothing was done by the Buddhists of India to follow up this mission of the White Horse--a fact which seems to point to its not having been a Buddhist mission at all, for the Buddhists would surely not have neglected to follow up so gracious an invitation from so powerful a monarch as Ming-ti. But suppose it to have been a Christian preacher that went to China, and we may, in the confusions that followed in Europe and Asia, find abundant reasons for the cessation of Christian missionary effort. The seed had been scattered very widely--the testimony had been delivered, by St. Paul before Nero, by some unknown preacher before the Great Han Emperor. Then the labourers fell asleep, and the enemy came to sow the tares. Those first men were sent forth only to give a testimony, and when the testimony had been delivered the End of the Age came.

Footnotes

^76:1 Murakami, "Handbook of Buddhism," p. 290. The story will be found in the S.P.C.K. "Handbook of Chinese Buddhism."

^78:1 See above, <page 50>.

^78:2 Bukkyo Kakushu Koyo," vol. i. chap. i. p. 4.

^79:1 In "Bukkyo Mondo Shu," vol. i. p. 34, in a discussion on As'vaghosha as the patron saint of silk-culture (he is so considered in the provinces of Shinshu and Echigo, and perhaps elsewhere in Japan), there is a mention of As'vaghosha in connection with the White Horse. He is said to have appeared as a thousand white horses, to have made a thousand white birds sing, to have assumed the forms of countless silkworms, to have spun thousands of cocoons, to have saved many thousands of living creatures. The Shingon speaks of him as an incarnation of Vairoc'ana, who, in the days of his flesh, was the Eighth Patriarch of Buddhism. There are several temples in Japan in which a white horse is constantly kept.

^80:1 In "Sacred Books of the East," vol. xlix. Bukkyo Mondo Shu (l.c.) correctly gives As'vaghosha's approximate date as "during the sixth century after the Nirvana."

^80:2 Chinese history has several "bibliothecal catastrophes," as they are termed, when, by order of the Government, all books were burned except a few favoured ones on practical subjects. But these catastrophes sometimes occurred at a time when China was divided into several kingdoms, and then of course they did not apply to the whole empire.

^83:1 Compare what has been said above of the "Divine Name of the Six Letters."

^84:1 A good translation of the Sutra of the Forty-Two Sections will be found in "Sermons by a Buddhist Abbot." Chicago, Open Court, 1905.