formulae of incantation. These formulae and practices, which have not as yet received much attention from scholars, are valuable to the student of religion as showing how far-spread was the use of cognate practices during the second century. We find the mudra and mantra in Egypt; we find them in the Gnosticism of Asia Minor, e.g. amongst the Marcosians mentioned by Irenaeus, in North-Western India, in China, and, in process of time, in Japan. The sacred language used for the mantras differs; in the West it is Hebrew, in the East it is Sanskrit; but the manual signs made by the worshippers are the same, as are also the seals or characters used conventionally to denote certain objects. One most interesting case in point is the so-called sixteen-petalled Imperial Chrysanthemum of Japan. Dr. Munro of Yokohama has, as I have said, found it in Egypt on a tomb. It is also given in the newly discovered book of Jao as a "seal," with its appropriate though meaningless mantra: it comes to Japan via China and appears at Kyoto as the "seal" of the god of Peace. In the twelfth century it appears as the mon or crest of the Emperor Toba, who was a religious-minded person, much devoted to the worship of the "god of Peace." It is to-day the Imperial Crest, sacred to the uses of the Imperial House. No subject may have it on anything that belongs to him; and yet, for the modest outlay of a halfpenny, he can procure at the (modern) Heian-Jingu, or Temple of the God of Peace, at Kyoto, amulets and charms, protective against evil, which bear the Imperial Chrysanthemum Crest.

Another Mahayana trace will be found in the Sutra on the use of Images of the Buddha, ascribed to Lokaraksha. That it was not until the inauguration of the Gandhara Buddhism that images were made to represent the Buddha and other prominent personages, is shown in Japan by the use of the term "Image Law" to denote the second phase of their religion. For five centuries after the Nirvana, so they say, the "Upright Law" continued. This was to be followed by a thousand years of "Image Law," after which should come the Age of the Destruction of the Law in which we now are. It was, apparently, the Image Worship of the Buddhists that incited the Confucianists to make images of their own revered master. The Buddhists were inspired by Gandhara art, that art was Greek and Roman in its ideals, and thus it has come to pass that the art of China, and eventually that of Japan, has drawn its inspiration from Antioch and Alexandria.