The Liang emperor Wu-ti, after three times assuming the, Buddhist vows and expounding the Sutras to his assembled courtiers, was succeeded by a son who favoured Tauism. A few years after, the sovereign of the Ts'i kingdom endeavoured to combine these two religions. He put to death four Tauist priests for refusing to submit to the tonsure and become worshippers of Buddha. After this there was no more resistance. In A.D. 558 it is related that Wu-ti, an emperor of the Ch'in dynasty, became a monk. Some years afterwards, the prince of the Cheu kingdom issued an edict prohibiting both Buddhism and Tauism. Books and images were destroyed, and all professors of these religions compelled to abandon them.

The History of the Northern Wei dynasty contains some details on the early Sanscrit translations in addition to what has been already inserted in this narrative. The pioneers in the work of translation were Kashiapmadanga and Chu-fa-lan, who worked conjointly in the time of

[paragraph continues] Ming-ti. The latter also translated the "Sutra of the ten points of rest." In A.D. 150, a priest of the "An-si" (Arsaces) country in Eastern Persia is noticed as an excellent translator. About A.D. 170, Chitsin, a priest of the Getae nation, produced a version of the Nirvana Sutra. Sun K'iuen, prince of the Wu state, one of the Three Kingdoms, who, some time after the embassy of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus, the Roman emperor, to China, received with great respect a Roman merchant at his court, treated with equal regard an Indian priest who translated for him some of the books of Buddha. The next Indian mentioned is Dharmakakala, who translated the "Vinaya" or Kiai-lu (Discipline) at Lo-yang. About A.D. 300, Chi-kung-ming, a foreign priest, translated the Wei-ma and Fa-hwa, "Lotus of the Good Law Sutras," but the work was imperfectly done. Tau-an, a Chinese Buddhist, finding the sacred books disfigured by errors, applied himself to correct them. He derived instruction from Buddojanga and wished much to converse with Kumarajiva, noticed in a previous page. The latter, himself a man of high intelligence, had conceived an extraordinary regard for him, and lamented much when he came to Ch'ang-an from Liang-cheu at the north-western corner of China where he had long resided, that Tau-an was dead. Kumarajiva found that in the corrections he proposed to make in the sacred books, he had been completely anticipated by his Chinese fellow-religionist. Kumarajiva is commended for his accurate knowledge of the Chinese language as well as of his own. With his assistants he made clear the sense of many profound and extensive "Sutras" (King) and "Shastras" (Lun), twelve works in all. The divisions into sections and sentences were formed with care. The finishing touch to the Chinese composition of these translations was given