^161:* It is said of Eon that he was so strict in his observance of Buddhist discipline that when, on his deathbed, he was ordered to take honey, he first set his pupils to find out whether the Buddhist rule permitted it. While they were still examining, he died. Once he broke his rule of retirement by mistake, being so engrossed in conversation that he inadvertently went outside the bounds of his hermitage. This is a favourite theme for artists. It is interesting to remember that the Goths and other barbarians from Central Asia were at this time (circ. A.D. 575) invading the Roman Empire. There is a passage in the Byzantine historian Eunapius (Hist. p. 83) which represents them as bringing their Buddhist clergy with them and introducing them to the Roman authorities, because they had noticed that the Romans laid much stress on religion, and they wanted to show that they, too, had a religion of which they need not be ashamed. It is barely possible that these clergy may have been Arians: but the Goths were not concerted to Christianity by Ulphilas before A.D. 350, and it would scarcely be conceivable that twenty five years later the Arian clergy should be described as one of the "ancestral" institutions of the Goths. It is from about the middle of the 4th century that the Kaidan or grades of ministry, with ordinations, are said by Japanese writers to begin.

^162:* The Chow (circ. 560) were a northern Kingdom, a rival, of the Wei, whose territories and powers they gradually usurped.

^162:+ Donran died in 533. Like all the Amidaists, he was not a pure Chinaman, but a subject, of one of the small northern kingdoms. Wuti, of the Liang, circ. A.D. 528, was a great admirer of Donran's. It is interesting, to note that shortly, after Donran's death, within the life time both of Doshaku and Zendo, an attempt was made (the fore-runner of the Ryobu Shinto in Japan) to amalgamate Buddhism with Taoism. I quote it to show that this was an age of syncretic aspirations. Donran may almost have been a contemporary of . Some trace of the tendency to make common cause with Taoism may be perhaps found in the syllable Do (#) in the assumed names of Doan, or Doshaku. Donran was certainly a Taoist before becoming a Buddhist. The Do in Zendo's name is slightly different (#), as though to emphasize sane new principle that had come into his teaching.

^163:* Tada. Shoshinge Kowa. p. 349.

^164:* This is Mr. Murakami's division in Bukkyo Hyakkwa Hoten. But there are other disciples of Zendo in Japan, who do not trace their descent through Genku and Shinran, notably the Yudzunembutsu and Ji sects, concerning whom a note will be given later on in this chapter.

^164:+ Murakami. Bukkyo Hyakkwa Hoten, p. 493.

^166:* P. Gaubil. Mem. des Chinois. xv. p 399.