[paragraph continues] Buddhists, tried to murder the persuasive monk who injured his trade. And not only did persons of low degree set themselves against them. The literati persecuted him and his followers, as did also the priests of the other Buddhist sects. When the Emperor Kaotsung died in 684, the reins of the Government fell into the hands of the Empress-Dowager Wu-hu, who was under the influence of a Buddhist monk named Hwai-yi, a monk of one of the sects opposed to Zendo's teaching, and Hwai-yi in 694 caused much popular discontent among the lower classes by burning a favourite temple, which may have been Zendo's. For the common people heard Zendo gladly, and it was his preaching of a Gospel to the poor and outcast that annoyed the literati and the "Salvation-by-knowledge" Schools of Buddhists.

Strange to say, the Nestorians, well received and honourably treated by Taitsung and Kaotsung, fall into disgrace, and are persecuted, as soon as Kaotsung's death leaves the supreme power in the hands of the Empress-Dowager Wu-hu, and her adviser Hwai-yi. The persecution of the Nestorians is instigated by the same people as that against the followers of Zendo, and much the same pretexts are alleged. Moreover, the persecution of the two bodies goes on for the same time, and relief comes to them simultaneously. Of the Nestorians we read that Huantsung (723-756), succeeding Wu-hu, rebuilds the "Temple of Felicity," as the Nestorian Church is called, that Huantsung's successor, Sutsung (756-763), coming into a disordered inheritance recovers Singanfu which was in the hands of rebels, and erects "luminous" temples in various parts of his Empire, and finally that the Emperor Taitsung (763-780), the same who discouraged the

collaboration of King Tsing and Prajna, not only celebrated the Bon Festival with the Buddhists in the seventh month, but kept Christmas in the twelfth with the Nestorians, "burning incense" in a "luminous temple" with the "luminous multitude." As to Zendo's followers, we find them gathering round a teacher named Ekan, not very long after the master's death. Ninety years after that event, a monk named Hosso is mentioned as acquiring great fame, and in 793 Shoko makes Uryusan () the headquarters of the teachings promulgated by Zendo. But by that time the Emperor Taitsung was already dead (ob. 780), and the collaboration between Amidaist and Christian had already been prohibited.