History of Pure land Buddhism

English translation of the French language text “History of Pure Land Buddhism”

“Today Amida is, without any doubt, the most popular divinity in the Buddhist pantheon; he has eclipsed the historical Buddha, Sakyamuni, in the entire domain of the Chinese and Japanese Church”. ^¹ The transition from one to the other was able to proceed smoothly - within the limits that we shall specify - not only because the concrete personality of Sakyamuni receded more and more in time as in space in proportion as Buddhism progressed in the Far East, and became, as to speak, cut off from its bases, but also because an ingenious system brought into correspondence Amitabha, as mystical Buddha, and the earthly Buddha, Sakyamuni. There was a conviction that the latter was not really supplanted, since, in leaving this earth, he became in some fashion transformed into Amida. He had been the reflection, the emanation, of Amida, in an earthly and transitory form. In his transcendent being, he was in reality Amida. “There is no Shakya other than Amida himself”, a Japanese bonze explains even in our days. ^² This belief is bound up with the entire Buddhaological construction of the Mahayana. It presides over the “ambiguity” of the representations of Paradise, as we saw in the last chapter. It is expressed in these two liturgical verses, often quoted in China as well as in Japan:

Sakyamuni could not, then, constitute an obstacle to the mounting glory of Amitabha. Thought of as his Paradise, Vulture’s Peak, the place chosen for the great Mahayanist preaching, could only fade, perhaps after a period of equivalence ^⁴ or relative haziness, before Sukhavati. ^⁵

But among the other Buddhas, closer to him by virtue of their wholly “mystical” character, Amitabha found several rivals. Aksobhya, the conqueror of Mara, who formed part like him of the system of the five dhyani-Buddhas, offered, in the Eastern region, his Paradise Abhirati. ^⁶ His cult is attested for China as early as the epoch of the later Han. It appears that he is the first Buddha of whom there was told the story of an “original vow” before his illumination. One day he formulated the vow, held subsequently with steadfastness during numerous existences, never to feel anger or repulsion, and it is this which made him powerful among all for “subjugating the demonic passions”. The Sutra which magnifies him is given by the Chinese tradition has having formed part of the first batch of Buddhist writings translated, between 147 and 186. If the notion of salvation which it expresses is different, it is quite analogous, by virtue of its setting, to the great Sukhavativyuha. Nevertheless, despite the numerous eulogies of it to be found in the Prajna-Paramita literature, the success of its eastern Paradise, an unoriginal replica of the Western Paradise, was slight enough, except in Nepal and Java. ^⁷ But too other rivals were to prove more serious.

The entire Far East opened to Bhaisajyaguru, who drew the crowds through his fame as a healing Buddha. This Aesculapius of Buddhism reigned, it was said, over a Land of crystal and lapis lazuli, externally very like that of Amitabha, and situated like that of Aksobhya to the East of our world. ^⁸ It is described in a Sutra which was translated several times into Chinese, between the fourth and eighth Centuries. ^⁹ It is still the same scenario as in the Amidist Sutras. One day when Sakyamuni was on his way to Vaisali, Manjusrikumara asked him to explain the vows formulated by Buddhas of former times for the liberation of beings. Then Sakyamuni related the story of Bhaisajyaguru. While he was still a Bodhisattva, this Buddha pronounced a vow of ten points: he desired that his person should enlighten the world; his name heal sickness; release prisoners; change into men those women weary of their condition; procure for the poor food and clothing . . . The Land where he is enthroned is separated from our world by innumerable Buddha Lands; neither poverty nor suffering, neither female sex nor any inferior status, is known there; its highways are of gold, its dwellings of precious stones. If, at the point of death, one desires to be reborn there, one is led to it by eight great Bodhisattvas. ^¹0 We are acquainted with nearly all that.

Bhaisajyaguru was very popular in Tibet (Man-la), in China (Yao-shi-Fo), in Indo-China^¹1, in Japan (Yakushi). He presided over the benefits of Indian medicine, which was a potent agent of propagation for the Buddhist missionaries. ^¹2 In Tibet, as in China, Man-la often forms a triad with Amitabha and Gautama (Sakyamuni), and the representation of his Land is thronged with Tantric figures. ^¹3 On the walls of Chinese Temples, his Paradise made a pair with Sukhavati. The sanctuaries of Tuan-huang offer two great examples. One of them is of great beauty, the finest perhaps, by virtue of the harmony of colours, of all Buddhist “Paradises”.^¹4 Bhaisajyaguru, seated in the centre, is attended by Manjusri on his left and Samantabhadra on his right; he holds in his left hand a jar of medicaments; in front of him, two other Bodhisattvas bear offerings to his altar; on each side, on a platform, can be seen six warriors: they are his twelve generals, each of whom corresponds to one of the twelve points of his Vow. ^¹5 A Chinese inscription of the year 776 mentions side by side the two Buddhas of the East and of the West. Again in 1695, Emperor Kang-hi, the very same who gave shelter in his palace to the Jesuits sent by Louis XIV, recopied with his own hand the translation of Bhaisajyaguru’s Sutra owed to Hiuan-tsang. China was to have many Temples where the three great statues occupying the same wall, above the altar, were those of Amitabha, Sakyamuni and Bhaisajyaguru. In Japanese devotion of the seventh and eight Centuries, Yakushi prevails over Amitabha (Amida). In the Moryuji, which is the oldest Buddhist Temple in Japan (south-west of Nara), while the latter appears only on the frescoes, shortly before 710, Yakushi has as early as 607 his bronze statue in a triad (Yakushi-sangon), by Tori. ^¹6 His Sutra, Yakushi-kio, is read in the imperial palace through the good offices of Emperor Temmu, who erects in honour of him, in 681, the Yakushiji, in Yamado, and for the Kondo (gold pavilion) of this Temple the artist Gyogi composes in 726 the triad in which he appears flanked by his two attendants assimilated to the divinities of the sun and the moon. His cult continues to flourish until the fifteenth Century and even later. Yakushi and Amida will be joined in the thought of their worshippers as the rising sun and the setting sun and, by a kind of division of labour, the first will end by being invoked solely for earthly well-being, whilst the second is relied on with a view to the future life. ^¹7

More formidable perhaps was a last rival, Maitreya (Chinese: Mi-lo-Fo; Japanese: Miroku). A rival from the point of view of the historian, who observes in the course of time the more or less correlative advance and recession of these Buddha figures, not from the point of view of their faithful, who generally associated them more than they opposed them to each other, in conformity with the logic of the system which had conceived them. For a fairly long duration the cult of O-mi-to-Fo and that of Mi-lo-Fo “went on an equal footing, interpenetrating”, as they interpenetrated that of Sakyamuni. ^¹8 Each formed “the necessary complement of the two others”, and their “intimate accord” constituted, up to at least the end of the seventh Century, “the solid framework and the principle of unit” of Chinese Buddhism. Many donors of Long-men, in the course of the sixth and seventh Centuries, “made the vow to go and be reborn in the Sukhavati of Amitabha through the merit acquired by raising a statue of Maitreya, or else formulated the vow of going to be reborn provisionally close to Amitabha, and of being born afterwards on a lotus close to Maitreya, in order to be present at his teaching, and to open Nirvana through him.” ^¹9 One alone of the two, nevertheless, was finally to emerge.

In the Lesser Vehicle, Maitreya is known only as the “future Buddha” (not the “Messiah”, as he is sometimes designated by an entirely misleading analogy). The first successor to Sakyamuni to come on this earth, since the Wheel of the Law must once more be set in motion, he is waiting at present, in the Heaven of the Tusita Gods (the “Satisfied”), situated on the pinnacle of the world, in the far north, the hour of his mission among men. His character of Buddha-Bodhisattva and his very close link with Sakyamuni, attested by a certain number of Indian statues, made of him an intermediary of long standing between the Buddha of our world and the Buddhas of the Pure Lands. In the Mahayana of the Far East, the faith and the cult of which he was the object were remodelled very soon, it seems, on the faith and cult which concerned Amitabha. Thus we read in his Sutra, which was the object of several translations in Chinese, especially in 402 and 455: “Were they guilty of every crime, those who, hearing the name of Mi-lo-Fo, prostrate themselves and repent, will be immediately purified. Those who have honoured him, by statues, flowers, incense, etc., will see him appear at the moment of death in the form of Mahapurusha, with the tuft of white hair between his eyebrows, accompanied by all the Gods; and they will obtain immediate rebirth in the Tusita Heaven.” And again: “If a man, at the moment of a thought, invokes the name of Mi-lo-Fo, he thus wins exemption from sins equivalent to twelve hundred kalpas of births and deaths; if, on hearing his name, he adores him joining his palms together, he wins exemption from sins equivalent to the duration of five hundred kalpas.” ^²0

When Tao-ngan, who was the great promoter of his cult in China, died in 385, the last sight which met his eyes was that of a strange personage in the north-west direction, and a beautiful Heaven revealed through the clouds. ^²1 In the fifth Century, and during a part of the sixth, the Chinese Buddhist iconography appears dominated by this figure of Maitreya. ^²2 In the seventh Century, under the T’ang, the great Hiuan-tsang, who had during his toilsome existence translated both the small Sutra of Amida and the Sutra of Bhaisajyaguru, died consoled by the thought that Mi-lo-Fo was going to welcome him into his abode. In 680, at Long-men, a donor had five hundred images of this Buddha made at one stroke. In 701, Yi-tsing, on his return from India, again translated the classic texts which speak of Maitreya. ^²3 A fresco of Tuan-huang shows him perhaps at the centre of his Paradise. ^²4 Again at the end of the tenth Century, at the beginning of the Sung, he has his devotees desiring to be reborn in the “inner court” of the Tusita. The great images of Mi-lo-Fo hewn from stone at Yun-kang and at Long-men remain the mute witnesses of this ancient fervour - which, let us repeat, was not always exclusive, as certain of their inscriptions testify. ^²5 In Japan, one of the oldest Buddhist Temples, the Taimadera (outskirts of Nara), founded in 612, was dedicated to Miroku (the statue still to be seen there dates from 720, and it seems that it may have been made in Korea). Before being considered a manifestation of Amida, the God Hachiman had been assimilated to Miroku. Another statue of this last-named, sculpted in 687, was still in the thirteenth Century the object of a brilliant cult, in the Kasaji Temple (Kyoto). Finally, towards the end of the Hsian epoch, the Shingon propagated the notion of the “Descent” of Mirolu, and from then on artists represented the scene of it, closely copied from that of the “Descent” of Amida. ^²6 Nevertheless, as Tche-yi scornfully said in 594, the Tusita Heaven was “a much more vulgar abode” than the Western Paradise ^²7 ; although it had become, like the latter, a kind of superior school preparatory to Nirvana - there in particular, according to the legend, Asanga received from Maitreya the entire explanation of the most abstruse Sutras ^²8 - it still felt the effects of the time when it was still only a simple abode of Gods, fourth in the list of the six kinds of kamadevas. Doubtless, also his character of future Buddha impeded Maitreya a little in his quite different role of heavenly Buddha and henceforth “saviour”. ^²9 Although he always remained popular in the Far East, Amitabha was his conqueror - not without having borrowed in his turn, in the course of the struggle, some small elements of his legend. ^³0 Even recently, on the eve of the communist revolution, the traveller could often see in China, “at the crossroads, in thoroughfares, on quays, pillars bearing, carved on the stone, the name of Amitabha”, and which makes one think of “our crosses planted beside roads”. ^³1

As early as the middle of the second Century of our era, the two main Amidist Sutras arrive in China. The “Parthian Prince” An-cheu-kao (Ngan-che-kao) then directed at Lo-yang, the Han capital, the first school of Buddhist translators, which he had just founded, “the Inimitables”. ^³2 It was between 147 and 180. Among many other works, including Aksobhya’s Sutra, he had one of his disciples, the turanian Lokaksema, or Lokaraksa (Leou-kia-tch’an), translate our “Short Sutra” (Wou-leang ts’ing-tsing king), perhaps also our “Long Sutra”, as well as the Bhadrapala-Bodhisattva-Sutra. This last-named work will likewise be an authority in Amidism; in general it teaches to meditate until all the Buddhas appear before one, but it also contains a dialogue between the Bodhisattva Bhadrapala and the Buddha Amida, in which the latter declares: “Whosoever desires to be born in my Land must ceaselessly invoke my name”.

Another turanian, the layman Tcheu-k’ien, came about 222 from Lo-yang to Nanking (then Kien-ie), where he was minister of the King of Wu, published between 230 and 240, he too among many other texts, a series of extracts taken from the Sutra of Amida and adapted under the inspiration of the Bodhisattva Avalokitesvara, whom Tcheu-k’ien, according to what he himself gives us to understand, had not stopped invoking during the carrying out of his task. It is a summary sometimes called A-mi-t’o-king. Almost at the same time, in 252, one of his fellow-countrymen again, the Monk Samghavarman, of the Lo-yang group, translated (or retranslated) the Long Sutra. Between 266 and 313, at Tch’ang-ngan, the capital of the North, another Monk, endowed with extraordinary activity, the Gete (indo-scythian) Dharma raksa, in Chinese Fa-Ou, presented a version of the Lotus of the Good Law, under the title of Tcheng fo houa king. It is already known that this text, fundamental for the entire Greater Vehicle, is also very important, from the special point of view of Amidism.

In this work of translations, the beginning of the fifth Century marks a new advance. It was in 401 that the famous Kumarajiva (Kieou-mo-lo-chi), “very learned and not very devout”, arrived at Tch’ang-ngan. A Kuchean in origin, he had been brought from Kashmir in 383 as a hostage by the soldiers of the tartar King of the Ts’in Fou-kien, and the enterprising Tao-ngan, guessing the advantage which Chinese Buddhism would be able to derive from it, had then invited him to make his way to the capital. When he arrive, his introducer (sponsor) had long been dead. He set up immediately a translation bureau, “very superior to anything hitherto”. ^³3 He himself retranslated with a more thorough exactitude - but concerning himself with the spirit rather than the letter - the “Short Sutra” under the name Fo chouo A-mi-t’o-king ^³4 and the Lotus, under the name of Miao fa lien houa king. ^³5 Among the numerous other Sanskrit texts which he put into Chinese, we can recollect the Sutralamkara of Asvaghosa (Ma-ming), interesting as we have seen for the pre-history of Amidism, and the essential work of Nagarjuna (Long-chou), the Mahaprajnaparamita-sastra, which became the Ta tche tou louen. ^³6 A few years later, round about 424, a Monk originally from Tarim, Kalayasas, translated for the first time the Amitayur-dhyana-sutra (Fo chouo kouan wou leang cheou fo king). Between 508 and 535, the first Bodhiruci translated the Amitayus-sutropadesa, a commentary on the “Long Sutra” attributed to Vasubandhu (Che-ts’in). In 553, Paramarth, “the most cultivated and the most learned of all the Indian Buddhists came to China”, ^³7 translated the Mahayana-sraddhotpeda-sastra, attributed to Asvaghosa, an essential page of which, as already noted above, is dedicated to the glory of Amitabha and his Paradise. ^³8 In 650, Hiuan-trang gave a new version, a little verbose, of the “Short Sutra”. There was again a translation of the “Long Sutra”, by the second Bodhiruci, between 693 and 713. Up to about the year 1000, at least twelve can be reckoned, five of which have come down to us. To which was added, more and more voluminous, the literature of the commentaries. ^³9 The Law of the Buddha Sakyamuni, came from the West, had “spread like a river in the kingdom of the East”. ^⁴0 Already about the fifth Century, despite the persecution of T’o la Tao (444 - 453), it was flooding China. “In a short time, of ten families nine became Buddhists”. ^⁴1 “Forgetting the genies of Heaven and Earth, they thought only of the Buddha”. ^⁴2 Soon the very head of the empire bent before him. Among the Wei (T’o ba), whose founder Wu-ti (386 - 407) had shown himself very favourable, King Hung, in 471, became a Monk; in 515 - 528, Queen Hu covered her kingdom with Buddhist foundations, etc. In Nanking, the Lieu-Sung (420 - 479) were not less well-disposed, and shortly after them, Emperor Liang Wu-ti, founder of the Liang dynasty (502), was Monk on the throne. ^⁴3 Amidism had not yet made its great break-through. Already however, here and there, it was beginning to become individual. It separated from the Mahayana unit so as to form, some time at least, a school, a sect, almost a religion apart, destined to swarm and hive off in schools and sects or various fraternities, before spreading anew in the mass of popular Buddhism.

The determining influence in this evolution had been, to begin with, that of Houei-yuan (334 - 416), originally from North China (the far north of the present province of Chan-si), who was called “the Master of the Law”. All the Amidists of China, Indo-China and Japan considered him their ancestor.

He was a “seeker after truth”. In his youth, he had studied the classics of Confucianism and the Treatises of the “Fathers” of Taoism; then, aged twenty, he had passed the Blue River in order to seek more light in South China, then calmer and better organised than the Northern provinces. There he met Tao-ngan, the very same who was soon going to invite Kumarajiva. Tao-ngan had a stern mind, scholarly and critical rather than contemplative; although visions are attributed to him. ^⁴4 He initiated his disciples into the doctrines of the Prajnaparamita. Houei-yuan (Japanese: Ye-on, Eon) had come deeply under the influence of the mystic system of the Tao, like many others before him of Chinese converted to Buddhism. He declared himself to have used the writings of Chuang-tzu to make clear his new faith, he quoted them readily “to draw parallels”, and his thought always remained eclectic. Soon yielding to the attraction of contemplation, he retired to a glade of the Lou-chan mountains, in the Kiang-si range. This was in 381.

Little to little disciples from every province came to join him. The governor of the province built them a Temple. The community formed by them particularly honoured Manjusri (Wen-shu), “him whose beauty captivates”, patron of contemplatives; but it readily put its trust in Amitabha too - of whom Manjusri, luminous genie, was sometimes considered an emanation. ^⁴5 When it had gained more than a hundred members, Houei-yuan endowed it with a rule and a particular cult, wholly Amidist. This exclusive choice was an innovation. Many, dissatisfied, withdrew. Only seventeen remained, who bound themselves by a vow in front of the image of Amitayus. Thus was founded the association called “Lotus Mound” or “Community of the White Lotus” (Po-lien-kiao).

In 416, at the age of eighty-three, Houei-yuan felt himself becoming feeble. Amitayus, it is said, appeared to him, immense, filling the universe with his presence; in the glory which surrounded him, a number of other Buddhas were to be seen; the Bodhisattvas Avalokitesvara and Mahasthamaprapta were beside him; a torrent of light gushed under their feet . . . Houei-yuan then said to his own disciples: “This is the third time; now I am assured of my rebirth in the Pure Land”. Soon after he expired.^⁴6 He left a commentary on the “Long Sutra”(a translation of Samghavasman), some notes on the text, not yet translated, of the Meditation Sutra, and a large work in twenty chapters entitled Dialogue between Houei-yuan and Kumarajiva, chapter 19 of which deals with the cult of Amida, “the King of the World”. But his principal work was his community. It was continued by Buddhabhadra, an Indian whom he had welcomed to Lou-chan, and by his other disciples. It can be said that it was the Community of the White Lotus which definitely rendered popular in China the name and cult of the Buddha Amitabha. ^⁴7

One disciple of Kumarajiva, Sang-jui (373 - 439), was a great devotee of Amitabha. In 453, Gunabhadra translated into Chinese a magic formula, meant to procure rebirth in Sukhavati; this category of writings was to multiply. ^⁴8 About fifty years later, Amidism was preached at Ho-nan by the first Bodhiruci. One day he met a fervent Taoist, who told him that he had worked to become a “genie”. “Many”, he replied, “have like you desired this, but nobody has ever succeeded; rather seek to attain to rebirth in the Pure Land . . .” The result was the Taoist burned his books of mystical science or alchemy, became the Monk T’an-louan (476 - 542) who was, it appears, the first to systematise the antithesis between the salvation obtained by the own individual effort (tseu li) and the salvation obtained by the grace and power of another (t’a li), what the Japanese are to call the jiriki and the tariki.

We owe to him a commentary in which he magnifies more than anyone had yet done the saving power of Amitabha’s name. We owe to him likewise a certain number of dithyrambs, which are a great outburst of devotion. They may be judged by the following example:

While being devout, T’an-louan could be critical. He accounted the appearance of Amida at the deathbed as merely a dream. ^⁵0 Among his first successors must be cited Tao-tch’ao (562 - 645), author of several didactic Treatises and especially of a collection of texts concerning the Pure Land. From the age of seven he was an ardent apostle of his Buddha. His legend has it that, out of holy respect, he never turned his back to the west. It is also said that he repeated the name of Amitabha as many as seventy thousand times a day. He revived the systematic antithesis established by T’an-louan under the two names of “Holy Path” and “Pure Land” (the Shado and the Jodo of the Japanese), that is, in practice, of salvation by works or the effort of contemplation and salvation by confiding faith. ^⁵1 His “Book of Peace and Happiness” (An-le-tsi) sets forth the four ways in which Buddhas save beings: by the Teaching written down in the twelve categories of Scripture; by the marks of their bodies, traits of supernatural beauty ^⁵2 ; by the marvellous power they have of transforming themselves and of carrying out other magical operations; finally by the power of their name. It is this fourth way which Tao-tch’ao especially remembers. By the power of their name, Buddhas thrust aside all obstacles on the path of liberation; they assure to the being who pronounces it rebirth near them. Such was Amitabha’s intention when he made his name resound across the chiliocosms. Now this mode of salvation is particularly suitable for the present age of our world. “Consequently here is what he have to do; to repent our sins, cultivate virtues, and pronounce the name of the Buddha Amitabha. Is it not written that the simple act of pronouncing this name, be it but once, purifies us of all the sins committed in all our existences during eight billion kalpas? If a single thought effects such a marvel, how much more efficacious still will be a constant thought, accompanied by repentance!” ^⁵3

In his turn, Tao-tch’ao was relieved by Chan-t’ao (613 - 681), whom all the Japanese Amidists are to honour, under the name of Zendo, as an incarnation of Amida and their third and most important Chinese patriarch, the first two being Houei-yuan, or sometimes T’an-louan (Japanese: Donram) and Tao-tch’ao (Japanese: Doshaku). Born in Chan-tung, Chan-t’ao discovered the Meditation Sutra by chance in a Temple library, and as a consequence of reading it came to put himself under Tao-tch’ao’s direction. Arrived in Tch’ang-ngan in 649, he won the entire capital over to Amidism. He converted Emperor Kao-tsung by the marvellous fact that a flame issued from his mouth each time that he pronounced the name of Amitabha. It is told too that he painted three hundred pictures of the Pure Land and that he copied the small Sukhavati-vyuha-sutra ten thousand times in his own hand. ^⁵4 What is more certain, he wrote a commentary on the third Sutra, as well as an explanation of the main methods of meditation on Amitabha. he called “correct practice” and various practices what T’an-louan, following the Indians, had called “easy way” and “difficult way”. He taught in particular that access to the Western Paradise was by way of a narrow white path (Pai-tao), bounded on one side by a river of water and on the other side by a river of fire, symbols of cupidity and anger: only the aid of Amitabha enables us to tread it to the end without falling to the right or left. It is what the Japanese will name the Niga byakudo. Genshin will develop the subject, which will be dealt with in didactic paintings. ^⁵5 We recognise here a very old theme, passed on from one people to another, and which is expressed in a series of images, from the constrained passage between the two jaws of a monster or on the thin edge of a razor to the crossing of the bridge Cinvat in the Zoroastrian faith. It is likewise Chan-t’ao who definitely confirmed the choice already made by Tao-tch’ao of the two Sukhavati Sutras as first canonical books of the sect. Later, his own writings, held to be a direct revelation from Amida himself, will enjoy the same authority as these Sutras. ^⁵6

A fourth patriarch, Huai-kan or Ekan is little known. But outside the sect whose principal founders we have just seen, the cult of Amitabha evolved on quite different lines among the disciples of another personage, whose influence was fundamental on the destinies of the Buddhism of the Far East. Tche-yi or Chi-i, (sometimes called Chik-k’ai, or Tcheuk’ai) (531 - 597) had first belonged to an esoteric Ch’an (Dhyana) sect. Then he founded on the “Heavenly Mountain”, Tien-t’ai, in 575, a monastery which soon became the centre of a new syncretism. His doctrine, one of the most philosophical of Chinese Buddhism was founded on the Lotus of the True Law and The Awakening of Faith of pseudo-Asvaghosa, but deeply tinged with Taoism, - Buddhists and Taoists have not given up copying and plagiarising each other. It showed itself equally hospitable to all forms of Buddhist thought. Later it was even, it seems, to look on Christianity with a certain favour, seeing in it one of the innumerable paths which lead to the unique liberation. ^⁵7 Now, three years before his death, Tche-yi had composed a Treatise, “short, but substantial”, on the ten points of Amidism, a Treatise “which remained classical and was often commented upon”. He showed there in particular how the cult of the Buddha Amitabha is not prejudicial to the other Buddhas. ^⁵8 In fact, he died invoking the Sacred Name. His disciple Kouan-ting published in an enormous volume a record of his lectures on the principles of the Lotus, a work in which the most differing and sometimes the most opposed sects were to find their common doctrinal source. A particular method of meditation on Amitabha was to be passed on in the T’ien-t’ai, and the works of the sect customarily afford it a place by the side of magical formulas. ^⁵9

The seventh Century, which was a glorious Century for China, had marked a first apogee for Chinese Amidism. It was then that there spread everywhere the great pictures of Sukhavati, one of the creators of which was, as we have seen the famous painter Ts’ao Tchong t’a, about the period 577 - 587. About fifty years after the painter’s death, these pictures occupied a place of honour in all the monasteries. The examination of the dated inscriptions of Long-men enable us to see that the cult of Amitabha was especially very flourishing between 647 and 715.^⁶0 Two men again rendered it illustrious in the following century: Tz’u-min (Japanese: Jimin) and Fa-tchao (Japanese: Hosako).

Tz’u-min (686-748) did not belong to the school of Huai-yuan and Chan-t’ao. ^⁶1 His masters were more eclectic. But he had spent eight years in India, where he had encountered fervent devotees of Amitabha. He was a man of experience rather than learning. Of a conciliatory frame of mind, he acknowledged all categories of the nembutsu, whose respective supporters too often wrangled among themselves. He recognised in particular the incessant invocation of the name of Amitabha accompanied by an actual desire for the Pure Land, as well as the daily recitation of the “Short Sutra” and Meditation Sutra. He also warmly recommended transferring to others the merit of one’s own good actions. But what he had most at heart was the union of mental concentration with ascetic and cultic practices. It was to show the necessity of this that he made a compilation of texts in “favour of the Pure Land”. He is also the author of a certain number of hymns, including a hymn “on the Western region” which has recently been discovered. ^⁶2

Tz’u-min started a school of thought. His influence spread not only in China, but in Korea, and from there to Japan, where we shall find it again. One of his first disciples was Tch’eng-yuan, who became in his turn the master of Fa-tchao (762 - 821). The former, who had ties to the T’ien-t’ai, was at once a mystic, a preacher and a specialist in liturgical chanting. Having recruited a small group of companions, he came to settle down, in 770, on Mount Wou-t’ai (Japanese: Godaisan), where soon the great Bodhisattva Manjusri revealed to him or confirmed that the invocation of the Buddha of the West was the most excellent of all spiritual disciplines. Later, he recounted his experience in Memoirs which he called, “History of the Holy Temple Chou-lin (Tchou-lin-sseu) on Wou-t’ai”. It is less through this that he is original, however, than through his Wu-hui-nien, or nembutsu in five tones. The theory of it is expounded in a kind of ritual giving the “hymns of the curtailed ceremony of the five assemblies of the nembutsu of the Pure Land”. They divided the singers into five groups, each of which chanted the name of Amida in a different “tone”: the whole was meant to imitate the harmony of the choirs of Sukhavati. ^⁶3 These liturgical harmonies of Wou-t’ai were themselves only one note or “tone” in the great harmony of praise which then arose everywhere, on Chinese soil, in honour of Amitabha. Shortly after Fa-tchao’s death, which occurred in 777, the poet Pai Lo-t’ien could write: “People of every kind, great and small, young and old, wise and foolish, when they wish to pray to a Buddha, raise their hands and turn their faces to the West, and call Amitabha. When they make images of a Buddha in porcelain, copper or gold, or when they represent him in embroidery or painting, it is Amitabha’s figure that they reproduce, and even the children in their games cause the Sacred Name to resound.”

Fa-tchao’s works were lost at the time of the great persecution which Buddhism had to undergo, along with Zoroastrianism and Nestorian Christianity, in the middle of the ninth Century (845), and of which we have already spoken. But numerous fragments of them were to be discovered, shortly before the Great War (1914 - 1918), in the blocked-up library of Tuan-huang. ^⁶4 They have brought to light one of the most original figures of Chinese Amidism, whose influence on the Japanese was great.

Chao-k’ang (Japanese: Shoko), an author of hymns and a musician like Tz’u-min and Fa-tchao, was the last patriarch of the Amidist sect properly so-called in China. He died in 805. Already about the middle of the eight Century, and again some time subsequently, the invasion of Tantric doctrines, introduced into China from India by Subhakarasinha (+ 735), Vajrabodhi (Kin-kang-tche, + 741), and his disciple Amoghavajra (Pouk’ong, 705 - 774), and favoured by the imperial court, ran counter to the expansion of Amidism, without halting it altogether. Amoghavajra himself, while with all his school revering Mahavairocana (Pi-lu-che-na) as supreme Buddha, translated a writing “on the practice of the meditation concerning the Buddha Amitayus and on the offerings to make to him.”^⁶5 At the beginning of the eleventh Century, Tsoun-cheu (963 - 1032), although belonging moreover to Hiuan-tsang’s school, is a devotee of Amitabha; but he interprets the doctrine in an esoteric sense. Yuan-tchao (1048 - 1116) carries on the line of Tz’u-min and Fa-tchao. He is like the latter links with the T’ien-t’ai. He insists on the union of moral practice and the nembutsu, which he observes according to the precepts of the Meditation Sutra. His influence is to be profound on Korean Buddhism.^⁶6

Henceforth fixed, the Amidist doctrine makes no further progress in China. But the slow decadence of Chinese Buddhism, which is already beginning under the Sung (960 - 1127), which will continue under the Yuan and rush headlong under the Ming, benefits more than it harms the diffused cult of the Buddha of the Pure Land. The masses of the people flock to it in every greater numbers. It has been said that about the tenth Century “the Amidists ruled as masters over souls”. ^⁶7 In the course of the eleventh Century, when the Taoists seek to exploit official favour which has reverted to them, they see nothing more efficacious to gain their ends than plagiarising, in their cult of the “August Pure”, the cult of Amitabha.^⁶8 Subsequently, Amidism recruits more and more adepts among the well-read laymen, some of whom produce widely-diffused works: such as Wang Jeu-hiou (or Wang-kou), a statesman of the Sung dynasty, who resigns in 1125 and publishes in 1131 a Treatise on the invocation of Amitabha, reacting against idealist interpretations. It is the same again under the Ts’ing (from 1644 to 1912), with the laymen Tcheou K’eue-fou, P’eng Tsi-ts’ing, P’eng hi-sou, General Tchang Cheu-tch’eng. The last named reissues in 1825 the work of Wang Jeu-hiou, while putting the emphasis on the necessity for inward sincerity and love in the repetition of the Sacred Name.^⁶9

In all these later centuries, Amidism no longer appears in China as a particular sect, nor even as a school. The numerous works which it still inspires and which are admitted into the Tripitaka are due to authors from every source. It constitutes a recognised devotion, more or less in favour, in every Buddhist milieu, and it even overflows the borders of the great religion come from India, unless one prefers to say that it conduces to rendering them indistinct. The invocation of O-mi-to-Fo, to which attach, we believe, kinds of “indulgence”, has become a common practice. In a chapter of the Si yeou ki, the famous satirical novel of Wou Tch’eng in the sixteenth Century, the Monkey persuades a child to pass himself off as a Buddhist novice: “You will recite a sacred text”, he says to him; but the child does not know any. Then the Monkey asks: “Don’t you know any prayer to Buddha?” “Oh!” exclaims the child, “everyone can say O-mi-to-Fo!” ^⁷0 As for those who pride themselves on superior intellectuality or more advanced spirituality, they judge at least that this religion is good for the people and those lacking education, by virtue of its simple and emotional character. ^⁷1

In the Chinese monasteries, a whole ritual developed, with psalms alternated with readings, in honour of the Buddha of the West. The Monks invoke him in all circumstances, on great days and in the trifling details of each day. The evening exercises in his honour are among them the practice most followed. The two greatest annual festivals are the birthdays of Sakyamuni (eighth day of the fourth moon) and Amitabha (seventeenth day of the eleventh month). The latter is very especially invoked during the ceremony of the burning of the skull, which marks the monastic consecration (often wrongly called “ordination”). When a Monk happens to die, while his coffin is in position, groups relieve one another in order to read without interruption near the dead man the Amitabha Sutra or its abridgement, the O-mi-to-king, which is concluded each time by a processional march while invoking the Sacred Name, and after the services of the day the whole community likewise marches in front of the coffin. A monastic manual in high favour in the last century, “The Most Important Daily Occupations according to the Vinayas”, has the morning assembly in the Triratna hall open with these words: “O Amitabha, first among the Buddhas of the three worlds of the ten cardinal points, thou who dost lend all creatures to the supreme salvation, thou whose valuable blessings are infinite, we turn to thee. We feel repentance for our sins in thought, word and deed . . . Grant that all obtain rebirth in thy Paradise!”^⁷2

Another ceremony, which is not peculiar to the Monks, shows the cult of Amida mingled with the current Buddhism. The hundredth day after a decease, parents and friends come together to invoke the Bodhisattva

Afterwards they address all the divinities, Taoist and others: “Cause his soul to advance to the Western Paradise!” Magical formulas are recited. A few pages are read of the “Book which Destroys the Hells”. Finally, everything concludes with new invocations to Ti-t’sang and Amitabha. ^⁷3

Even not taking into account the numerous writings in honour of Amitabha due to authors of different sects, the Chinese Amidist literature is considerable. It comprises varied categories: dithyrambs, such as the one from T’an-luan quoted by us; systematic Treatises; commentaries on the fundamental Sutras; models of acts of repentance and desire; collections of exhortations to the faithful; popular brochures of propaganda and piety; liturgical works^⁷4; edifying lives in very great number; the history of Amidism. Here is a curious example of an act of repentance, cited by Father Leon Wieger:

“All of us here, gathered together, make confession with due penitence, before the Buddhas and P’ousas (Bodhisattvas), before the Genies of Heaven, Earth and Air, before the Judge of the Hells, that during innumerable existences we have perhaps committed many crimes: wounded some Buddha, killed some Arhat, ill-treated parents or kinsfolk, sinned through lewdness, theft or slander . . . We have perhaps incurred the worst sufferings, in the hot Hells and cold Hells. Affrighted by this thought, we now declare our repentance, wishing all our sins to be destroyed so that nothing of them remains. All of us whole-heartedly give ourselves to Amitabha.” ^⁷5

And here is an example of a popular brochure. The Si-fang kong-kiu, or “Testimony of the West”, edited in 1748, is the work of two authors, Tch’en and Tcheou. It is a kind of pot-pourri in sixteen small chapters, giving a summary of all that a good Amidist ought to know: the main point of the Sutras, formulas for prayers and acts of devotion, exhortations to morality and asceticism, accounts of miracles, etc. One learns in it for example that under the Sung dynasty, in a bonze monastery, a parrot died suddenly; as it had been in the habit of repeating the invocation: “O-mi-to-Fo”, then to add as many times: “Illumine me with your pure light”, etc. Let us despise this body from which escape ceaselessly fluids and filth through the nine orifices; let us despise this short and fragile life, ephemeral as the dewdrop; let us draw away from vanity and illusion . . . for a disciple of the Buddha, death is a matter for joy, since it opens the Western paradise; “it is the exchange of a patched coat for a precious garment.” ^⁷6

The biographical notices are full of marvellous narratives. They lay fond stress on the circumstances of the last moments. Here is a touching story, which occurred in the Sung dynasty, about the end of the eleventh Century. An old woman had two servants whom she maintained in the desire for the Pure Land. One day, one of the two servants said to the other: “I shall pass this night in Amitabha’s Paradise.” In the night, indeed, a sweet perfume filled the house, and the servant, who was not ill, died. Next day her surviving companion said to the lady, “The dead woman appeared to me in a dream and said: “Thanks to the exhortations of our mistress, I have attained Paradise and my happiness is beyond all description!”” The lady then said: “If she appears to me too, I shall believe what you have told me.” This indeed came about the following night. “Shall I also reach the Happy Land?” asked the old woman. “You have only to follow your servant”, replied the dead woman, and she led her to the shore of a vast lake, covered with red and white lotuses; some were blooming, others faded. They are, she explained, the souls who, on earth, directed their thoughts to the Pure Land. Their yearning causes a flower to be born in the heavenly lake; this flower grows in beauty or fades depending on whether there is progress or backsliding on earth. One of these flowers was the dead woman herself; two others were her living companion and their old mistress. The particular truth that the story wishes to instil is that a soul which lives in trusting faith and perseveres is already, in reality, in the Happy Land, although, its body still sojourns in this perishable world. ^⁷7

Here are some more stories of the dying. The Monk Hoei-yong, seriously ill, suddenly begs for his garments and shoes; as people are astonished, he goes on: “Don’t you see Amitabha coming to fetch me?”, and at once he dies. A mysterious perfume fills his cell for seven days. (414). Another Monk, Hoei-joei, one day says to his companions: “I am going”, rises up and makes for the West; several onlookers then see a lotus of gold open and receive him, while a fragrant smoke was surrounding his hut. (439) On the death of T’an-louen, people heard in the direction of the West the music of the procession which was coming to meet him. (600) Chan-t’ao achieved death on the field of action by letting himself drop, after beseeching Amitabha to come and take him. That was almost suicide; but suicide which results from yearning for the Pure Land is not considered a sin. Many Amidist actually starved themselves to death, or burnt themselves alive, or deliberately drowned themselves, in honour of their Buddha and so as to go and join him. We shall have occasion to cite various testimonies to it. Let us conclude this chapter by the account of the death of a humble upasaka (layman), named Kou-yuan. He was in bed, watched by his relations. “I see”, he is supposed to have suddenly declared, “the heavenly body of Amitabha which fills the universe. Everything is shining with the brilliance of gold. The Buddha is covering me with his mantle. Do not talk any more about secular matters, lest you divert my mind.” Then he sat up, silent. At the third watch of the night, he passed away gently, while his family, gathered around him, invoked Amitabha. ^⁷8

1 Hobogirin, 1, p. 24 b. Doubtless it is as a substitute for Sakyamuni that, in the art of the Far East, Amida is sometimes the sole Buddha to wear the Indian costume; thus in the famous paintings of the Kondo of the Horyuji in Nara, where the three other Buddhas represented are dressed in the Chinese style. C.B. Jeannine Auboyer, The Foreign Influences and Reminiscences in the Mural paintings of the Kondô of Hôryûji, in Review of Asiatic Arts (Annals of the Guimet Museum) vol. XIII (1939 - 1942), pp. 49 - 66.

3 These verses are taken from a book of “Liturgies of Avalokitesvara” (Koen-yinn Ch’an-fa), a version of which was compiled for Emporer Wee in the sixth Century and another round about the year 1000 A.D.. C.B. Arthur Waley, An Introduction to the Study of Chinese Painting, (London, 1923). There is another variant, in the Japanese Nô Atago Kuya: “Formerly on Vulture’s Peak, the sacred Name was that of the Lotus of the Law. Today, in the Western Paradise, it is that of Amida.” In Tibet and elsewhere, Sakyamuni is held to be a reflection of Amitabha: Charles Eliot, Japanese Buddhism (1935), p. 100. Junjiro Takakusu, The Essentials of the Buddhist Philosophy, (Honolulu, 1947): “Amitabha or Amitayus is a Buddha idealised from the historical Buddha Sakyamuni.”

4 C.B. Nagajuna: “The Blessed Sakyamuni has moreover a Pure Land, like the kingdom of the Blessed Amitabha; and the Blessed Amitabha also has an impure Kingdom, like this of the Blessed Sakyamuni.” (in Hobogirin, I, p. 25)

5 Tuan-huang possesses at least one great Paradise (or rather a sermon) of Sakyamuni, attended by the two Bodhisattvas Kshitigarbha and Akasagarbha, as well as the four disciples, Sariputra, Ananda, Maudgalyana and Kasyapa. In a more reduced model he appears as a cosmic divinity: the moon on his right shoulder, the sun on his left, Mount Meru on his abdomen, and surrounded by an ocean populated by fabulous animals. C.B. Raphael Petrucci, loc. cit., pp 1410 and 1411. Sir Aurel Stein, Serindia, vol. 2, p. 888. Without doubt there are others; C.B. supra, ch. 111, note 11.

7 Nanjio Catalogue, No. 28. Hobogirin, I, art. Ashuku, pp. 39 - 40, C.B. p. 25. Charles Eliot, Japanese Buddhism, p. 101. Aksobhya is also mentioned by the Lotus, ch. 7, in the list of the six Buddhas of the principal directions, and in our Short Sutra, in the middle of a longer list. His own Sutra begins with a setting analogous to that of the Amidist Sutras: Sakyamuni, on Vulture’s Peak explains to Sariputra the Vow made in former times by this future Buddha and the joys of his Paradise. He is often associated with Amitabha in the narrative of their previous existences.

8 The East was the customary direction of Aksobhya, but Bhaisajyaguru disputed the place with him. Of the various Buddhas appointed to the cardinal points. Amitabha is the only one to have remained invariably attached to his direction. C.B. Hobogirin, I. pp. 24 and 39.

9 By Srimitra (317 - 322), by Houei-kien (457), by Dharmagupta (615), by Hiuan-tsang (650). In 707 Yi-tsing translated a later text, which expounds in honour of the seven Buddhas, the “seven medical Tathagatas”, what was first attributed solely to Bhaisajyaguru.

1⁰ Paul Pelliot, Bhaisajyaguru, in Bulletin of the French School of the Far East, vol. III (1903), p. 33 - 37. Noël Péri, same Bulletin, vol. XI (1911), p. 225. The complete name of this Buddha is Bhaisajyaguruvaiduryaprabha.

1¹ A Sanskrit inscription from Sây-fông, in Laos (twelfth Century?), attests the extension of his cult in Indo-China: Louis Finot, The Sanskrit Inscription of Sây-fông, in Bulletin of the French School of the Far East, vol. 3, (1903), p. 29

1³ Albert Grunwadel, Mythology of Buddhism, (1900), pp. 120 - 121. Raphael Petrucci, The Mandalas . . ., loc. cit., p. 1405. G. Tucci, Tibetan Painted Scrolls, no. 16, pp. 360 - 361.

1⁵ Complete description in R. Petrucci,, loc. cit., pp. 1409 - 1410. For a Tibetan Bhaisajyaguru, C.B. G. Tucci, op. cit., pp. 360 - 361, pl. 30 - 31.

1⁶ According to the inscription on Yakushi’s halo, it was constructed and dedicated to this Buddha by Prince Shotoku, at the request of his father Emperor Yomei, who died in 587. A second triad, still by Tori, dating form 623, is a Shaka-sanzon.

1⁷ On the history of the cult of Yakushi-Nyorai in Japan, C.B. M.W. de Visser, Ancient Buddhism in Japan, vol. 2, pp. 533 - 571; vol. 1. pp. 18 - 21.

1⁸ C.B. supra, ch. 3, note 11. In Borabudur, p. 574, M. Paul Mus summed up in the following manner the relations of the three principal Buddhas who more or less succeeded one another in favour among the Chinese: “The great Mahayanist miracle of the multiplication of Buddhas, bound to the hope of being reborn above the world in their presences was centered in turn on Sakyamuni, Maitreya and Amitabha, the anterior phase being each time conserved by the new doctrine which set out from it in order to go beyond it. In such a way that the revelation has successively been of an “historical”, prophetic and ideal essence, and that in their third form it remains all three together.”

1⁹ Paul Mus, Borabudur, pp. * 17, * 122 - 123, 503, 576, 572, according to the inscriptions pointed out by Edward Chavannes, Archeological Mission in North China, 1, 2, pp. 473 - 474 and 493 - 494.

2⁰ Texts quoted by Noël Peri, loc. cit., pp. 446 - 452. Se also Paul Demiéville; The Chinese Versions of the Milinda-panha, p. 232, note 5.

2³ Life of Hiuan-tsang, translated Stanislas Julien, p. 345. C.B. Noël Peri, loc. cit., pp. 444 and 447. Edward Chavannes, in Review of the History of Religions, vol. 36 (1897), pp. 91 - 94.

2⁴ Description in Aurel Stein, op. cit., p. 890 and R. Petrucci, p. 1408. Above and below there are represented scenes borrowed from the Maitreya-vyakarana-Sutra. However, the interpretation is contested by M. Paul Mus, The Decorated Buddha, pp. 223 - 231.

2⁶ M. W. de Visser, op. cit., pp. 223 - 224. Kokka, no. 572 (July 1938), plate 3: Miroku coming to receive the souls of the dying, kakemono of the end of the Kamakura age.

2⁷ Treatise on Ten Questions relative to the Pure Land, (594). 7th question; summary by Leon Wieger, Chinese and Japanese Amidism, (1928), p. 23.

2⁸ C.B. Asanga, Mahayana-sutralamkara, vol. 2, introduction by Sylvain Lévi, pp. *2 - * 6. Louis de La Vallée Poussin, Maitreya and Asanga, in Bulletin of the class of Letters . . . of the Royal Academy of Belgium, vol. XVI (1930), pp. 9 - 39. It was through the supernatural powers of the Lesser Vehicle that Asanga mounted, so it was said, to the Tusita Heaven so as to receive these from Maitreya the teaching of the Great Vehicle; details in Paramartha, Hiuan-tsang and Taranatha.

3⁰ In the legend reported in the last chapter on the supernatural origin of the pictures of Sukhavati, the Indian Monk came from the monestery of Ki-t’sou-mo: it is the Kukkutarama of the Magadha, of whom it was a question in the legend of Maitreya. This Monk is transported, by his supernatural power, to the Pure Land, as various personages, in the texts relative to Maitreya, “go to the Tusita”, “go to see Maitreya”, etc. C.B. Noël Peri, Apropes of the Date of Vasubandhu, in Bulletin . . ., vol. XI (1911), p. 370, note 2. The famous Tibetan mystical poet Milarepa, if we can believe it, went “to visit each of the heavens of the different Buddhas” in order to listen to their preaching (translated Jacques Bacot, p. 221).

3² “The History of Buddhism in China”, wrote Henri Maspero, Taoism, (1950), p. 186, “such as the religious (Monks) of the sixth and seventh Century made it, is only a history of translations of texts”. At least we have here a positive, generally sound datum.

3³ Henri Maspero, The Religions of China, p. 67. The first Chinese translations of the Sanskrit Buddhist texts were made orally, by means of successive recitations; hence a certain number of ambiguities: C.B. Buddhist Bibliography, 1950, no. 355. Henri Maspero, Taoism, (1950), pp. 190 - 191. Already however the translation of the great Sukhavativyuha due to Samghavarman was, according to the statement of Father Wieger, “excellent”. History of Beliefs . . ., p. 380. C.B. pp. 360 - 377.

3⁴ On this curious personage, C.B. René Grousset, History of the Far East, vol. 1, pp. 256 - 257. A French translation of the Short Sutra was given in 1881 by M.M. Imaizumi and Yamata (Annals of the Guimet Museum, vol. 2, pp. 39 - 44), after this version of Kumarajiva’s.

3⁶ C.B. Étienne Lamotte, The Treatise of the Great Perfect Wisdom of Nagarjuna, vol. 1 (Louvain, 1944), p. VII. This Chinese translation is all we have today.

3⁹ Léon Wieger, History of Beliefs . . . in China, pp. 369 ss.; Chinese Buddhism, pp. 17 - 21. Pradobh Chandra Baighi, The Buddhist Canon in China, the translators and the translations, (1926). Paul Demiéville, The Chinese Versions . . pp. 233 - 237. Charles Eliot, Hinduism and Buddhism, vol. III, pp. 292 - 295 and 313.

4⁰ This is what is soon to be said by the author of the introduction to the Memoirs of Hiuan-tsang, (translated Stanislas Julien, vol. I, 1857, p. LXXVI).

4³ Léon Wieger, op. cit., vol 2, pp. 1184 and 1213. On the attachment to Buddhism of the Northern Wei, C.B. A. Spruyt, Recollections of a Journey to Long-men, in Chinese and Buddhist Miscellanies, vol. 1 (1931 - 1932). P.C. Bacghi, The Buddhist Canon, pp. XXV - XXX.

4⁵ C.B. B. Bhattacaryya, op. cit., pp. 17 - 18. The name of Manjusri appeared for the first time in the “Short Sutra”. The Buddha with whom he is habitually associated as dhyani-Bodhisattva is Akshobhya.

4⁶ Paul Pelliot, The Sect of the White Lotus and the Sect of the White Cloud, in Bulletin of the French School of the Far East, 1903, pp. 304 - 317. René Grousset, History of the Far East, vol. 1, pp. 258 - 260. Leon Weiger, Chinese Buddhism, pp. 15 - 18; History of Beliefs, p. 589. Charles Eliot, Hinduism and Buddhism, vol. III, pp. 313 - 314. Walter Liebenthal, Shih Hui-Yuan’s Buddhism as set forth in his writings, in Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. 70, (1950).

4⁷ Leon Wieger, Chinese and Japanese Amidism, p. 17. In the process of time, this name of “White Lotus” will become that of a formidable secret society and will cease to designate the Amidists. The School of the Pure Land = Tsing-tou-tsong.

4⁹ Leon Wieger, History of Beliefs, pp. 594 - 595. The beginning of this dithyramb evokes, for a Christian, the hymn of Clement of Alexandria to Christ the Saviour. O eternal Logos / Aeon without end / Immortal light / Fountain of mercy . . . See also, for example, the Hymn to Christ of St. Gregory of Narek: . . . When rise the rays without darkness / Of thy mercy, of thy glory, etc. (translated Isaac Kechichian, S.J., in The Christian Near-East, 1953, p. 233).

5² On the thirty-two marks (laksanas) of a Buddha and the eighty secondary signs, see e.g. Étienne Lamotte, in Asanga, Mahayanasamgraha, vol. 2, 2, pp. 55 * - 58 *.

5⁴ This custom of honouring the Law by copying the holy books is frequent in Buddhism, and was recommended in the Long Sutra, n. 43 (p. 68). C.B. M.W. de Vesser, op. cit., p. 320. G.B Sansom, Japan, History of Japanese Civilisation, (French translation, 1938), p. 294. Jean Buhot, in Gorce and Mortier, General History of Religions, vol. 4, p. 496.

5⁷ Serge Elisseev, loc. cit., pp. 316 - 317. René Grousset, History of the Far East, vol. 2, pp. 263 - 264. Léon Wieger, History of Beliefs, pp. 541 and 558 - 559; Chinese Buddhism, pp. 21 - 23; Philosophical Texts, pp. 351 and 397. On the reciprocal influence of Taoism and Buddhism: Henri Maspero, Taoism (1950), above all pp. 28 - 29 and 188 - 197.

5⁹ In Japan, Honen (Jodo sect), Eisai (Rinzai sect), Dogen (Soto sect) and Nichiren (Hokke sect) are equally indebted to it, not to mention, of course, the entire Tendai. C.B. infra, ch. 7, 8 and 9. Charles Elliot, Hinduism and Buddhism, vol. 3, p. 312. Coates and Ishizuka, op. cit., p. 108.

6¹ In Junjiro Takakusu, op. cit., pp. 167 - 168, there can be seen the picture of the double transmission of Amidism in China, from the fourth to the seventh Century.

6² Gemmyo Ono, On the Pure Land Doctrine of Tz’u-min, in The Estern Buddhist, vol. V, (1930), pp. 200 - 206. One the nembursu, C.B. infra, p. 144

6³ Hobogirin, II, art. Bombai (Psalmody), p. 97. The five “tones” were: “even tone; slowly with an evenly rising tone; without being slow or fast; hurrying a little; fast.”

6⁴ Hobogirin, I, p. 97. C.B. Charles Eliot, Japanese Buddhism, pp. 158 - 159. Coates, op. cit., p. 444. Tsukamoto (report in Buddhist Bibliography, VII - VIII, no. 507: P.D.) Gemmyo Ono, loc. cit., pp. 206 - 207

6⁶ Gemmyo Ono, loc. cit., p. 208. He is the author of three works: “Ritual Rule for Penitence and the Vow of Rebirth in the Pure Land”; “Additional Rules based on the Suvarnaprabhasa-sutra”; “Two Gates Leading to Amida’s Paradise”.

6⁹ Leon Wieger, China through the Ages, 2nd edition, Epitome, (1924), p. 260. Coates, op. cit., p. 308. The Treatise of Wang Jeu-hiou has been translated (into German) by H. Hackmann, Laien-Buddhismus in China, (Gotha, 1924).

7² J.J.M. de Groot, The Mahayana Code in China, pp. 6, 161, 205, 209, 219. Yang Seng-wey, The Chinese Bonze, his Religious and Liturgical Life, in Bulletin of Missions, 1931, pp. 126 - 128.

7⁵ On the three kinds of contrition according to Chan-t’ao, C.B. M.W. de Visser, op. cit., pp. 283 - 284. On the rites of repentance in honour of Amitabha in the Tendai: ibid., pp. 287 - 288. On these rites in the cult of Bhaisajyaguru: ibid., pp. 293 - 295. There is a beautiful liturgical prayer of repentance and desire, in L. Wieger, China (Dictionary of Spirituality, f. 10, col. 865).

7⁷ Schoot, Uber der Buddhismus in China und Hochasien, (1846), pp. 55 - 56; quoted by Albert Grunwedel, op. cit., pp. 119 - 120. We summarise.

7⁸ Leon Wieger, History of Beliefs, pp. 578 and 589 - 602. All these stories, analogies of which we shall find in Japan, have one of their prototypes in a narrative given by Nagarjuna; but this narrative showed the cult of Amitabha still associated with that of the literature of “great wisdom”: “There was a mendicant Monk, who recited the Sutra of Blessed Amitabha and the Mahaprajnaparamita. Shortly before his death, he said to his disciples that the Blessed Amitabha with his great assembly had come; then, sitting up again immediately, he took refuge in him, and died. After his death, his disciples gathered sticks and burnt him. On the following day they found in the cinders his tongue, which had not been consumed. Because he had recited the Mahaprajnaparamita, his tongue was not consumed. These are facts of the present day.” Quoted in Hobogirin, I, p. 25.