The Best of the Bureau/The_Best_of_the_Bureau_Bureau_Development_Inc._1992.iso/dp/0079/00790.txt

Text File | 1992-08-07 | 29KB | 452 lines

$Unique_ID{bob00790}
$Pretitle{}
$Title{History Of Religions
Chapter II: Part I}
$Subtitle{}
$Author{Foot Moore, George}
$Affiliation{}
$Subject{buddhism
buddhist
japan
sects
china
buddha
chinese
monks
sect
century}
$Date{1913}
$Log{}
Title:       History Of Religions
Book:        Religions Of Japan
Author:      Foot Moore, George
Date:        1913

Chapter II: Part I

Buddhism

     Introduction - Influence of China - Compromise with Shinto - Spread among
the People - Monasteries and Their Feuds - Conflicts with the State - Tenets
of the Sects: Shingon, Tendai, Zen - Pure Land Sects: Jodo, Shin - Salvation
by Faith - Relation to Christianity - Common Characteristics - Popular
Buddhism - Confucianism in Japan.

     In 552 A.D. the ruler of the little kingdom of Pekche, in the
south-western corner of the Korean peninsula, being hard pressed by more
powerful neighbours and desiring to secure Japanese support, sent to the
emperor, with other presents, an image of Shaka Butsu ^1 in gold and copper,
several flags and umbrellas, and a number of volumes of Sutras.  In an
accompanying letter, he commended the Buddhist religion as the most profitable
of all faiths.

[Footnote 1: The Buddha Sakyamuni.  Buddhism had been introduced into northern
Korea in 372 A.D. and into Pekche in 384, where it at once became the court
religion.]

     A division of counsels arose over the question whether the new god should
be worshipped or not: the chief minister, Soga, was in favour of following the
fashion of all the western neighbours; other no less influential voices gave
warning against provoking the anger of the native deities, the gods of heaven
and earth, of the land and grain, by giving them a rival.  It was thereupon
decided that Soga might set up the worship himself in his own house and see
what happened.  A pestilence which shortly ensued was interpreted by the
opponents of the foreign religion as a confirmation of their warning; Soga's
temple was burned and the image thrown into a canal.  A second attempt to
introduce Buddhism, in 577 A.D., had a like ending.

     In the conflicts over the succession which followed the death of the
emperor Bidatsu (586 B.C.), however, the leaders of the opposition lost their
lives, and the house of Soga, which from the beginning had been favourably
disposed to Buddhism, became all-powerful.  Under the empress Suiko Tenno
(593-628 A.D), whom the Soga raised to the throne, with the prince Shotoku
Taishi as heir apparent and virtual regent, Buddhism became the religion of
the court, and the nobility made haste to follow the fashion.  Shotoku was a
man of high character and of remarkable learning, not only in Buddhist
doctrine but in Chinese literature, and he tried to instil into the governing
class some of those lofty notions of official obligation and responsibility
which he found in Confucius and Mencius.  In the second of the seven articles
of his instructions for officials he strongly commends Buddhism: "Zealously
venerate the three jewels (the Triratna).  The three jewels are the Buddha,
the Law, and the Order.  These are the last refuge of the four classes of
beings and the ultimate principles of all lands.  What age, what men should
not honour these laws? There are but few men who are wholly bad; men can be
instructed and so brought to follow the laws.  How can they be rightly
controlled except by refuge in the three jewels?  His example and influence
doubtless did as much to further the spread of Buddhism as his formal
commendation.  In an enumeration taken shortly after his death (621 A.D.) 46
temples were reported, with 816 priests and 569 nuns.

     In 607 Shotoku despatched a company of students, monks and laymen, to
Loh-yang, then the capital of China, where they remained for many years,
devoting themselves not only to the abstrusities of scholastic Buddhism, but
to the classic ethical and political philosophy, and to Chinese methods of
government.  A few years after their arrival in China the Sui dynasty was
overthrown (619) and the T'ang succeeded it.  The second emperor of this line,
T'ai Tsung (627-650), brought China to the very highest pitch of its power.
His dominions extended to Persia and the Caspian Sea and to the confines of
India, and under him China was "the most powerful, the most enlightened, the
most progressive, and the best governed empire, not only in Asia, but on the
face of the globe." He remodelled the university and other educational
institutions, instituted the system of examinations which have ever since been
the way into the service of the state, and undertook a new codification of the
laws of the empire.  The last of the Japanese students sent over by Shotoku
returned to their native country in 640, having lived for a dozen years at the
capital of this great monarch.

     They had not been long at home when they had opportunity to put their
knowledge to use: the great reforms of 645 were largely directed by them.
These reforms consisted essentially in a reorganisation of the whole Japanese
system of government on the Chinese model.  In the place of a clan system,
which is often, though not quite accurately, called feudal, was erected a
strongly centralised government, with eight ministerial departments, whose
functions were minutely defined, and a hierarchy of officials; provision was
made for the registration of the people in census lists and laws were enacted
regulating the division of land, taxes, and the like.  The successive codes
from 662 on are framed in the same spirit; the definitive code of 702, the
Taiho-ryo, was based throughout on the contemporary Chinese code, T'ang-ling,
and was promulgated in the Chinese language.

     In short, Japan appropriated Chinese civilisation in the seventh century
with more avidity and with less discrimination and independence than it
manifested toward Occidental civilisation in the nineteenth century -
naturally, inasmuch as in the former period there was no old and high national
culture to withstand the foreign way.  Schools for the study of Chinese were
established by the emperor Tenchi (668-671), with foreign and native teachers,
and later a university, in which instruction was given in the quadrivium,
history, the Chinese classics, law, and mathematics. Buddhism seemed to be an
integral part of the new civilisation - to be, in fact, its religious side.
Confucianism as a moral and political philosophy was of undisputed authority
in its own sphere; but the Chinese official cultus, being specifically a state
religion, was not exportable.

     The reforming emperor, Kotoku (645-654), "honoured the religion of Buddha
and despised the way of the gods" (Shinto).  The second of his successors,
Temmu, in 674, ordered that every house in his kingdom should have an altar
for the worship of Buddha.  The progress that Buddhism made in this period may
be judged by the fact that in the code of 702 it was found necessary to forbid
the gift or sale of lands to the temples and to prohibit monks and nuns from
owning real estate individually - so rapidly were the saints inheriting the
earth.  This legislation proved, however, to be of as little effect as similar
statutes of mortmain in Christian countries.

     Down to the end of the eighth century Buddhism, like the Chinese learning
with which it was so intimately associated, flourished chiefly at court and in
official circles; the masses remained ignorantly loyal to the faith of their
fathers.  A virulent epidemic of smallpox, which, starting in Kiushiu, reached
the capital in 735, set all classes to propitiating the offended powers -
whoever they were - or to invoking the protection of the friendly gods against
the demons.  The Buddhist priests did their part as experts in such business,
and the emperor promised to erect a colossal statue of Buddha for deliverance
from the plague.  The common people resorted to the old gods for help, and as
the pestilence continued to rage the thoughts of other classes also turned to
them.  Perhaps, as at the very int