CHAPTER XLIII
CHINA (continued)
History.
The traditional date for the introduction of Buddhism is 62 A.D., when the chronicles tell how the Emperor Ming-Ti of the Later Han Dynasty dreamt that he saw a golden man fly into his palace[591] and how his courtiers suggested that the figure was Fo-t'o[592] or Buddha, an Indian God. Ming-Ti did not let the matter drop and in 65 sent an embassy to a destination variously described as the kingdom of the Ta Yüeh Chih[593] or India with instructions to bring back Buddhist scriptures and priests. On its return it was accompanied by a monk called Kâśyapa Mâtanga[594], a native of Central India. A second called Chu Fa-Lan[595], who came from Central Asia and found some difficulty in obtaining permission to leave his country, followed shortly afterwards. Both were installed at Loyang, the capital of the dynasty, in the White Horse Monastery[596], so called because the foreign monks rode on white horses or used them for carrying books.
The story has been criticized as an obvious legend, but I see no reason why it should not be true to this extent that Ming-Ti sent an embassy to Central Asia (not India in our sense) with the result that a monastery was for the first time established under imperial patronage. The gravest objection is that before the campaigns of Pan Ch'ao[597], which began about 73 A.D., Central Asia was in rebellion against China. But those campaigns show that the Chinese Court was occupied with Central Asian questions and to send envoys to enquire about religion may have been politically advantageous, for they could obtain information without asserting or abandoning China's claims to sovereignty. The story does not state that there was no Buddhism in China before 62 A.D. On the contrary it implies that though it was not sufficiently conspicuous to be known to the Emperor, yet there was no difficulty in obtaining information about it and other facts support the idea that it began to enter China at least half a century earlier. The negotiations of Chang Ch'ien[598] with the Yüeh Chih (129-119 B.C.) and the documents discovered by Stein in the ancient military posts on the western frontier of Kansu[599] prove that China had communication with Central Asia, but neither the accounts of Chang Ch'ien's journeys nor the documents contain any allusion to Buddhism. In 121 B.C. the Annals relate that "a golden man" was captured from the Hsiung-nu but, even if it was an image of Buddha, the incident had no consequences. More important is a notice in the Wei-lüeh which gives a brief account of the Buddha's birth and states that in the year 2 B.C. an ambassador sent by the Emperor Ai to the court of the Yüeh Chih was instructed in Buddhism by order of their king[600]. Also the Later Han Annals intimate that in 65 A.D. the Prince of Ch'u[601] was a Buddhist and that there were Śramanas and Upâsakas in his territory.
The author of the Wei-lüeh comments on the resemblance of Buddhist writings to the work of Lao-tzŭ, and suggests that the latter left China in order to teach in India. This theory found many advocates among the Taoists, but is not likely to commend itself to European scholars. Less improbable is a view held by many Chinese critics[602] and apparently first mentioned in the Sui annals, namely, that Buddhism was introduced into China at an early date but was exterminated by the Emperor Shih Huang Ti (221-206) in the course of his crusade against literature. But this view is not supported by any details and is open to the general objection that intercourse between China and India viâ Central Asia before 200 B.C. is not only unproved but improbable.
Still the mystical, quietist philosophy of Lao-tzŭ and Chuang-tzŭ has an undoubted resemblance to Indian thought. No one who is familiar with the Upanishads can read the Tao-Tê-Ching without feeling that if Brahman is substituted for Tao the whole would be intelligible to a Hindu. Its doctrine is not specifically Buddhist, yet it contains passages which sound like echoes of the Pitakas. Compare Tao-Tê-Ching, 33. 1, "He who overcomes others is strong: he who overcomes himself is mighty," with Dhammapada, 103, "If one man overcome a thousand thousand in battle and another overcome himself, this last is the greatest of conquerors"; and 46. 2, "There is no greater sin that to look on what moves desire: there is no greater evil than discontent: there is no greater disaster than covetousness," with Dhammapada, 251, "There is no fire like desire, there is no monster like hatred, there is no snare like folly, there is no torrent like covetousness." And if it be objected that these are the coincidences of obvious ethics, I would call attention to 39. 1̣, "Hence if we enumerate separately each part that goes to form a cart, we have no cart at all." Here the thought and its illustration cannot be called obvious and the resemblance to well-known passages in the Samyutta Nikâya and Questions of Milinda[603] is striking.
Any discussion of the indebtedness of the Tao-Tê-Ching to India is too complicated for insertion here since it involves the question of its date or the date of particular passages, if we reject the hypothesis that the work as we have it was composed by Lao-tzŭ in the sixth century B.C.[604] But there is less reason to doubt the genuineness of the essays of Chuang-tzŭ who lived in the fourth century B.C. In them we find mention of trances which give superhuman wisdom and lead to union with the all-pervading spirit, and of magical powers enjoyed by sages, similar to the Indian iddhi. He approves the practice of abandoning the world and enunciates the doctrines of evolution and reincarnation. He knows, as does also the Tao-Tê-Ching, methods of regulating the breathing which are conducive to mental culture and long life. He speaks of the six faculties of perception, which recall the Shaḍâyatana, and of name and real existence (nâmarûpam) as being the conditions of a thing[605]. He has also a remarkable comparison of death to the extinction of a fire: "what we can point to are the faggots that have been consumed: but the fire is transmitted and we know not that it is over and ended." Several Buddhist parallels to this might be cited[606].
The list of such resemblances might be made longer and the explanation that Indian ideas reached China sporadically, at least as early as the fourth century B.C., seems natural. I should accept it, if there were any historical evidence besides these literary parallels. But there seems to be none and it may be justly urged that the roots of this quietism lie so deep in the Chinese character, that the plant cannot have sprung from some chance wind-wafted seed. That character has two sides, one seen in the Chinese Empire and the classical philosophy, excellent as ethics but somewhat stiff and formal: the other in revolutions and rebellions, in the free life of hermits and wanderers, in poetry and painting. This second side is very like the temper of Indian Buddhism and easily amalgamated with it[607], but it has a special note of its own.
The curiosity of Ming-Ti did not lead to any immediate triumph of Buddhism. We read that he was zealous in honouring Confucius but not that he showed devotion to the new faith. Indeed it is possible that his interest was political rather than religious. Buddhism was also discredited by its first convert, the Emperor's brother Chu-Ying, who rebelled unsuccessfully and committed suicide. Still it flourished in a quiet way and the two foreign monks in the White Horse Monastery began that long series of translations which assumed gigantic proportions in the following centuries. To Kâśyapa is ascribed a collection of extracts known as the Sûtra of forty-two sections which is still popular[608]. This little work adheres closely to the teaching of the Pali Tripitaka and shows hardly any traces of the Mahâyâna. According to the Chinese annals the chief doctrines preached by the first Buddhist missionaries were the sanctity of all animal life, metempsychosis, meditation, asceticism and Karma.