CHAPTER VIII - NORTHERN BUDDHISM IN ITS DOCTRINAL EVOLUTIONS
Chronological Outline.
In sketching the history of the doctrinal developments of Buddhism in Japan, we note that the system, greatly corrupted from its original simplicity, was in 552 A.D. already a millennium old. Several distinct phases of the much-altered faith of Gautama, were introduced into the islands at various times between the sixth and the ninth century. From these and from others of native origin have sprung the larger Japanese sects. Even as late as the seventeenth century, novelties in Buddhism were imported from China, and the exotics took root in Japanese soil; but then, with a single exception, only to grow as curiosities in the garden, rather than as the great forests, which had already sprung from imported and native specimens.
We may divide the period of the doctrinal development of Buddhism in Japan into four epochs:
I. The first, from 552 to 805 A.D., will cover the first six sects, which had for their centre of propagation, Nara, the southern capital.
II. Then follows Riyōbu Buddhism, from the ninth to the twelfth centuries.
III. This was succeeded by another explosion of doctrine wholly and peculiarly Japanese, and by a wide missionary propagation.
IV. From the sixteenth to the nineteenth century, there is little that is doctrinally noticeable, until our own time, when the new Buddhism of to-day claims at least a passing notice.
The Japanese writers of ecclesiastical history classify in three groups the twelve great sects as the first six, the two mediæval, and the four modern sects.
In this lecture we shall merely summarize the characteristics of the first five sects which existed before the opening of the ninth century but which are not formally extant at the present time, and treat more fully the purely Japanese developments. The first three sects may be grouped under the head of the Hinayana, or Smaller Vehicle, as Southern or primitive orthodox Buddhism is usually called.