In A.D. 710, the great monastery at Nara was founded; and here we must notice or at least glance at the great throng of civilizing influences that came in with Buddhism, and at the great army of artists, artisans and skilled men and women of every sort of trade and craft.  We note that with the building of this great Nara monastery came another proof of improvement and the added element of stability in Japanese civilization.  The ancient dread which the Japanese had, of living in any place where a person had died was passing away.  The nomad life was being given up.  The successor of a dead Mikado was no longer compelled to build himself a new capital.  The traveller in Japan, familiar with the ancient poetry of the Many[=o]-shu, finds no fewer than fifty-eight sites[34] as the early homes of the Japanese monarchy.  Once occupying the proud position of imperial capitals, they are now for the most part mere hamlets, oftentimes mere names, with no visible indication of former human habitation; while the old rivers or streams once gay with barges filled with silken-robed lords and ladies, have dried up to mere washerwomen’s runnels.  For the first time after the building of this Buddhist monastery, the capital remained permanent, Nara being the imperial residence during seventy-five years.  Then beautiful Ki[=o]to was chosen, and remained the residence of successive generations of emperors until 1868.  In A.D. 735, we read of the Kegon sect.  Two years later a large monastery, with a seven-storied pagoda alongside of it, was ordered to be built in every province.  These, with the temples and their surroundings, and with the wayside shrines beginning to spring up like exotic flowers, made a striking alteration in the landscape of Japan.  The Buddhist scriptures were numerously copied and circulated among the learned class, yet neither now nor ever, except here and there in fragments, were they found among the people.  For, although the Buddhist canon has been repeatedly imported, copied by the pen and in modern times printed, yet no Japanese translation has ever been made.  The methods of Buddhism in regard to the circulation of the scriptures are those, not of Protestantism but of Roman Catholicism.

In the same year, the Mikado called for contributions from all the people for the building of a colossal image of the Buddha, which was to be of bronze and gilded.  Yet, fearing that the Shint[=o] gods might be offended, a skilful priest named Giyoku,—­probably the same man who introduced the potter’s wheel into Japan,—­was sent to the shrine of the Sun-goddess in Ise to present her with a shari or relic of the Buddha, and find out how she would regard his project.  After seven days and nights of waiting, the chapel doors flew open and the loud-voiced oracle was interpreted in a favorable sense.  The night following the return of the priest, the Mikado dreamed that the sun-goddess appeared to him in her own form and said “The sun is Birushana” (Vairokana).  This meant that the chief deity of the Japanese proclaimed herself an avatar or incarnation of one of the old Hindu gods.[35] She also approved the project of the image; and in this same year, 759, native gold was found in Japan, which sufficed for the gilding of the great idol that, after eleven hundred years and many vicissitudes, still stands, the glory of a multitude of pilgrims.