In this task, we are happy to be able to rely upon native witness and confession.[4] The foreigner may easily misrepresent, even when sincerely inclined to utter only the truth.  Each religion, in its theory at least, must be judged by its ideals, and not by its failures.  Its truth must be stated by its own professors.  In the “History of The Twelve Japanese Sects,” by Bunyiu Nanjio, M.A.  Oxon., and in “Le Bouddhisme Japonais,” by Ryauon Fujishima, we have the untrammelled utterances, of nine living lights of the religion of Shaka as it is held and taught in Dai Nippon.  The former scholar is a master of texts, and the latter of philosophy, each editor excelling in his own department; and the two books complement each other in value.

Buddhism, being a logical growth out of Brahmanism, used the old sacred language of India and inherited its vocabulary.  In the Tripitaka, that is, the three book-baskets or boxes, we have the term for canon of scripture, in the complete collection of which are sutra, vinaya and abidharma.  We shall see, also, that while Gautama shut out the gods, his speculative followers who claimed to be his successors, opened the doors and allowed them to troop in again.  The democracy of the congregation became a hierarchy and the empty swept and garnished house, a pantheon.

A sutra, from the root siv, to sew, means a thread or string, and in the old Veda religion referred to household rites or practices and the moral conduct of life; but in Buddhist phraseology it means a body of doctrine.  A shaster or shastra, from the Sanskrit root cas, to govern, relates to discipline.  Of those shastras and sutras we must frequently speak.  In India and China some of those sutras are exponents, of schools of thought or opinion, or of views or methods of looking at things, rather than of organizations.  In Japan these schools of philosophy, in certain instances, become sects with a formal history.

In China of the present day, according to a Japanese traveller and author, “the Chinese Buddhists seem ... to unite all different sects, so as to make one harmonious sect.”  The chief divisions are those of the blue robe, who are allied with the Lamaism of Tibet and whose doctrine is largely “esoteric,” and those of the yellow robe, who accept the three fundamentals of principle, teaching and discipline.  Dhyana or contemplation is their principle; the Kegon or Avatamsaka sutra and the Hokke or Saddharma Pundarika sutra, etc., form the basis of their teaching; and the Vinaya of the Four Divisions (Dharmagupta) is their discipline.  On the contrary, in Japan there are vastly greater diversities of sect, principle, teaching and discipline.

Buddhism as a System of Metaphysics.

The date of the birth of the Buddha in India, accepted by the Japanese scholars is B.C. 1027—­the day and month being also given with suspicious accuracy.  About nine centuries after Gautama had attained Nirvana, there were eighteen schools of the Hinayana or the doctrine of the Smaller Vehicle.  Then a shastra or institute of Buddhist ontology in nine chapters, was composed, the title of which in English, is, Book of the Treasury of Metaphysics.  It had such a powerful influence that it was called an intelligence-creating, or as we say, an epoch-making book.