This Ku-sha shastra, from the Sanskrit kosa, a store, is eclectic, and contains nine chapters embodying the views of one of the schools, with selections from those of others.  It was translated in A.D. 563, into Chinese by a Hindu scholar; but about a hundred years later the famous pilgrim, whom the Japanese call Gen-j[=o], but who is known in Europe as Hiouen Thsang,[5] made a better translation, while his disciples added commentaries.

In A.D. 658, two Japanese priests[6] made the sea-journey westward into China, as Gen-j[=o] had before made the land pilgrimage into India, and became pupils of the famous pilgrim.  After long study they returned, bringing the Chinese translation of this shastra into Japan.  They did not form an independent sect; but the doctrines of this shastra, being eclectic, were studied by all Japanese Buddhist sects.  This Ku-sha scripture is still read in Japan as a general institute of ontology, especially by advanced students who wish to get a general idea of the doctrines.  It is full of technical terms, and is well named The Store-house of Metaphysics.

The Ku-sha teaches control of the passions, and the government of thought.  The burden of its philosophy is materialism; that is, the non-existence of self and the existence of the matter which composes self, or, as the Japanese writer says:  “The reason why all things are so minutely explained in this shastra is to drive away the idea of self, and to show the truth in order to make living beings reach Nirvana.”  Among the numerous categories, to express which many technical terms are necessary, are those of “forms,” eleven in number, including the five senses and the six objects of sense; the six kinds of knowledge; the forty-six mental qualities, grouped under six heads; and the fourteen conceptions separated from the mind; thus making in all seventy-two compounded things and three immaterial things.  These latter are “conscious cessation of existence,” “unconscious cessation of existence,” and “space.”

The Reverend Shuzan Emura, of the Shin-shu sect of Japan, after specifying these seventy-five Dharmas, or things compounded and things immaterial, says:[7] “The former include all things that proceed from a cause.  This cause is Karma, to which everything existing is due, Space and Nirvana alone excepted.  Again, of the three immaterial things the last two are not subjects to be understood by the wisdom not free from frailty.  Therefore the ‘conscious cessation of existence’ is considered as being the goal of all effort to him who longs for deliverance from misery.”

In a word, this one of the many Buddhisms of Asia is vastly less a religion, in any real sense of the word, than a system of metaphysics.  However, the doctrine to be mastered is graded in three Yanas or Vehicles; for there are now, as in the days of Shaka, three classes of being, graded according to their ability or power to understand “the truth.”  These are: