Space and time—­which seem never to fail the Buddhists in their literature—­would fail us to describe this sect in full, or to show in detail its teachings, wherein are wonderful resemblances to European ideas and facts—­in philosophy, to Hegel and Spinoza find in history, to Jesuitism.  Nor can we stay to point out the many instances in which, invading the domain of politics, the Ten-dai abbots with their armies of monks, having made their monasteries military arsenals and issuing forth clad in armor as infantry and cavalry, have turned the scale of battle or dictated policies to emperors.  Like the Praetorian guard of Rome or the clerical militia in Spain, these men of keen intellect have left their marks deep upon the social and political history of the country in which they dwelt.  They have understood thoroughly the art of practising religion for the sake of revenue.  To secure their ends, priests have made partnerships with other sects; in order to hold Shint[=o] shrines, they have married to secure heirs and make office hereditary; and finally in the Purification of 1870, when the Riy[=o]bu system was blown to the winds by the Japanese Government, not a few priests of this sect became laymen, in order to keep both office and emolument in the purified Shint[=o] shrines.

The Sect of the True Word.

It is probable that the conquest and obliteration of Shint[=o] might have been accomplished by some priest or priests of the Ten-dai sect, had such a genius as K[=o]b[=o] been found in its household; but this great achievement was reserved for the man who introduced into Japan the Shin-gon Shu, or Sect of the True Word.  The term gon is the equivalent of Mantra,[20] a Sanskrit term meaning word, but in later use referring to the mystic salutations addressed to the Buddhist gods.  “The doctrine of this sect is a great secret law.  It teaches us that we can attain to the state of the ‘Great Enlightened,’ that is the state of ‘Buddha,’ while in the present physical body, which was born of our parents (and which consists of six elements,[21] Earth, Water, Fire, Wind, Ether, and Knowledge), if we follow the three great secret laws, regarding Body, Speech, and Thought."[22]

The history of the transmission of the doctrine from the greatest of the spirit-bodied Buddhas to the historic founder, Vagrabodhi, is carefully given.  The latter was a man very learned in regard to many doctrines of Buddhism and other religious, and was especially well acquainted with the deepest meaning of the doctrine of this sect, which he taught in India for a considerable time.  The doctrine is recorded in several sutras, yet the essential point is nothing but the Mandala, or circle of the two parts, or, in Japanese, Riy[=o]bu.