The Sacred Edict of the great K’ang Hsi forbids heterodoxy (i tuan) in which the official explanation clearly includes Buddhism.[579] It was published in his extreme youth, but had his mature approval, and until recently was read in every prefecture twice a month.  But the same Emperor gave many gifts to monasteries, and in 1705 he issued a decree to the monks of P’uto in which he said, “we since our boyhood have been earnest students of Confucian lore and have had no time to become minutely acquainted with the sacred books of Buddhism, but we are satisfied that Virtue is the one word which indicates what is essential in both systems.  Let us pray to the compassionate Kuan-yin that she may of her grace send down upon our people the spiritual rain and sweet dew of the good Law:  that she may grant them bounteous harvests, seasonable winds and the blessings of peace, harmony and long life and finally that she may lead them to the salvation which she offers to all beings in the Universe."[580] The two edicts are not consistent but such inconsistency is no reproach to a statesman nor wholly illogical.  The Emperor reprimands extravagance in doctrine and ceremonial and commends Confucianism to his subjects as all that is necessary for good life and good government, but when he finds that Buddhism conduces to the same end he accords his patronage and politely admits the existence and power of Kuan-yin.

But I must pass on to another question, the relation of Chinese to Indian Buddhism.  Chinese Buddhism is often spoken of as a strange and corrupt degeneration, a commixture of Indian and foreign ideas.  Now if such phrases mean that the pulse of life is feeble and the old lights dim, we must regretfully admit their truth, but still little is to be found in Chinese Buddhism except the successive phases of later Indian Buddhism, introduced into China from the first century A.D. onwards.  In Japan there arose new sects, but in China, when importation ceased, no period of invention supervened.  The T’ien-t’ai school has some originality, and native and foreign ideas were combined by the followers of Bodhidharma.  But the remaining schools were all founded by members of Indian sects or by Chinese who aimed at scrupulous imitation of Indian models.  Until the eighth century, when the formative period came to an end, we have an alternation of Indian or Central Asian teachers arriving in China to meet with respect and acceptance, and of Chinese enquirers who visited India in order to discover the true doctrine and practice and were honoured on their return in proportion as they were believed to have found it.  There is this distinction between China and such countries as Java, Camboja and Champa, that whereas in them we find a mixture of Hinduism and Buddhism, in China the traces of Hinduism are slight.  The imported ideas, however corrupt, were those of Indian Buddhist scholars, not the mixed ideas of the Indian layman.[581]