cannot have sprung from some chance wind-wafted seed.  That character has two sides, one seen in the Chinese Empire and the classical philosophy, excellent as ethics but somewhat stiff and formal:  the other in revolutions and rebellions, in the free life of hermits and wanderers, in poetry and painting.  This second side is very like the temper of Indian Buddhism and easily amalgamated with it,[607] but it has a special note of its own.

The curiosity of Ming-Ti did not lead to any immediate triumph of Buddhism.  We read that he was zealous in honouring Confucius but not that he showed devotion to the new faith.  Indeed it is possible that his interest was political rather than religious.  Buddhism was also discredited by its first convert, the Emperor’s brother Chu-Ying, who rebelled unsuccessfully and committed suicide.  Still it flourished in a quiet way and the two foreign monks in the White Horse Monastery began that long series of translations which assumed gigantic proportions in the following centuries.  To Kasyapa is ascribed a collection of extracts known as the Sutra of forty-two sections which is still popular.[608] This little work adheres closely to the teaching of the Pali Tripitaka and shows hardly any traces of the Mahayana.  According to the Chinese annals the chief doctrines preached by the first Buddhist missionaries were the sanctity of all animal life, metempsychosis, meditation, asceticism and Karma.

It is not until the third century[609] that we hear much of Buddhism as a force at Court or among the people, but meanwhile the task of translation progressed at Lo-yang.  The Chinese are a literary race and these quiet labours prepared the soil for the subsequent efflorescence.  Twelve[610] translators are named as having worked before the downfall of the Han Dynasty and about 350 books are attributed to them.  None of them were Chinese.  About half came from India and the rest from Central Asia, the most celebrated of the latter being An Shih-kao, a prince of An-hsi or Parthia.[611] The Later Han Dynasty was followed by the animated and romantic epoch known as the Three Kingdoms (221-265) when China was divided between the States of Wei, Wu and Shu.  Loyang became the capital of Wei and the activity of the White Horse Monastery continued.  We have the names of five translators who worked there.  One of them was the first to translate the Patimokkha,[612] which argues that previously few followed the monastic life.  At Nanking, the capital of Wu, we also hear of five translators and one was tutor of the Crown Prince.  This implies that Buddhism was spreading in the south and that monks inspired confidence at Court.