In 520 (or according to others, in 525) Bodhidharma (generally called Ta-mo in Chinese) landed in Canton from India.  He is described as the son of a king of a country called Hsiang-chih in southern India, and the twenty-eighth Patriarch.[633] He taught that merit does not lie in good works and that knowledge is not gained by reading the scriptures.  The one essential is insight, which comes as illumination after meditation.  Though this doctrine had subsequently much success in the Far East, it was not at first appreciated and Bodhidharma’s introduction to the devout but literary Emperor in Nanking was a fiasco.  He offended his Majesty by curtly saying that he had acquired no merit by causing temples to be built and books to be transcribed.  Then, in answer to the question, what is the most important of the holy doctrines, he replied “where all is emptiness, nothing can be called holy.”  “Who,” asked the astonished Emperor, “is he who thus replies to me?” “I do not know,” said Bodhidharma.

Not being able to come to any understanding with Wu-Ti, Bodhidharma went northwards, and is said to have crossed the Yang-tse standing on a reed, a subject frequently represented in Chinese art.[634] He retired to Lo-yang where he spent nine years in the Shao-Lin[635] temple gazing silently at a wall, whence he was popularly known as the wall-gazer.  One legend says that he sat so long in contemplation that his legs fell off, and a kind of legless doll which is a favourite plaything in Japan is still called by his name.  But according to another tale he preserved his legs.  He wished to return to India but died in China.  When Sung Yun, the traveller mentioned above, was returning from India, he met him in a mountain pass bare-footed and carrying one sandal in his hand.[636] When this was reported, his coffin was opened and was found to contain nothing but the other sandal which was long preserved as a precious relic in the Shao-Lin temple.

Wu-Ti adopted many of the habits of a bonze.  He was a strict vegetarian, expounded the scriptures in public and wrote a work on ritual.  He thrice retired into a monastery and wore the dress of a Bhikkhu.  These retirements were apparently of short duration and his ministers twice redeemed him by heavy payments.

In 538 a hair of the Buddha was sent by the king of Fu-nan and received with great ceremony.  In the next year a mission was despatched to Magadha to obtain Sanskrit texts.  It returned in 546 with a large collection of manuscripts and accompanied by the learned Paramartha who spent twenty years in translating them.[637] Wu-Ti, in his old age, became stricter.  All luxury was suppressed at Court, but he himself always wore full dress and showed the utmost politeness, even to the lowest officials.  He was so reluctant to inflict the punishment of death that crime increased.  In 547 he became a monk for the third time and immediately afterwards the events connected with Hou-Ching (briefly sketched above) began to trouble the peace of his old age.  During the siege of Nanking he was obliged to depart from his vegetarian diet and eat eggs.  When he was told that his capital was taken he merely said, “I obtained the kingdom through my own efforts and through me it has been lost.  So I need not complain.”