to marry.  He was opposed by Hsiao Yu,[643] who declared that hell was made for such people as his opponent—­an argument common to many religions.  The Emperor followed on the whole advice of Fu I. Magistrates were ordered to inquire into the lives of monks and nuns.  Those found pure and sincere were collected in the large establishments.  The rest were ordered to return to the world and the smaller religious houses were closed.  Kao Tsu abdicated in 627 but his son Tai Tsung continued his religious policy, and the new Empress was strongly anti-Buddhist, for when mortally ill she forbade her son to pray for her recovery in Buddhist shrines.  Yet the Emperor cannot have shared these sentiments at any rate towards the end of his reign.[644] He issued an edict allowing every monastery to receive five new monks and the celebrated journey of Hsuan Chuang[645] was made in his reign.  When the pilgrim returned from India, he was received with public honours and a title was conferred on him.  Learned monks were appointed to assist him in translating the library he had brought back and the account of his travels was presented to the Emperor who also wrote a laudatory preface to his version of the Prajnaparamita.  It was in this reign also that Nestorian missionaries first appeared in China and were allowed to settle in the capital.  Diplomatic relations were maintained with India.  The Indian Emperor Harsha sent an envoy in 641 and two Chinese missions were despatched in return.  The second, led by Wang Hsuan-Ts’e,[646] did not arrive until after the death of Harsha when a usurper had seized the throne.  Wang Hsuan-Ts’e collected a small army in Tibet, dethroned the usurper and brought him as a prisoner to China.

The latter half of the seventh century is dominated by the figure of the Dowager Empress Wu, the prototype of the celebrated lady who took charge of China’s fate in our own day and, like her, superhuman in decision and unscrupulousness, yet capable of inspiring loyalty.  She was a concubine of the Emperor Tai Tsung and when he died in 649 lived for a short time as a Buddhist nun.  The eventful life of Wu Hou, who was at least successful in maintaining order at home and on the frontiers, belongs to the history of China rather than of Buddhism.  She was not an ornament of the faith nor an example of its principles, but, mindful of the protection it had once afforded her, she gave it her patronage even to the extent of making a bonze named Huai I[647] the minister of her mature passions when she was nearly seventy years old.  A magnificent temple, at which 10,000 men worked daily, was built for him, but the Empress was warned that he was collecting a body of vigorous monks nominally for its service, but really for political objects.  She ordered these persons to be banished.  Huai I was angry and burnt the temple.  The Empress at first merely ordered it to be rebuilt, but finding that Huai I was growing disrespectful, she had him assassinated.