The next Emperor, Tai-Tsung, was converted to Buddhism by his Minister Wang Chin,[658] a man of great abilities who was subsequently sentenced to death for corruption, though the Emperor commuted the sentence to banishment.  Tai-Tsung expounded the scriptures in public himself and the sacred books were carried from one temple to another in state carriages with the same pomp as the sovereign.  In 768 the eunuch Yu Chao-En[659] built a great Buddhist temple dedicated to the memory of the Emperor’s deceased mother.  In spite of his minister’s remonstrances, His Majesty attended the opening and appointed 1000 monks and nuns to perform masses for the dead annually on the fifteenth day of the seventh month.  This anniversary became generally observed as an All Souls’ Day, and is still one of the most popular festivals in China.  Priests both Buddhist and Taoist recite prayers for the departed, rice is scattered abroad to feed hungry ghosts and clothes are burnt to be used by them in the land of shadows.  Large sheds are constructed in which are figures representing scenes from the next world and the evening is enlivened by theatricals, music and fire-works.[660]

The establishment of this festival was due to the celebrated teacher Amogha (Pu-k’ung), and marks the official recognition by Chinese Buddhism of those services for the dead which have rendered it popular at the cost of forgetting its better aspects.  Amogha was a native of Ceylon (or, according to others, of Northern India), who arrived in China in 719 with his teacher Vajrabodhi.  After the latter’s death he revisited India and Ceylon in search of books and came back in 746.  He wished to return to his own country, but permission was refused and until his death in 774 he was a considerable personage at Court, receiving high rank and titles.  The Chinese Tripitaka contains 108 translations[661] ascribed to him, mostly of a tantric character, though to the honour of China it must be said that the erotic mysticism of some Indian tantras never found favour there.  Amogha is a considerable, though not auspicious, figure in the history of Chinese Buddhism, and, so far as such changes can be the work of one man, on him rests the responsibility of making it become in popular estimation a religion specially concerned with funeral rites.[662]

Some authors[663] try to prove that the influx of Nestorianism under the T’ang dynasty had an important influence on the later development of Buddhism in China and Japan and in particular that it popularized these services for the dead.  But this hypothesis seems to me unproved and unnecessary.  Such ceremonies were an essential part of Chinese religion and no faith could hope to spread, if it did not countenance them:  they are prominent in Hinduism and not unknown to Pali Buddhism.[664] Further the ritual used in China and Japan has often only a superficial resemblance to Christian masses for the departed.  Part of it is magical and part of it consists in acquiring