ght have bowed to
Nakanari's fate, but Kusu's sentence of degradation and exile
overtaxed his patience. He raised an army and attempted to move to
the eastern provinces. In Mino, his route was intercepted by a force
under Tamuramaro, and the ex-Emperor's troops being shattered, no
recourse offered except to retreat to Nara. Then the Jo-o (Heijo)
took the tonsure, and his consort Kusu committed suicide. Those who
had rallied to the ex-Emperor's standard were banished.

THE FIRST JAPANESE THAT ENTERED INDIA

When Heijo ceded the throne to Saga, the former's son, Takaoka, was
nominated Crown Prince, though Saga had sons of his own. Evidently
that step was taken for the purpose of averting precisely such
incidents as those subsequently precipitated by the conspiracy to
restore Heijo. Therefore on the day following Heijo's adoption of the
tonsure, Takaoka was deprived of his rank.* Entering the priesthood,
he called himself Shinnyo, retired to Higashi-dera and studied the
doctrine of the True Word (Shingori). In 836, he proceeded to China
to prosecute his religious researches, and ultimately made his way to
India (in his eighty-first year), where he was killed by a tiger in
the district now known as the Laos States of Siam. This prince is
believed to have been the first Japanese that travelled to India. His
father, the ex-Emperor Heijo, was a student of the same Buddhist
doctrine (Shingon) and received instruction in it from Kukai. Heijo
died in 824, at the age of fifty-one.

*His family was struck off the roll of princes and given the uji of
Ariwara Asomi.

THE FIFTY-SECOND SOVEREIGN, THE EMPEROR SAGA (A.D. 810-823)

It is memorable in the history of the ninth century that three
brothers occupied the throne in succession, Heijo, Saga, and Junna.
Heijo's abdication was certainly due in part to weak health, but his
subsequent career proves that this reason was not imperative. Saga,
after a most useful reign of thirteen years, stepped down frankly in
favour of his younger brother. There is no valid reason to endorse
the view of some historians that these acts of self-effacement were
inspired by an indolent distaste for the cares of kingship. Neither
Heijo nor Saga shrank from duty in any form. During his brief tenure
of power the former unflinchingly effected reforms of the most
distasteful kind, as the dismissal of superfluous officials and the
curtailing of expenses; and the latter's reign was distinguished by
much us