retfully admit their truth, but still little is to be
found in Chinese Buddhism except the successive phases of later Indian
Buddhism, introduced into China from the first century A.D. onwards.
In Japan there arose new sects, but in China, when importation ceased,
no period of invention supervened. The T'ien-t'ai school has some
originality, and native and foreign ideas were combined by the
followers of Bodhidharma. But the remaining schools were all founded
by members of Indian sects or by Chinese who aimed at scrupulous
imitation of Indian models. Until the eighth century, when the
formative period came to an end, we have an alternation of Indian or
Central Asian teachers arriving in China to meet with respect and
acceptance, and of Chinese enquirers who visited India in order to
discover the true doctrine and practice and were honoured on their
return in proportion as they were believed to have found it. There is
this distinction between China and such countries as Java, Camboja and
Champa, that whereas in them we find a mixture of Hinduism and
Buddhism, in China the traces of Hinduism are slight. The imported
ideas, however corrupt, were those of Indian Buddhist scholars, not
the mixed ideas of the Indian layman.[581]

Of course Buddhist theory and practice felt the influence of their new
surroundings. The ornaments and embroidery of the faith are Chinese
and sometimes hide the original material. Thus Kuan-yin, considered
historically, has grown out of the Indian deity Avalokita, but the
goddess worshipped by the populace is the heroine of the Chinese
romance mentioned above. And, since many Chinese are only half
Buddhists, tales about gods and saints are taken only half-seriously;
the Buddha periodically invites the immortals to dine with him in
Heaven and the Eighteen Lohan are described as converted brigands.

In every monastery the buildings, images and monks obviously bear the
stamp of the country. Yet nearly all the doctrines and most of the
usages have Indian parallels. The ritual has its counterpart in what
I-Ching describes as seen by himself in his Indian travels. China has
added the idea of _feng-shui_, and has modified architectural forms.
For instance the many-storeyed pagoda is an elongation of the
stupa.[582] So, too, in ceremonial, the great prominence given to
funeral rites and many superstitious details are Chinese, yet, as I
have often mentioned in this work, rites on behalf of the dead were
tol