erated by early Buddhism. The curious mingling of religious
services with theatrical pagents which Hsuan Chuang witnessed at
Allahabad in the reign of Harsha, has its modest parallel to-day in
many popular festivals.

The numerous images which crowd a Chinese temple, the four kings,
Arhats and Bodhisattvas, though of unfamiliar appearance to the Indian
student, are Indian in origin. A few Taoist deities may have side
chapels, but they are not among the principal objects of worship. The
greater part of the Chinese Tripitaka is a translation from the
Sanskrit and the Chinese works (only 194 against 1467 translations)
are chiefly exegetical. Thus, though Chinese bonzes countenance native
superstitions and gladly undertake to deal with all the gods and
devils of the land, yet in its doctrine, literature, and even in many
externals their Buddhism remains an Indian importation. If we seek in
it for anything truly Chinese, it is to be found not in the
constituents, but in the atmosphere, which, like a breeze from a
mountain monastery sometimes freshens the gilded shrines and libraries
of verbose sutras. It is the native spirit of the Far East which finds
expression in the hill-side hermit's sense of freedom and in dark
sayings such as _Buddhism is the oak-tree in my garden_. Every free
and pure heart can become a Buddha, but also is one with the life of
birds and flowers. Both the love of nature[583] and the belief that
men can become divine can easily be paralleled in Indian texts, but
they were not, I think, imported into China, and joy in natural beauty
and sympathy with wild life are much more prominent in Chinese than in
Indian art.

Is then Buddhist doctrine, as opposed to the superstitions tolerated
by Buddhism, something exotic and without influence on the national
life? That also is not true. The reader will perceive from what has
gone before that if he asks for statistics of Buddhism in China, the
answer must be, in the Buddha's own phrase, that the question is not
properly put. It is incorrect to describe China as a Buddhist country.
We may say that it contains so many million Mohammedans or Christians,
because these creeds are definite and exclusive. We cannot quote
similar figures for Buddhism or Confucianism. Yet assuredly Buddhism
has been a great power in China, as great perhaps as Christianity in
Europe, if we remember how much is owed by European art, literature,
law and science to non-Christian sources. Th