ia.]

[Footnote 587: There are said to have been four great schools of
Buddhist painting under the T'ang. See Kokka 294 and 295.]

[Footnote 588: Preserved in the British Museum and published.]

[Footnote 589: [Chinese: ] of the [Chinese: ] dynasty.]

[Footnote 590: [Chinese: ]

CHAPTER XLIII

CHINA _(continued)_

HISTORY.

The traditional date for the introduction of Buddhism is 62 A.D., when
the chronicles tell how the Emperor Ming-Ti of the Later Han Dynasty
dreamt that he saw a golden man fly into his palace[591] and how his
courtiers suggested that the figure was Fo-t'o[592] or Buddha, an
Indian God. Ming-Ti did not let the matter drop and in 65 sent an
embassy to a destination variously described as the kingdom of the Ta
Yueh Chih[593] or India with instructions to bring back Buddhist
scriptures and priests. On its return it was accompanied by a monk
called Kasyapa Matanga,[594] a native of Central India. A second
called Chu Fa-Lan,[595] who came from Central Asia and found some
difficulty in obtaining permission to leave his country, followed
shortly afterwards. Both were installed at Loyang, the capital of the
dynasty, in the White Horse Monastery,[596] so called because the
foreign monks rode on white horses or used them for carrying books.

The story has been criticized as an obvious legend, but I see no
reason why it should not be true to this extent that Ming-Ti sent an
embassy to Central Asia (not India in our sense) with the result that
a monastery was for the first time established under imperial
patronage. The gravest objection is that before the campaigns of Pan
Ch'ao,[597] which began about 73 A.D., Central Asia was in rebellion
against China. But those campaigns show that the Chinese Court was
occupied with Central Asian questions and to send envoys to enquire
about religion may have been politically advantageous, for they could
obtain information without asserting or abandoning China's claims to
sovereignty. The story does not state that there was no Buddhism in
China before 62 A.D. On the contrary it implies that though it was not
sufficiently conspicuous to be known to the Emperor, yet there was no
difficulty in obtaining information about it and other facts support
the idea that it began to enter China at least half a century earlier.
The negotiations of Chang Ch'ien[598] with the Yueh Chih (129-119
B.C.) and the documents discovered by Stein in the ancient military
posts on th