as governor and then listened to the proposals made by the ruler of
Eastern Wei for his surrender. On this Hou-Ching conspired with an
adopted son of Wu-Ti, who had been set aside as heir to the throne and
invested Nanking. The city was captured after the horrors of a
prolonged siege and Wu-Ti died miserably.

Wu-Ti was not originally a Buddhist. In fact until about 510, when he
was well over forty, he was conspicuous as a patron of Confucianism.
The change might be ascribed to personal reasons, but it is noticeable
that the same thing occurred in Wei, where a period of Confucianism
was succeeded by a strong wave of Buddhism which evidently swept over
all China. Hu,[628] the Dowager Empress of Wei, was a fervent devotee,
though of indifferent morality in both public and private life since
she is said to have poisoned her own son. In 518 she sent Sung Yun and
Hui Sheng[629] to Udyana in search of Buddhist books of which they
brought back 175.

Wu-Ti's conversion is connected with a wandering monk and magician
called Pao-Chih,[630] who received the privilege of approaching him at
all hours. A monastery was erected in Nanking at great expense and
edicts were issued forbidding not only the sacrifice of animals but
even the representation of living things in embroidery, on the ground
that people might cut up such figures and thus become callous to the
sanctity of life. The emperor expounded sutras in public and wrote a
work on Buddhist ritual.[631] The first Chinese edition of the
Tripitaka, in manuscript and not printed, was collected in 518.
Although Wu-Ti's edicts, particularly that against animal
sacrifices, gave great dissatisfaction, yet the Buddhist movement
seems to have been popular and not merely an imperial whim, for many
distinguished persons, for instance the authors Liu Hsieh and Yao
Ch'a,[632] took part in it.

In 520 (or according to others, in 525) Bodhidharma (generally called
Ta-mo in Chinese) landed in Canton from India. He is described as the
son of a king of a country called Hsiang-chih in southern India, and
the twenty-eighth Patriarch.[633] He taught that merit does not lie in
good works and that knowledge is not gained by reading the scriptures.
The one essential is insight, which comes as illumination after
meditation. Though this doctrine had subsequently much success in the
Far East, it was not at first appreciated and Bodhidharma's
introduction to the devout but literary Emperor in Nanking wa