f sutras, and 12,000 monks were ordered
to return to the world. In 725 he ordered a building known as "Hall of
the Assembled Spirits" to be renamed "Hall of Assembled Worthies,"
because spirits were mere fables.

In the latter part of his life he became devout though addicted to
Taoism rather than Buddhism. But he must have outgrown his
anti-Buddhist prejudices, for in 730 the seventh collection of the
Tripitaka was made under his auspices. Many poets of this period such
as Su Chin and the somewhat later Liu Tsung Yuan[650] were Buddhists
and the paintings of the great Wu Tao-tzu and Wang-wei (painter as
well as poet) glowed with the inspiration of the T'ien-t'ai teaching.
In 740 there were in the city of Ch'ang-An alone sixty-four
monasteries and twenty-seven nunneries. A curious light is thrown
on the inconsistent and composite character of Chinese religious
sentiment--as noticeable to-day as it was twelve hundred years ago--by
the will of Yao Ch'ung[651] a statesman who presented a celebrated
anti-Buddhist memorial to this Emperor. In his will he warns his
children solemnly against the creed which he hated and yet adds the
following direction. "When I am dead, on no account perform for me the
ceremonies of that mean religion. But if you feel unable to follow
orthodoxy in every respect, then yield to popular custom and from the
first seventh day after my death until the last (_i.e._ seventh)
seventh day, let mass be celebrated by the Buddhist clergy seven
times: and when, as these masses require, you must offer gifts to me,
use the clothes which I wore in life and do not use other valuable
things."

In 751 a mission was sent to the king of Ki-pin.[652] The staff
included Wu-K'ung,[653] also known as Dharmadhatu, who remained some
time in India, took the vows and ultimately returned to China with
many books and relics. It is probable that in this and the following
centuries Hindu influence reached the outlying province of Yunnan
directly through Burma.[654]

Letters, art and pageantry made the Court of Hsuan Tsung brilliant,
but the splendour faded and his reign ended tragically in disaster and
rebellion. The T'ang dynasty seemed in danger of collapse. But it
emerged successfully from these troubles and continued for a century
and a half. During the whole of this period the Emperors with one
exception[655] were favourable to Buddhism, and the latter half of the
eighth century marks in Buddhist history an epoch of i