repeated the now familiar arguments that it is an alien and maleficent
superstition, unknown under the ancient and glorious dynasties and
injurious to the customs and morality of the nation. Incidentally he
testifies to its influence and popularity for he complains of the
crowds thronging the temples which eclipse the imperial palaces in
splendour and the innumerable monks and nuns supported by the
contributions of the people. Then, giving figures, he commands that
4600 great temples and 40,000 smaller rural temples be demolished,
that their enormous[669] landed property be confiscated, that 260,500
monks and nuns be secularized and 150,000 temple slaves[670] set free.
These statistics are probably exaggerated and in any case the Emperor
had barely time to execute his drastic orders, though all despatch
was used on account of the private fortunes which could be amassed
incidentally by the executive.

As the Confucian chronicler of his doings observes, he suppressed
Buddhism on the ground that it is a superstition but encouraged Taoism
which is no better. Indeed the impartial critic must admit that it is
much worse, at any rate for Emperors. Undeterred by the fate of his
predecessors Wu-Tsung began to take the elixir of immortality. He
suffered first from nervous irritability, then from internal pains,
which were explained as due to the gradual transformation of his
bones, and at the beginning of 846 he became dumb. No further
explanation of his symptoms was then given him and his uncle Hsuan
Tsung was raised to the throne. His first act was to revoke the
anti-Buddhist edict, the Taoist priests who had instigated it were put
to death, the Emperor and his ministers vied in the work of
reconstruction and very soon things became again much as they were
before this great but brief tribulation. Nevertheless, in 852 the
Emperor received favourably a memorial complaining of the Buddhist
reaction and ordered that all monks and nuns must obtain special
permission before taking orders. He was beginning to fall under Taoist
influence and it is hard to repress a smile on reading that seven
years later he died of the elixir. His successor I-Tsung (860-874),
who died at the age of 30, was an ostentatious and dissipated
Buddhist. In spite of the remonstrances of his ministers he again sent
for the sacred bone from Fa-men and received it with even more respect
than his predecessor had shown, for he met it at the Palace gate and
bowed