not see that
there is much definite Buddhism in his philosophy, but if Mahayanism
had never entered China this new Confucianism would probably never
have arisen or would have taken another shape. Though the final result
may be anti-Buddhist yet the topics chosen and the method of treatment
suggest that the author felt it necessary to show that the Classics
could satisfy intellectual curiosity and supply spiritual ideals just
as well as this Indian religion. Much of his expositions is occupied
with cosmology, and he accepts the doctrine of world periods,
recurring in an eternal series of growth and decline: also he teaches
not exactly transmigration but the transformation of matter into
various living forms.[677] His accounts of sages and saints point to
ideals which have much in common with Arhats and Buddhas and, in
dealing with the retribution of evil, he seems to admit that when the
universe is working properly there is a natural _Karma_ by which good
or bad actions receive even in this life rewards in kind, but that in
the present period of decline nature has become vitiated so that vice
and virtue no longer produce appropriate results.

Chu-Hsi had a celebrated controversy with Lu Chiu-Yuan,[678] a thinker
of some importance who, like himself, is commemorated in the tablets
of Confucian temples, although he was accused of Buddhist tendencies.
He held that learning was not indispensable and that the mind could in
meditation rise above the senses and attain to a perception of the
truth. Although he strenuously denied the charge of Buddhist leanings,
it is clear that his doctrine is near in spirit to the mysticism of
Bodhidharma and sets no store on the practical ethics and studious
habits which are the essence of Confucianism.

The attitude of the Yuan or Mongol dynasty (1280-1368) towards
Buddhism was something new. Hitherto, whatever may have been the
religious proclivities of individual Emperors, the Empire had been
a Confucian institution. A body of official and literary opinion
always strong and often overwhelmingly strong regarded imperial
patronage of Buddhism or Taoism as a concession to the whims of the
people, as an excrescence on the Son of Heaven's proper faith or even
a perversion of it. But the Mongol Court had not this prejudice and
Khubilai, like other members of his house[679] and like Akbar in
India, was the patron of all the religions professed by his subjects.
His real object was to encourage a