t bids officials discharge their duties
with due respect to the Church and the other protests against improper
legislation.

The Fan-wang-ching is the most important and most authoritative
statement of the general principles regulating monastic life in China.
So far as my own observation goes, it is known and respected in all
monasteries. The Pai-chang-ch'ing-kuei[864] deals rather with the
details of organization and ritual and has not the same universal
currency. It received the approval of the Yuan dynasty[865] and is
still accepted as authoritative in many monasteries and gives a
correct account of their general practice. It was composed by a monk
of Kiang-si, who died in 814 A.D. He belonged to the Ch'an school, but
his rules are approved by others. I will not attempt to summarize
them, but they include most points of ritual and discipline mentioned
below. The author indicates the relations which should prevail between
Church and State by opening his work with an account of the ceremonies
to be performed on the Emperor's birthday, and similar occasions.

Large Buddhist temples almost always form part of a monastery, but
smaller shrines, especially in towns, are often served by a single
priest. The many-storeyed towers called pagodas which are a
characteristic beauty of Chinese landscapes, are in their origin
stupas erected over relics but at the present day can hardly be called
temples or religious buildings, for they are not places of worship and
generally owe their construction to the dictates of Feng-shui or
geomancy. Monasteries are usually built outside towns and by
preference on high ground, whence _shan_ or mountain has come to be
the common designation of a convent, whatever its position. The sites
of these establishments show the deep feeling of cultivated Chinese
for nature and their appreciation of the influence of scenery on
temper, an appreciation which connects them spiritually with the
psalms of the monks and nuns preserved in the Pali Canon. The
architecture is not self-assertive. Its aim is not to produce edifices
complete and satisfying in their own proportions but rather to
harmonize buildings with landscape, to adjust courts and pavilions to
the slope of the hillside and diversify the groves of fir and bamboo
with shrines and towers as fantastic and yet as natural as the
mountain boulders. The reader who wishes to know more of them should
consult Johnston's _Buddhist China_, a work which combi