from
India and took up his residence at the court at Changan, where a
Tibetan family was then reigning over the north; and this, when
you think that these Patriarchs were (as I believe) no popes
elected by a conclave of churchly dignities, but the Spiritual
Successors of the Buddha, each appointed by his predecessor, an
event momentous enough in itself. Still, Kumarajiva came (it
would appear) but to prepare the way for the great change that
was impending; left behind him a successor in India, or one to
fill the office at his death; in India the headquarters of
Buddhism remained. Two years before his arrival, Fa Hian, a
Chinese Buddhist monk, had set out on foot from Central China,
walked across the Gobi Desert, and down through Afghanistan into
India, a pilgrim to the sacred places: a sane and saintly man,
from whom we learn most of what we know about the Gupta regime.
He returned by sea in 412, landing at Kiao-chao in Santung,--a
place latterly so sadly famous,--bringing with him spiritual and
quickening influences. In the south, meanwhile, another Indian
teacher, Buddhabhadra, had been at work. Before very long, a
Renaissance was in full flow.

The political events that led up to it were these: between 304
and 319 a Tatar family by the name of Liu, from Manchuria,
succeeded in driving the House of Tsin out of northern China:
these Tsins were that effete, ladylike, chess-playing, fan-waving,
high-etiquettish dynasty I have spoken of before. In 319
they took up their abode in Nanking, and there ruled corruptly
for a hundred years, leaving the north to the barbarians. In
420, a soldier in their employ, Liu-yu by name, deposed the
last Tsin emperor, and set himself on the throne as the first
sovereign of the Liu-song Dynasty. He was a capable man, and
introduced some vigor and betterment into affairs; he found
conditions ripe for a renaissance of civilization; and in his
reign we may say that the renaissance took shape. 420 is, so far
as a date can be given for what was really a long process, a
convenient date to give. We have seen Persia rise in the
two-twenties; India in the three-twenties; we shall not go far
wrong in giving the four-twenties to China. That decade, too,
marks a fresh step downward in the career of Rome: Honorius died
in 423. Fenollosa is definite upon 420 for the inception of
the great age of the Southern Renaissance of art. That age
culminated in the first half of the next century,