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BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM.
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but the permanent inhabitants of the monasteries are either persons disgusted with life, or the old and infirm; the younger and more active inembers continually falling back into society. The share taken by the sovereign in the organisation of the system seems to be the chief source of its prosperity.
We have no very recent accounts of the condition of Buddhism in Japan, although, to judge from the drawings of Col. Siebold in his “Nippon”, the ordinary objects of Buddhist worship are numerous, and comprehend many of the later saints of the system as well as personages apparently of peculiar and local sanctity. Buddhism also is broken up into various sectarial divisions. In China, as far as there has been any opportunity of ascertaining, which however is almost coufined to the maritime districts, it is evidently on the wane: although a few monasteries are respectably tenanted, the residents are much less numerous than they have been, and many are altogether deserted; many of the temples also are in a state of decay. The majority of the priests are illiterate, and seem to hold their offices and their idols in little veneration; the people regard the priests with little respect, or in some instances with contempt, and attach no great sanctity to the objects of their worship, - a curious instance of this indifference in both is mentioned by the Right Rev. Dr. Smith, the present Bishop of Victoria. In a temple belonging to a monastery, where he was allowed to occupy a residence, he first inadvertently and then designedly, overthrew several idols,
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