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FO-SHO-HING-TSAN-KING.
result of my work, therefore, with some mistrust, and yet with this confidence, that due allowance will be made for imperfections in the preparation of a first translation of a text comprising nearly 10,000 lines of poetry, printed in the original without stops or notes of any sort, and in a difficult style of Chinese composition.
NORTHERN BUDDHISM.
This term is now well recognised. It is used to denote the Buddhism of Nepal, Thibet, China, Japan, and Mongolia, as distinguished from the Buddhism of Ceylon, Burmah, and Siam. The radical difference between the two schools is this, that Northern Buddhism is the system developed after contact with Northern tribes settled on the Indus, while the Southern school, on the contrary, represents the primitive form of the Buddhist faith as it came (presumably) from the hands of its founder and his immediate successors. We might, without being far wrong, denote the developed school as the Buddhism of the valley of the Indus, whilst the earlier school is the Buddhism of the valley of the Ganges. In China there is a curious mixture of the teaching of both schools. The books of the contemplative sect in Southern China are translations or accommodations from the teaching of men belonging to the South of India, whilst in the North we find the books principally followed are those brought by priests from the countries bordering on the Indus, and therefore representing the developed school of the later complex system.
Northern Buddhism, again, may be divided into two, if not three, distinct periods of development, or epochs. The earliest includes in it the period during which the teaching of the immediate followers of Buddha, who brought their books or traditions northward and there disseminated them, generally prevailed; this is called the teaching of the 'little vehicle' (Hînayana), or 'imperfect means of conveyance' (across the sea of sense). The second period is that during which the expanded form of belief denoted as the great
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