[Footnote 888:  I do not refer to the practice of turning disused temples into schools which is frequent.  In some monasteries the monks, while retaining possession, have themselves opened schools.]

[Footnote 889:  It is not clear to me what is really meant by the birthdays of beings like Maitreya and Amitabha.]

[Footnote 890:  Actes du Sixieme Congres des Orientalistes, Leide, 1883, sec.  IV. pp. 1-120.]

[Footnote 891:  E.g. in Dipavamsa, XIII; Mahav.  XIV.  Mahinda is represented as converting Ceylon by accounts of the terrors of the next world.]

[Footnote 892:  The merit of good deeds can be similarly utilized.  The surviving relatives feed the poor or buy and maintain for the rest of its life an animal destined to slaughter.  The merit then goes to the deceased.]

[Footnote 893:  It may possibly be traceable to Manichaeism which taught that souls are transferred from one sphere to another by a sort of cosmic water wheel.  See Cumont’s article, “La roue A puiser les ames du Manicheisme” in Rev. de l’Hist, des Religions, 1915, p. 384.  Chavannes and Pelliot have shown that traces of Manichaeism lingered long in Fu-Kien.  The metaphor of the endless chain of buckets is also found in the Yuan Jen Lun.]

[Footnote 894:  See Francke, “Ein Buddhistischer Reformversuch in China,” T’oung Pao, 1909, pp. 567-602.]

CHAPTER XLVII

KOREA[895]

The Buddhism of Korea cannot be sharply distinguished from the Buddhism of China and Japan.  Its secluded mountain monasteries have some local colour, and contain halls dedicated to the seven stars and the mountain gods of the land.  And travellers are impressed by the columns of rock projecting from the soil and carved into images (miriok), by the painted walls of the temples and by the huge rolled-up pictures which are painted and displayed on festival days.  But there is little real originality in art:  in literature and doctrine none at all.  Buddhism started in Korea with the same advantages as in China and Japan but it lost in moral influence because the monks continually engaged in politics and it did not win temporal power because they were continually on the wrong side.  Yet Korea is not without importance in the annals of far-eastern Buddhism for, during the wanderings and vicissitudes of the faith, it served as a rest-house and depot.  It was from Korea that Buddhism first entered Japan:  when, during the wars of the five dynasties the T’ien-t’ai school was nearly annihilated in China, it was revived by a Korean priest and the earliest extant edition of the Chinese Tripitaka is known only by a single copy preserved in Korea and taken thence to Japan.

For our purposes Korean history may be divided into four periods: 

      I. The three States (B.C. 57-A.D. 668). 
     II.  The Kingdom of Silla (668-918). 
    III.  The Kingdom of Korye (918-1392). 
     IV.  The Kingdom of Chosen (1392-1910).