f the religion of Shaka as it is held
and taught in Dai Nippon. The former scholar is a master of texts, and
the latter of philosophy, each editor excelling in his own department;
and the two books complement each other in value.

Buddhism, being a logical growth out of Brahmanism, used the old sacred
language of India and inherited its vocabulary. In the Tripitaka, that
is, the three book-baskets or boxes, we have the term for canon of
scripture, in the complete collection of which are _sutra_, _vinaya_ and
_abidharma_. We shall see, also, that while Gautama shut out the gods,
his speculative followers who claimed to be his successors, opened the
doors and allowed them to troop in again. The democracy of the
congregation became a hierarchy and the empty swept and garnished house,
a pantheon.

A sutra, from the root _siv_, to sew, means a thread or string, and in
the old Veda religion referred to household rites or practices and the
moral conduct of life; but in Buddhist phraseology it means a body of
doctrine. A shaster or shastra, from the Sanskrit root _cas_, to govern,
relates to discipline. Of those shastras and sutras we must frequently
speak. In India and China some of those sutras are exponents, of schools
of thought or opinion, or of views or methods of looking at things,
rather than of organizations. In Japan these schools of philosophy, in
certain instances, become sects with a formal history.

In China of the present day, according to a Japanese traveller and
author, "the Chinese Buddhists seem ... to unite all different sects, so
as to make one harmonious sect." The chief divisions are those of the
blue robe, who are allied with the Lamaism of Tibet and whose doctrine
is largely "esoteric," and those of the yellow robe, who accept the
three fundamentals of principle, teaching and discipline. Dhyana or
contemplation is their principle; the Kegon or Avatamsaka sutra and the
Hokke or Saddharma Pundarika sutra, etc., form the basis of their
teaching; and the Vinaya of the Four Divisions (Dharmagupta) is their
discipline. On the contrary, in Japan there are vastly greater
diversities of sect, principle, teaching and discipline.

Buddhism as a System of Metaphysics.

The date of the birth of the Buddha in India, accepted by the Japanese
scholars is B.C. 1027--the day and month being also given with
suspicious accuracy. About nine centuries after Gautama had attained
Nirvana, there were eighteen schools o