, secondly, the masses who fed the monks but could not
achieve salvation. This religion did not gain a footing in China; only
traces of it can be found in some Buddhistic sects in China. Mahayana
Buddhism, on the other hand, developed into a true popular religion of
salvation. It did not interfere with the indigenous deities and did not
discountenance life in human society; it did not recommend Nirvana at
once, but placed before it a here-after with all the joys worth striving
for. In this form Buddhism was certain of success in Asia. On its way
from India to China it divided into countless separate streams, each
characterized by a particular book. Every nuance, from profound
philosophical treatises to the most superficial little tracts written
for the simplest of souls, and even a good deal of Turkestan shamanism
and Tibetan belief in magic, found their way into Buddhist writings, so
that some Buddhist monks practised Central Asian Shamanism.

In spite of Buddhism, the old religion of the peasants retained its
vitality. Local diviners, Chinese shamans (_wu_), sorcerers, continued
their practices, although from now on they sometimes used Buddhist
phraseology. Often, this popular religion is called "Taoism", because a
systematization of the popular pantheon was attempted, and Lao Tzu and
other Taoists played a role in this pantheon. Philosophic Taoism
continued in this time, aside from the church-Taoism of Chang Ling and,
naturally, all kinds of contacts between these three currents occurred.
The Chinese state cult, the cult of Heaven saturated with Confucianism,
was another living form of religion. The alien rulers, in turn, had
brought their own mixture of worship of Heaven and shamanism. Their
worship of Heaven was their official "representative" religion; their
shamanism the private religion of the individual in his daily life. The
alien rulers, accordingly, showed interest in the Chinese shamans as
well as in the shamanistic aspects of Mahayana Buddhism. Not
infrequently competitions were arranged by the rulers between priests of
the different religious systems, and the rulers often competed for the
possession of monks who were particularly skilled in magic or
soothsaying.

But what was the position of the "official" religion? Were the aliens to
hold to their own worship of heaven, or were they to take over the
official Chinese cult, or what else? This problem posed itself already
in the fourth century, but it was