before it.

During the remainder of the T'ang dynasty there is little of
importance to recount about Buddhism. It apparently suffered no
reverses, but history is occupied with the struggle against the
Tartars. The later T'ang Emperors entered into alliance with various
frontier tribes, but found it hard to keep them in the position of
vassals. The history of China from the tenth to the thirteenth
centuries is briefly as follows. The T'ang dynasty collapsed chiefly
owing to the incapacity of the later Emperors and was succeeded by a
troubled period in which five short dynasties founded by military
adventurers, three of whom were of Turkish race, rose and fell in 53
years.[671] In 960 the Sung dynasty united the Chinese elements in
the Empire, but had to struggle against the Khitan Tartars in the
north-east and against the kingdom of Hsia in the north-west. With the
twelfth century appeared the Kins or Golden Tartars, who demolished
the power of the Khitans in alliance with the Chinese but turned
against their allies and conquered all China north of the Yang-tze and
continually harassed, though they did not capture, the provinces to
the south of it which constituted the reduced empire of the Sungs. But
their power waned in its turn before the Mongols, who, under Chinggiz
Khan and Ogotai, conquered the greater part of northern Asia and
eastern Europe. In 1232 the Sung Emperor entered into alliance with
the Mongols against the Kins, with the ultimate result that though the
Kins were swept away, Khubilai, the Khan of the Mongols, became
Emperor of all China in 1280.

The dynasties of T'ang and Sung mark two great epochs in the history
of Chinese art, literature and thought, but whereas the virtues and
vices of the T'ang may be summed up as genius and extravagance, those
of the Sung are culture and tameness. But this summary judgment does
not do justice to the painters, particularly the landscape painters,
of the Sung and it is noticeable that many of the greatest masters,
including Li Lung-Mien,[672] were obviously inspired by Buddhism. The
school which had the greatest influence on art and literature was the
Ch'an[673] or contemplative sect better known by its Japanese name
Zen. Though founded by Bodhidharma it did not win the sympathy and
esteem of the cultivated classes until the Sung period. About this
time the method of block-printing was popularized and there began a
steady output of comprehensive histories, collect