Japan and the Japanese

BUDDHISM. 65
There was this further resemblance also to the regular orders of
the Romish church, that the Buddhist clergy were divided into a
number of observances, hardly
less hostile to each other than the
Dominicans to the Franciscans, or both to the Jesuits. But as the
church and state were kept in Japan perfectly distinct as now in
the United States and as the bonzes possessed no direct tempo-
ral power, there was no appeal to the secular arm, no civil punish-
ments for heresy, and no religious vows perpetually binding, all
Fuh-hi, and then into Fuh, or Fo), is not the personal name of the great
saint, the first pi'eacher of the religion of the Buddhists, but a title of honor
given to him after he had obtained to eminent sanctity. According to the
concurrent traditions of the Buddhists in various parts of Asia, he was the
son of a king of central India, Suddhu-dana, meaning in Sanscrit pureeating
king, or eater of pure food, which the Chinese have translated into
their language by Zung-fung-wang. His original name was Leh-ta ; after
he became a priest, he was called Sakia-mouni , that is, devotee of the race
of Sakia, whence the appellation SIAKA, by which he is commonly known in
Japan, and also the name Xako applied to the patriarch, or head of the
Buddhist church. Another Sanscrit patronymic of Buddha is Gautuma,
which in different Buddhist nations has, in conjunction with other epithets
applied to him, been variously changed and corrupted. Thus among
the Siamese he is called Summana-kodom.
The Buddhist mythology, includes several Buddhas who preceded Sakiamouni,
and the first of v;\iom,Jldi-Budilha, or the first Buddha, was when
nothing else was, being in fact the primal deity, and origin of all things.
It seems to be this first Buddha who is worshipped in Japan under the
name of AMIDA, and whose priests form the most numerous and influential
of th$ Buddhist orders.
monotheists.
Siebold seems inclined to regard them as pure
The birth of Siaka is fixed by the Japanese annalists, or at least by the
book of chronology quoted in a previous note, in the twenty-sixth year of
the emperor Chaou-wang, of the Chinese Chew Dynasty, B. c. 1027. B. c.
1006, he fled ft-orn his father's house to become a priest; B. c. 998 he reached
the highest step of philosophical knowledge ; B. c. 949, being seventy-nine
years of age, he entered into Nirvana, that is, died. He was succeeded by a
regular succession of Buddhist patriarchs, of whom twenty-eight were natives
of Hindustan. The twenty-eighth emigrated to China, A. D. 490, where
he had five Chinese successors. Under the second of these, A. D. 552, Buddh-
ism was introduced into Japan. A. D. 713, the sixth and the last Chi-
nese patriarch died, since which the Chinese Buddhists, and those who have
received the religion from them, seem not to have acknowledged any general
head, but only a local head in each country.
6*