literature, except in unwritten songs and legendary lore sung from mouth to mouth, telling of the gods and men who formed the glorious past of the Yamato race. So it is not difficult to imagine the dazzling effect which the Chinese learning, with its richness and its pedantry, with its elaborate system of civil government and its philosophy, produced upon our untrained eyes. Gradually but steadfastly it had been gaining ground, and making its slow way from the topmost rung to the bottom of the social ladder, when the introduction of Buddhism quickened the now resistless progress. The would-be priests and advocates of the Indian creed felt a fresh impulse and spiritual need to learn the Chinese language, for which they had long entertained a high estimation. Owing to the extremely secular character of the Confucian ethics on the one hand, and on the other, to the fact that Buddhists deny the existence of a personal god, and are eager to minister salvation through any adequate means so long as it does not contradict the Law of the Universe upon which the whole doctrine is based, Buddhism found in the teaching of the Chinese sage and his followers not only no enemy, but, on the contrary, a helpful friend. It found that the sacred books of Confucian doctrine contained only in a slightly different form the five commandments laid down by Shâkya-muni himself for the regulation of the conduct of a layman, viz.:-- 1. Not to destroy life nor to cause its destruction. 2. Not to steal. 3. Not to commit adultery. 4. Not to tell lies. 5. Not to indulge in intoxicating drinks; or the Buddhist warning against the ten sins; three of the body--taking life, theft, adultery; four of speech--lying, slander, abuse, and vain conversation; three of the mind--covetousness, malice, and scepticism. It saw also that Confucian writings embraced its fifty precepts[8] detailed under the five different secular relationships of 1. Parents and children. 2. Pupils and teachers. 3. Husbands and wives. 4. Friends and companions. 5. Masters and servants. Our early Buddhists therefore did not see why they should try to suppress the existing Confucian moral code and supplant it with their own which breathed the same spirit, only because it had not grown on Indian soil. [8] Cp. Rhys Davids' _Buddhism_, p. 144.