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But the ruin of Amida was the safety of the Roman provinces. As soon as the first transports of victory had subsided, Sapor was at leisure to reflect, that to chastise a disobedient city, he had lost the flower of his troops, and the most favorable season for conquest.
Then Cabades, still moved with passion, replied: "But why did you decide to fight against me?" And the old man answered quickly: "Because God willed to give Amida into thy hand not so much because of our decision as of thy valour."
The far more numerous images and shrines of Booddha the sage, Amida the queen of heaven, and hundred-armed Kuannon, tell of the popular faith of the masses of Japan in the gentle doctrines of the Indian sage.
When Areobindus, at the head of the first division, reached Amida and heard that the Persians had fallen back, he declined the comparatively inglorious work of a siege, and pressed forward, anxious to carry the war into Persian territory.
The Roman Catholic who prays to a wooden image of Christ is not one whit less idolatrous than the Buddhist who worships a bronze statue of Amida Butzu. All that the common people are capable of seeing is the soul-envelope, for the soul itself they are unable to appreciate. Spiritually they are undiscerning, because imaginatively they are blind.
That a powerful primitivistic faith, like Taoism, a sort of religious bohemianism, should flourish beside such pragmatic and passionless moderation as classic Confucianism is inevitable; that the worship of Amida Buddha, the Buddha of redemption and a future heaven, of a positive and eternal bliss, should be the Chinese form of the Indian faith is equally intelligible.
I just caught in soft, supplicatory accents the opening words, "Namu Amida Butsu" "Hear me, compassionate Lord Buddha" words that soon become familiar as one visits these temples; the great refrain of these people's prayers when they pray before the image of "Him, honoured, wisest, best, most pitiful, whose lips comfort the world."
Toward the end of the particular sutra which he advised her to read and recite, Buddha says: "Let not one's voice cease, but ten times complete the thought, and repeat the formula, of the adoration of Amida." "This practice," adds the Japanese exegete and historian, "is the most excellent of all."
Gall-nuts and manna are almost the only products for which the region is celebrated; and of these Phoenicia herself produced the one, while she probably did not need the other. But the natural route to Armenia was by way of the Coelesyrian valley, Aleppo and Carchemish, to Haran, and thence by Amida or Diarbekr to Van, which was the capital of Armenia in the early times.
Further, the peculiar nomenclature of the Fifth Monarchy men, is fully paralleled in the personal names of priests and even of laymen in Japan. Whether the priests and their followers were learned and devout, or the contrary, mattered little as regards the final result, as all that is necessary is the continual repetition of the prayer to Amida.
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