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It paved the way for the usurpation of the government by the unscrupulous soldier, "the man on horseback," who was destined to rule Japan for seven hundred years, while the throne and its occupant were in the shadow. In A.D. 805 the famous Tendai, and in 806 the powerful Shingon Sect were introduced.
They are found in a highly developed form among the Nambuthiris and other Brahmans of southern India who try to observe the Vedic rules and in the Far East among Buddhists of the Shingon or Chên-yen sect.
Unquestionably the offspring of a great mind, this Shingon system, with its mysterious possibilities and its lofty morality, appealed strongly to the educated and leisured classes in Kyoto during the peaceful Heian epoch, while for the illiterate and the lower orders the simpler canons of the Tendai had to suffice.
After a long walk in the hot sun we reach a village almost wholly composed of shrines and temples. The outlying sacred place three buildings in one enclosure of bamboo fences belongs to the Shingon sect. A small open shrine, to the left of the entrance, first attracts us. It is a dead-house: a Japanese bier is there. But almost opposite the doorway is an altar covered with startling images.
Thereafter the spread of his sect was very rapid. *Out of some 72,000 temples in Japan to-day, 20,000, approximately, belong to the Shin sect; an equal number to the Zen; 13.000 to the Shingon; 8000 to the Jodo; and smaller numbers to the rest. With the decentralization of the administrative power there was a corresponding growth of the vassal class.
For this distress neither the Tendai doctrines nor the Shingon conceptions were sufficiently simple to supply a remedy. Something more tangible and less recondite was needed, and it came , in the sequel of twenty-five years' meditation and study, to Genku posthumously called Honen Shonin a priest of the Tendai sect. "Salvation is by faith, but it is a faith ritually expressed.
Umè-ko in her room forgot her sewing, and leaned a delicate ear closer to the shoji. Old Mata's wall of reserve went down with a crash. "He believes as you believe!" she cried out shrilly. "All your Shingon chants and invocations and miracles he has faith in. Is that not what you call enlightenment? He and Miss Umè worship together almost daily at the great temple above us on the hill.
The two finest stone lanterns there are given in the name of my master's dead young wife. Her ihai is in this house, and an altar, and they are well tended, I assure you! My master is a true believer, poor man, and what has his belief brought him? Ma-a-a! all this mummery and service and what has come of it?" "I perceive with regret that you are not of the Shingon sect," remarked the priest. "Me?
Once when his suffering had passed beyond the power of all earthly alleviation, and it seemed as if each moment would fling the shuddering victim into the dark land of perpetual madness, Kano urged that the venerable abbot from the Shingon temple on the hill be summoned. He came in full regalia of office, splendid in crimson and gold.
Umè-ko, now in her little chamber across the narrow passage, with a bit of bright-colored sewing on her knees, could hear each word of the dialogue. Mata's shrill voice and the priest's deep tones each carried well. The girl smiled to herself, realizing as she did the conflict between love of gossip and disapproval of Shingon priests that now made a paltry battlefield of the old dame's mind.
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