ABSTRACT
True, negative remarks about magistmtes do not feature strongly (if at all) in the siUras most commonly read in China, and one may perhaps surmise that this totally unexpected subaltern point of view on monarchical government barred certain sutras from acceptability with influential patrons. But the materials still exist, and were evidently not subjected to censorship, as for example it has been claimed some texts were for reasons of Confucian prudery when translated from Indian languages. This has encouraged me to bring forward some further evidence which suggests that another Buddhist political belief relating to central rather than to local government was perhaps seen as more threatening, but that materials demonstrating exactly how that threat was countered also still exist in the Chinese Buddhist Canon. But rather than start with the contemporary canon, we should perhaps first take a look at the contemporary Chinese Buddhist monastery.
