ABSTRACT
Th e Tendai has a great record in both China and Japan, but its history in the two countries is somewhat different. In the first place, its connection with the Shingon was much closer in Japan than in the land of its birth, where the two sects were felt to be different in origin and not to be united by any special relationship. In Japan, on the contrary, they were both officially introduced at the same period, the first years of the ninth century, both under imperial patronage and both in the same district, Kyoto and its neighbourhood. They formed a natural body of religious opinion opposed in early times to the older sects of Nara and later to the new schools which arose about the twelfth century. But, in the second place, the Tendai achieved a position as a political and even as a military power such as never fell to the lot of any Buddhist denomination in China, for even Lamaism under the Yuan dynasty, though it became the Established Church, was strictly under imperial control, though it was not so in Tibet. But in Japan the Tendai, and to some extent the Shingon, were semi-independent organizations maintaining friendly relations with the Court, though fighting with one another and with other religious bodies-a fact by no means inconsistent with the close connection just mentioned, for one of the bitterest quarrels was between Enryakuji and Miidera, both temples of the Tendai sect. And just as a certain period in Japanese history is commonly known as the Fujiwara period, so for ecclesiastical purposes it may be appropriately designated as the Tendai period. We are inclined, and not wholly unjustly, to think of the Tendai as primarily a political power actuated by worldly motives and to forget that it was, especially in the beginning, a great Church inspired by lofty spiritual and philosophical ideals which seemed to the priesthood of Nara dangerously liberal.
