THE AWAKENING OF JAPAN
eighth century, is marked in India by the advent of Sankaracharya, the apostle of Hinduism, is followed, during the Sung dynasty (960–1260), by a similar activity in China, culminating in Neo-Confucianism and the recasting of the Zen school[1] of Buddhism, a phase echoed both in Japan and Korea. Thus, while Christendom was struggling with medievalism, the Buddhaland was a great garden of culture, where each flower of thought bloomed in individual beauty.
But, alas! the Mongol horsemen under Jenghiz Khan were to lay waste — these areas of civilization, and make of them a desert like that out of which they themselves came. It was not the first time that the warriors of the steppes
- ↑ Zen is the sect of Buddhism which seeks illumination through self-concentration. It corresponds to the Indian Gnan.
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