PHILOSOPHIES ' 41

the break-up of the United Tsin Empire to its reconstitution by the Sui,
was of no more avail than the more potent patronage of the Kushan
Emperor Kanishka had been at the turn of the first and second centuries
of the Christian Era. Even this royal aid failed to give the followers of
the Mahayana a firm seat in a political saddle. As soon, however, as the
encounter on Far Eastern ground between the Mahayana and Con-
fucianism was transferred from an alien political plane to a spiritual
plane on which both were breathing their native air, the fortunes of
their almost bloodless war were dramatically reversed.

The Confucians exposed themselves to the risk of experiencing this
peripeteia when they followed up the political triumph of securing the
reinstatement of the Confucian Classics, as the shibboleth for admission
into the civil service of an avatar of the Sink universal state, by attempt-
ing to reanimate the thought latent in their literary canon. This process
of re-eliciting a philosophy out of a cut-and-dried official examination-
subject was started, after the T'ang regime's partial recovery from its
first convulsion half way through the eighth century of the Christian
Era, by the Neoconfucian thinkers Han Yii (vivebat A.D, 768-824) and
Li Ao (mortuus circa A.D. 844) ;* and, after this Neoconfucianism had
branched in the eleventh century into two schools that were first differ-
entiated by the brothers Ch'eng Yi (vivebat A.D, 1033-1x08) and Ch'eng
Hao (vivebat A.D. 1033-85), the younger brother's 'School of Principles'
was carried to its culmination by Chu Hsi (vivebat A.D. 1x30-1200),
while the elder brother's 'School of Mind' culminated in the thought of
Wang Shpu-jcn* (vivebat A.D. 1473-1539).3 This Far Eastern Neo-
confucianism began and ended4 with declarations of dissent from both
Taoism and the Mahayana. Yet

'we can soy that the Neoconfucianists more consistently adhere to the
fundamental ideas of Taoism and Buddhism than do the Taoists and
Buddhists themselves. They are more Taoistic than the Taoists, and more
Buddhistic than the Buddhists.'3

The channel through which a would-be revival of Confucianism
imbibed the spirit of the MahSySna was the Ch'an6 School of Maha-
yanian Buddhism, which had struck root on Far Eastern ground in the
Early T'ang Age.7

'There are three lines of thought that can be traced as the main sources
of Neoconfucianism, The first, of course, is Confucianism itself. The
second is Buddhism, together with Taoism, via the medium of Ch'anism;
for, of all the schools of Buddhism, Ch'anism was the most influential at
the time of the formation of Neoconfucianism, To the Neoconfucianists,
Ch'anism and Buddhism are synonymous terms, and „ , , in, one sense
Neoconfucianism may be said to be the logical development of Ch'anism.
Finally, the third is the Taoist Religion, of which the cosmological views

* See Fung Yu-lan: A Short History of Chinese Philosophy (New York 1948, Mac-
miUan), p. 367.

> Commonly known as 'the Master of Yangf-ming* (Fung Yu-Ian> op. cit, p, 308) or
aft Wang Yang-ming, J See Fung Yu-lan, op. cit, p. a8i«

* See ibid, pp. 267-8 and 316-18, » Ibid,, p. 318,

* A Chinese rendering of the Sannkrit word 'Dhylna* which, in turn, wat rendered »»
'Zen' in Japanese (see v» v. 96-K03),

f See Fung Yu«lan, op, cit, pp. 855-65.