Note (return) — Chapter X · - JAPANESE BUDDHISM IN ITS MISSIONARY DEVELOPMENT

In its literary and scholastic development, Japanese Buddhism on its popular educational side deserves great praise. Although the Buddhist canon41 was never translated into the vernacular,42 and while the library of native Buddhism, in the way of commentary or general literature, reflects no special credit upon the priests, yet the historian must award them high honor, because of the part taken by them as educators and schoolmasters.43 Education in ancient and mediaeval times was, among the laymen, confined almost wholly to the imperial court, and was considered chiefly to be, either as an adjunct to polite accomplishments, or as valuable especially in preparing young men for political office.44 From the first introduction of letters until well into the nineteenth century, there was no special provision for education made by the government, except that, in modern and recent times in the castle towns of the Daimiōs, there were schools of Chinese learning for the Samurai. Private schools and school-masters45 were also creditably numerous. In original literature, poetry, fiction and history, as well as in the humbler works of compilation, in the making of text-books and in descriptive lore, the pens of many priests have been busy.46 The earliest biography written in Japan was of Shōtoku, the great lay patron of Buddhism. In the ages of war the monastery was the ark of preservation amid a flood of desolation.