Page:Brinkley - China - Volume 2.djvu/175

Shanghai, himself a Jew, paid a visit to Kaifêng in recent years, and his inquiries showed that one or two of the Jews had actually become Buddhist priests, that all were ignorant of their own rites and ceremonies, and that they had never translated their sacred books into Chinese, from which it is plain that their efforts to win converts must always have been perfunctory.

Judaism is here mentioned as the earliest alien faith brought under the notice of the Chinese people, but there is some reason to suppose that Buddhism preceded it. The Indian faith, according to some historians, was carried to China in the third century before Christ by priests who showed so much zeal in preaching their creed that they were seized and thrown into jail, whence the legends say that they escaped by the aid of an angel who appeared in the middle of the night and opened their prison doors,—an incident sometimes quoted as constituting one of the many points of resemblance between the records of the two great creeds, that of the Nepaulese and that of the Nazarene. It would seem, therefore, that in those early times the Chinese were not disposed to brook any active invasion by an alien faith, and that their display of repugnance was sufficiently strong to deter any second attempt on the part of the Buddhists. For they are not again heard of in Chinese history until 65 A.D. (61 according to some authorities), when an Emperor (Ming Ti) sent to India for the sacred books and for author-