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Indian Buddhism has touched the people's lives in a rather different way, bringing elements of spirituality and compassion into religious thought. Another perceptive English scholar of the last century, the Rev. Samuel Beal, expressed this as follows:
"The introduction of Buddhism among the Chinese tended in some way to elevate their thoughts and give some tinge of spirituality to their worship. At any rate, it must have brought them to a knowledge of a worship distinct from that of the mere powers of nature [Taoism], or deified intellect [Confucianism], and as it did this, or tends to this, it has answered a great purpose."
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Buddhism was also more humanistic than the two native religions. This aspect was touched upon by an American historian of our own day. In that volume of his Buddhist trilogy which described Buddhism's sad fate in Mao's China (published in 1966) the late Holmes Welch told his readers over modestly, given his major contribution to its modern history - that:
"Having studied Chinese Buddhism for some years, I have come to feel an affinity for it and to believe that it made life in China a little more tolerable for a majority of the people. So I am biased against its liquidation and occasionally express this in indignant asides ..".9
Compassion is indeed high on the list of the gentler Buddhist attributes. This is exemplified to this day in many of the couplets to be found in all religious houses of the Buddhist persuasion.10
Morality Books and Religious Tracts: Books to Guide the People
The long tradition of having a strongly didactic moral base to religion meant that people expected to be instructed, advised and warned in all the main forms of religious teaching; and particularly through the written or printed word. There was an enormous output of printed works associated with Buddhism and Taoism, much of it in the form of short popular works on their main tenets, the lives and miracles associated with the deities, and moralistic tracts.11 Their volume was much increased by the fact that the printing and distribution of such books