Page:The Awakening of Japan, by Okakura Kakuzō; 1905.djvu/30

 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 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