empress. In addition, the eastern gentry, who supported the empress Wu
and later the empress Wei, were closely associated with the foreign
merchants of western Asia and the Buddhist Church to which they adhered.
In gratitude for help from the Buddhists, the empress Wu endowed them
with enormous sums of money, and tried to make Buddhism a sort of state
religion. A similar development had taken place in the Toba and also in
the Sui period. Like these earlier rulers, the empress Wu seems to have
aimed at combining spiritual leadership with her position as ruler of
the empire.

In this epoch Buddhism helped to create the first beginnings of
large-scale capitalism. In connection with the growing foreign trade,
the monasteries grew in importance as repositories of capital; the
temples bought more and more land, became more and more wealthy, and so
gained increasing influence over economic affairs. They accumulated
large quantities of metal, which they stored in the form of bronze
figures of Buddha, and with these stocks they exercised controlling
influence over the money market. There is a constant succession of
records of the total weight of the bronze figures, as an indication of
the money value they represented. It is interesting to observe that
temples and monasteries acquired also shops and had rental income from
them. They further operated many mills, as did the owners of private
estates (now called "_chuang_") and thus controlled the price of flour,
and polished rice.

The cultural influence of Buddhism found expression in new and improved
translations of countless texts, and in the passage of pilgrims along
the caravan routes, helped by the merchants, as far as western Asia and
India, like the famous Hsüan-tsang. Translations were made not only from
Indian or other languages into Chinese, but also, for instance, from