simple and weightier matters of religion. This was the strong point of Budhism; and hence the popularity it so quickly attained, spreading among the non-Aryan (i.e. low-caste) population as well as amongst the Aryans, until it became the dominant faith from the Himalayas to Ceylon. In its theology it so far agreed with Brahmanism, that it regarded Mind as the great attribute of the Deity; but it reduced the conscious god of Vedantism into an unconscious Supreme Intelligence (Adi Budha), in whom the worlds exist, yet are evolved at first without his consciousness, and proceed without his care. Perhaps the best way in which we can make intelligible to the European reader the difference in the fundamental ideas of Vedantic and Budhistic theology, is to say, that in the former the worlds are the projected thoughts of a waking, and in the latter of a sleeping, Deity. Budhism held that the Supreme One, unconscious in his unity, only awakes to consciousness in the person of his creatures,—all of whom (according to Indian philosophy) are fractional emanations of Himself; and the grand characters who appear at intervals to revolutionise the world were regarded as the highest manifestations of the Supreme with whom we have to do, and therefore as the natural and rightful objects of human worship. These grand and saintly persons were called Budhas, earthly representatives of the Adi Budha'; and the last of these was held to have been this Gotama, who founded, or at least for the first time definitely and authoritatively promulgated, this creed within the limits of India.

Although Brahmanism, by its principle of spiritual pantheism, implies that all men, and beings of every kind, are emanations or parts of the

Deity-differing in qualities, and therefore in honour,-it is not till we come to Budhism that we find the doctrine of divine incarnations made the basis of religious law and worship. The Brahmans, though each believing himself a part of the Supreme, worshipped chiefly that Supreme in his transcendent and invisible unity,-giving a mere minor worship or devotional respect to those elements of nature and principles of mind in which Divinity seemed to them pre-eminently present. The Budhists, on the other hand, paid no reverence to sun or moon, or to the powers of earth and air, neither did they reverence as gods any personifications of mental qualities, indeed they seem to have held pantheism in its general aspect (that is to say, the worship of God in Nature) very loosely; but they exalted into exclusive supremacy the doctrine of the Supreme becoming incarnate at long intervals in the person of certain men, to whom in consequence was due the worship of the rest of mankind. The Budhas are represented in sculpture sometimes as standing upright, but more generally as seated cross-legged; always in an attitude of deep meditation (impassive abstraction being the Hindoo beau-ideal of happiness), with a placid countenance and curled hair. The Adi Budha, or Supreme Intelligence, they held, was an unconscious being, who therefore could or did pay no regard to the ongoings of creation; it was only in his conscious state, as incarnate in those rare men called Budhas, that he became an object of worship. Budhism is therefore a worship of deified saints—a religious hero-worship; and the Divinity in man is regarded as the sole and true object of reverence and worship to mankind.* Out of this worship of "divine men" grew a venera

tion for the relics of such saints-a feeling unknown to the Brahmanical faith; and over those relics (a few hairs, a bone, or a tooth) were erected those solid cupolas or bell-shaped monuments, often of stupendous size, which are exclusively associated with the Budhist religion. In Budhism, too, there arose monastic orders and monasteries, at a period antecedent to the establishment of the same system in Europe. As caste was not acknowledged, these monastic orders were open to all classes of the Indian population; but the monks or priests were strictly bound to celibacy, and to the renunciation of nearly all the pleasures of sense. They had temples and monasteries, of which we have still models in those ones so wonderfully hewn out in rock in various parts of the Bombay Presidency; and in those monasteries the Budhist monks lived together, eating together in one hall, slept sitting in a prescribed posture, and apparently only quitted the monastery for the purpose of receiving alms, which they did for a part of every day, or once a-week to march in a body to bathe. They went barefoot, with shaven heads and chins, wearing a yellow dress; and they had a daily routine of services in their chapels, and processions in which there were chanting, incense, and tapers. In fact, in most respects they closely resembled the monastic orders of Europe.

A religion which recognised no social or racial distinctions had a good chance of being popular in a country like India, where the bulk of the population was still non-Aryan, and where caste reserved its choice privileges for the few. Budhism became triumphant even in Hindostan, the chief seat of Brahmanical power, during the reign of Asoka, in the third century before Christ; and by the end of that century it had not only spread over Southern India, but had been introduced into Ceylon. Little is known of its subsequent history; but seven hundred years afterwards-in the beginning of the fifth century after Christ-we find it on the decline in the Punjaub, and languishing in the last stage of decay in the provinces on the Jumna and Ganges.

Capila, the birthplace of Gotama, was ruined and deserted-"a wilderness untenanted by man;" but his religion was in full vigour in Ceylon, in which island it still flourishes to this day. Again the veil of obscurity covers India and its religious history. We know there were religious disputes and contests between the Brahmanical and Budhist parties; that the latter suffered considerable persecution; that they were expelled from the Deccan in the eighth or ninth century, but still possessed considerable power in Hindostan; and that in Southern India and in Guzerat they flourished as late as the twelfth century of our era. In its later stages, Budhism in India merged into Jainism-a form of religion which appears to have originated in the sixth or seventh century; to have become conspicuous in the eighth or ninth century; reached its highest prosperity in the eleventh, and declined after the twelfth. The chief seats of Jainism were the southern portion of the peninsula, Guzerat, and western Hindostan-that is to say, in the very localities where Budhism longest held its ground: a circumstance which, taken in conjunction with the fact that there are still Jains in India but no Budhists, confirms us in our opinion that Budhism died away into Jainism, and that the latter is not a rival religion, but simply the last form which Budhism took ere it disappeared from the Indian soil. The character of the religion points to the same conclusion; for it is just a mixture or compromise between Budhism and the popular creeds of India, and shows how the latter were gaining ground upon the simpler but more abstract creed of Gotama. In its essence Jainism agrees with Budhism, only its chief objects of worship are called not Budhas but Tirtankeras-these being a limited number of saints who have raised themselves by austerities to a superiority over the rest of creation, but who remain in a state of apathetic beatitude, insensible to the ongoings of the world. In fact, in Jainism as in Budhism, the higher one rises above humanity and approaches the divine, the more nearly does his condition approach to a vir

tual or real nonentity! Like the Budhists, the Jains reject the divine character of the Vedas, and have no sacrifices or respect for fire; also they have monastic orders who subsist on alms. But, on the other hand, they admit the whole of the Hindoo gods, and worship some of them, although quite subordinate to their own deified saints they respect the Vedas in all points not at variance with their own creed; and, in direct contrariety to Budhism, they recognise the principle and rules of caste. Let it be noted, therefore, that Polytheism and Caste were the two powers which vanquished Budhism in India, and became incorporated in the mixed religion into which Budhism sank in its downward course to extinction.

We have now come down to the thirteenth or fourteenth century of our era, we have reached the beginning of the modern period of Hindoo religion. What do we find? People talk of the stationary character of Hindoo religion, just as they talk of the unchanging institutions of China, or as they figure to themselves all Africa an expanse of sandy desert. At a distance mountains appear monotonous in surface all over, but variety appears as we approach. In the same manner, and no otherwise, does the history of a country appear monotonous when we know little of it; but closer inspection always reveals the truth, that there is no such thing as a stand-still in the life of nations. In history, as in the material universe, everything is moving on. While one system or belief is in the ascendant, its predecessor is just dying, and its destined successor is being born. So when, after an ascendancy of probably half-a-dozen centuries, and an existence thrice as long, the cognate faiths of Budhism and Jainism expired or sank out of sight in the Indian world, what came next? Brahmanism again. But not the Brahmanism of the Vedas or of the Code of Manu. Brahmanism had triumphed, and thrown off the Budhist heresy. It had lived side by side with it in various alternations of fortune, until at length India once more acknowledged the Brahmans as

its spiritual leaders and social lords. But Brahmanism, too, had changed. It had gradually spread over the nonAryan peoples of India, and in doing so had become overlaid or encrusted with the beliefs and superstitions of the general population. It had also borrowed from, or been affected by, Budhism. In the Vedic period, animal food was in unquestioned use among the Aryans; horses and cows were offered in sacrifices, and their flesh was common diet; we even find a great saint, Vamadeva, dining off nothing less polluted than the entrails of a dog. In the period of the Code, again, we find numerous regulations in force as to what should be eaten or not eaten, but the general principle that man is an omnivorous animal was fully acknowledged. "It is for the maintenance of the vital spirit that Brahma has made this world: all that exists, whether mobile or immobile (i. e. animal or vegetable), serves as food for living beings. The immobile beings (i.. plants) are the prey of those who move (i. e. animals); those who have not teeth are the prey of those who have teeth; those without hands, of those who have hands; the cowardly of the brave. The man who, even every day, lives on the flesh of notforbidden animals, commits no fault; for Brahma has created certain living beings to be eaten, and others to eat them." Budhism, however— doubtless giving expression to a tendency already existing in some quarters forbade the use of animal food entirely, and made it a sin to hurt any sentient being. And when, two thousand years after the Code, we again catch sight of Brahmanism in the ascendant, we find that it likewise has entirely proscribed the use of animal food. We find, too, that it has agreed with conquered Budhism in having orders of devotees, not monastic, but some of them still more ascetic than even the Budhist monks. Idols, also, have won their way into the Brahmanical or Aryan religion. In the time of the Vedas there were neither temples nor idols; and at the later period of the Code, although in one or two places," the

sacred images" are mentioned with respect, idol-worship was certainly not recognised; and even temples appear to have been unthought of, or held unnecessary. Budhism, howhowever, introduced both of those adjuncts of worship-though apparently without any sanction from the founder of that religion; and Brahmanism, when it reappears in the ascendant, is found to have given its countenance to idols to a still greater extent than its defunct rival, and to have taken in a moderate degree to temple-building. Whence those changes? Whence this gradually increasing tendency towards idolatry, and to a less spiritual or abstract form of worship? The religious philosophy of the Brahmans had been refining and expanding in the interval, why then this degradation in the general worship of the people? Because that spiritual Aryan nation, enveloped by and extending its rule over large masses of an earlier polytheistic and idolatrous population, had, partly from policy, and partly by natural contagion, allowed their religion to sink towards that of the great bulk of the population. It could not be otherwise. In every nation there are different grades of mind; and while the grosser, more grandiose, and (on the whole) gayer worship of the Tamulese and other pre-Aryan peoples would have its attractions for the of root of the Aryan nation, the educated and more elevated classes of the Aryans would seek to raise the religious beliefs of the inferior peoples to the level of their own. The unavoidable result was a compromise. In seeking to clevate the ruder faiths of the other Indian races, the Brahmans had, at least externally, to lower their own. And manifestly the manner in which

*

they proceeded was this. As they held the doctrine that the Supreme is present in all his creatures, the animating Soul of all creation-of whom all objects, sun, moon, and stars, men, genii, plants, animals, are but the variously individualised parts

it was easy for the Brahmans to reconcile their faith in the One God with the polytheism of the pre-Aryan peoples, by regarding the many gods of the latter as simply incarnations or manifestations of the One. In this way, by one stroke, the multitude of fantastic gods of (what might be called) the heathen were attached as an outer fringe to the pantheistic monotheism of the Brahmans; and the two systems, although so dissimilar, became thenceforth united without any visible chasm. Sometimes from policy, oftener doubtless in perfect good faith, the Brahmans taught the inferior peoples that each of their local deities was simply their grand god under one of his endless manifestations. In this way to Brahma were added, at different times, Siva, Vishnoo, Kalee, and the other deities which now fill the Indian Pantheon.* Of these deities Siva appears to have been the earliest adopted by the Brahmans, who have continued to the present day to accord to that deity their special faith and favour. About 320 B.C., as Alexander was descending the Indus, we are told that the cattle of the tribes dwelling between that river and the Belooch hills were all stamped with the symbol of Siva; and about twenty years afterwards, the ambassador of Seleucus at Patna, on the Ganges, describes Siva worship as being the popular religion in the hills, celebrated in tumultuous festivals, the worshippers anointing their bodies,