From his time until the end of the long reign of Ajatasatra, 519 B.C., the creed of Buddha ad vanced slowly but surely. This success was partly due to the politic admission of women, who in the east have always possessed much secret though not apparent influence over mankind. To most of them the words of Buddha preached comfort in this life, and hope in the next. To the young widow, the neglected wife, and the cast-off mis tress, the Buddhist teachers offered an honourable career as nuns. Instead of the daily indignities to which they were subjected by grasping relatives, treacherous husbands, and faithless lords, the most miserable of the sex could now share, although still in a humble way, with the general respect accorded to all who had taken the vows. The Bhikshuni were indebted to Ananda's intercession with Sakya for their admission into the ranks of the Buddha community ; and (see Csoma's Ana lysis of the Dulva, Res. As. Soc. Bengal, xx. p. 90 ; also Fo-kue-ki, chap. xvi. p. 101) the Pi-khieu-ni, or Bhikshuni, at Mathura, in token of their grati tude, paid their devotions chiefly to the stupa of Anan (Ananda), because he had besought Buddha that he would grant to women the liberty of em bracing ascetic life. The observances required from the nuns are recorded in note 23, chap. xvi. of the Fo-kue-ki. The female ascetic even of a hundred years of age, however, was bound to respect a monk even in the first year of his ordina tion. It is related that Sakya's wife, after the first outburst of grief on seeing his return to her as an ascetic, herself became a Bhikshuni.
From its rise in the 6th century B.C., the doc trines of Buddha gradually spread over the whole of India. It was extended by Asoka to Kashmir and Kabul shortly after Alexander's invasion, and it was introduced into China about the beginning of the Christian era by 500 Kashmirian mission aries. In A.D. 400, when Fa Hian visited India, Buddhism was still the dominant religion, but the Vaishnava sect of modern Brahmanism, with a mixture of the old Aryan creed and the Buddhist faith, were already rising into consequence. In the middle of the 7th century, although the pil grim Hiwen Thsang found numerous temples of the Saiva, whose doctrines had been embraced by Skanda Gupta and the later princes of Patali putra, yet Buddhism was still the prevailing re ligion of the ople. But though the faith of Sakya lingered about the holy cities of Benares and Gaya for two or three centuries later, it was no longer the honoured religion of kings and princes, protected by the strong arm of power, but the persecuted heresy of a weaker party, who were forced to hide their images under ground, and were ultimately expelled from their monas teries by fire. In 1835, Major Cunningham exca vated numerous Buddhist images at Sarnath near Benares, all of which had evidently been purposely hidden under ground. He found quantities of ashes also, and there could be no doubt that the buildings had been destroyed by fire ; and Major K ittoe, who subsequently made f urther excavations, was of the same opinion. The Buddhist religion
has long been extinct in British India. Its last remnants were extinguished, in blood and violence, about the 14th century, dying out about Trichino poly and along the coast-line from Vizianagram to Masulipatam. But it still flourishes in its Hinayana and Mahayana forms, in the countries on its north and north-east borders, in Nepal and Tibet, in Mongolia and Manchuria, in Ava, Ceylon, and China, and amongst the Indo-Chinese nations of Annam, Siam, and Japan ; and its followers far outnumber those of all other existing creeds except the Christian.
The Buddhist faith was pre-eminently a religion of mercy and peace, of charity and benevolence. In the topes dedicated to the celestial Buddha, Adinath, the invisible being who pervaded all space, no"deposit was made ; but the divine Spirit, who is Light,' was supposed to occupy the in terior, and was typified on the outside by a pair of eyes, placed on each of the four sides either of the base or of the crown of the edifice. But in ages of strife and violence, of deifying mortals and of arrogant assumptions of an ignorant priest hood, a creed that taught gentleness and meek ness and kindness to living creatures must have exercised a great influence over the community,— must early have gained many converts amongst the peaceable and good, and largely leavened the minds even of those who did not openly become converts ; and amongst this class must be in cluded the entire populations from the primeval land east of the Oxus to China and Japan in the farthest east, to Singapore and Ceylon in the ex treme south. For ten centuries it had been the prevailing religion of India; but when the unwritten Tartar faith became corrupt and feeble, Brahman ism was revived, mixed with the worship of new gods, a Siva and a Vishnu, and every form of absurd fetishism gathered from local idolatries and superstitions. It is this mixture of several cre eds which Europeans now style Hinduism, and its followers Hindus. It is found amongst the people in every variety of belief,—from the mildest spirit and demon worship and recognition of numerous forms of gods and their idols, to a distinct theism ; from the grossest ignorance and superstition, to the most refined speculativeness ; performed and associated with bloody and most inhuman rites, and again followed with the greatest tenderness for animal life.
Brahmanic 1?evival.—In the later hymns of the Vedas can be traced the origin of the Vishnu wor ship, and the setting aside of Iudra. But the foreign Siva and Bhavani had come in with the Sake, and mingled in their worshippings, until the doctrines of Buddha, himself a Sakyan, were promulgated, and held their own for more than a thousand years, until, between the 5th and 12th centuries of the Christian era, a host of new divini ties, Vishnu, Siva, Durga, Kali, Rama, Krishna, Ganesha, Kartikeya, prevailed over a better faith than their own, and up to the present day enslave and degrade the Hindu mind.