MISSIONARIES. The south and east of Asia has been a scene of proselytizing labour from remote times. The earliest recorded missions in India were of the Buddhists, who sent agents to every country around, and forms of their faith still prevail in Tibet, in Ceylon, Burma, Siam, Cochin-China, Java, China, and Japan. No sooner had Sakya left the scene of his labours in Northern India than councils were held ; and while members of it were sent into Bactria, others advocated their faith by their writings. The intercourse between China and India was kept up by missionaries, two of whom, Fa Hian and Hiwen Thsang, of the 5th and 7th centuries, have left behind them histories of their travels. Pil grims from China to the present day continue to visit India ; Banyiu Nanjio and Kasawara, monks from Japan, have sought for information as to their religion in the library of Oxford University ; and the monasteries in Ceylon, aided from Siam, are putting forth violent polemical tracts in support of their own faith, and attacking Christianity. Ancient Buddhist writings are in two forms, —the Pali canon as preserved in Ceylon, Burma, and Siam, and the Sanskrit canon, preserved partially in the libraries of Nepal, but far more fully represented in Chinese, Tibetan, and Mon golian translations. The Yueh-chi, Parthia, Khoten, Kabul, Bukhara, and Tibet• all drew on India for their sacred literature. In A.D. 65, the Chinese emperor Ming-ti sent eighteen com missioners to India, and they returned to China to preach Buddhism,. A.D. 67. The names are now known of forty missionaries who have been engaged in translating from Sanskrit into Chinese. In the early part of the 4th century, a descendant of Sakya's family, named Budhabhadra, settled in China to help in the translation of the sacred canon which contained the teaching of his great ancestor. The collections containing the canonical books of the southern Buddhists are called the Tripitaka, and the Udanavarga is the northern Buddhist version of Dhammapada.
Buddhism prevailed in parts of India from B.C. 350 to the close of the 12th century A.D. It was prevalent along with, and intervened between, two forms of religion which the Aryan Hindus have practised, those of the ancient Vedic creed and the Puranic polytheism of the moderns. Since the latter form has been current, the Aryan Hindus, believers in Siva, or in Vishnu, or in any of the many incarnations of the latter deity, and of their sakti or female energies, have striven to bring over to their views the aboriginal Turanian races whom they found preoccupying the country, and their conversions of the hill and forest indi genes is by whole tribes. Their missionaries are continuously converting them. From about A.D. 700 an almost unbroken succession of gifted men have been proclaiming modern Hinduism. There
will be found notices of their lives under their respective names, — Sankaracharya, Kumarila Bhatta, Madhavacharya, Chaitanya, and Valabha Swami ; with Kabir, the weaver ; Nam Deo, the tailor ; Rain Das, the tanner ; Dudu, the cotton cleaner ; Krishna, the founder of the Manbhow sect ; and Tuka Ram, the cultivator.
It has been the .policy of the East Aryan • Brahmans to regard all who do not follow their teachings as immeasurably their inferiors in the social scale. Even those who follow caste rules, if of other than Brahmanical descent, are deemed to be greatly their inferiors. Repeated efforts to throw down this caste barrier have been made by reformers, both of Aryan and non-Aryan descent, but the learning, ability, knowledge of official business, and unanimity of the Brahman race, have enabled them to hold their undoubtedly high position, and many of the non-Aryan tribes welcome the Hindu missionaries, influenced by the desire of being nearer the high-caste Brahman. But the craving of the Hindu races for a mono theistic creed is incessant, and many reformers have appeared who gained converts. The Sikh religionists are one of these, the Sad'hs are another, as also in a Hindu form are the Lin gaet, the Baishnab, and the Satani. Ram Singh, the Kuka, carpenter, in the space of ten years counted his followers by hundreds of thousands. Dudu Mehan, a Bengali Musalman, was a weaver, and his followers may still be counted by thousands. The sects who accept Siva or Vishnu strive to inculcate the view that the object worshipped by them is the one true God. In the early years of the 19th century, a great monotheistic movement was effected by Ram Mohun Roy, a Brahman of Bengal. Under the name of Brahmoism, it has become a theistic system, solely based on natural religion, exhibiting all the characteristics of a practical cultus, with its temples, priests, and worshippers. They have unpaid missionaries throughout the whole of India. They are seeking to fuse all the creeds of the world in a religious synthesis resting on the universal revelations of the conscience and reason. The views of Ram Mohun Roy have been expanded by several eminent men,—Dwarkanath Tagore, Debendra Nath Tagore, and Keshub Chimder Sen. It was Ram Mohun Roy who founded the Brahma Sonaaj or Society of God, which was based on the unity of God as revealed in the Vedas. Ho was succeeded as a leader by Debendra Nath Tagore, who had previously founded the Tattva, Bodhini Sabha, which merged in the Brehm() Soma)' ; and later on, Keshub Chunder Sen claimed for the sect the position of followers of a revealed, in contradistinction to philosophical, deism. Before his death in 1884 he became a visionary.