History of For the first two centuries we have no trustworthy accounts of the progress of the religion. The sacred tra dition, indeed, recognizes two ((councils," that of Rajagaha, held shortly after Gotama's death for the purpose of fixing the canon of disci pline and doctrine, and the council of Vesali,_ held a century later in order to settle 10 dis puted points of discipline. In each case, how ever, the narratives of the proceedings are so filled with inconsistencies and impossibilities that they have little weight as history, although there is probably a basis of fact. With the reign of Aioka (273-232 the 3d emperor of the Maurya dynasty, we begin to have con temporary evidence for the spread of Bud dhism; for the edicts of that monarch show that he became a convert and also a patron of the monastic order. Not only did he propagate the faith in his own dominions embracing the greater part of India, but he sent missionaries to the Himalayan regions, to the Greek rulers of the eastern Mediterranean, to southern India and perhaps to Burma. The most last ing result was the conversion of Ceylon, which was effected, according to tradition, by Ma hinda, the Emperor's brother (or son). Ceylonese records also relate that a third council of the Church was held under Agoka for the confutation of heresy, and his own edicts show that he took measures to prevent schism, a danger continually present in the loose or ganization of Buddhism. The gunga dynasty, which overthrew the Mauryas in eastern India in the 2d century B.C., was hostile to Buddhism, but the religion made headway in the north western provinces under the Greco-Bactrian kings and was subsequently favored there by the great Indo-Scythian ruler Kanishka in the 1st century A.D. In his reign there was another general council, according to northern Bud dhist accounts.
About the beginning of the Christian era there arose in Buddhism a new school of thought, whose members not only developed the original law of impermanence into a theory of the unreality of all things but, going beyond the ideal of attaining Nirvana through saint hood, aspired to become Buddhas themselves by following the career of the Bodhisattvas, or potential Buddhas, and made devotion to Buddhas and Bodhisattvas conceived as per sonal divinities a prominent part of religion. This system they called Mahayana, ((Great Vehicle," as opposed to the Hinayana, ((Little (or, Inferior) Vehicle,) of the older schools (see MAHAYANA). Different in spirit as the two Vehicles were, they continued to exist side by side in India as recognized divisions of Bud dhism, although the kinship of the Mahayana with the Hinduism of the time is unmistakable. About the 6th century A.D. another school, that of the Tantras, or mystic formulas (see TAN MA), sprang up, partly as an offshoot of the Mahayana, and partly as an accommodation of popular and often gross superstitions to the terms of Buddhist mythology. Thus Buddhism in India gradually abandoned its distinctive character and tended, from the 8th century on ward, to merge itself in the surrounding Hin duism. There seems to have been little perse cution by Brahmanical rulers, but the Moham medan invaders and conquerors of northern India in the 12th century dealt a fatal blow to Buddhism in its original home by their destruc tion of the monasteries. From that time it rapidly declined, and for the last three centuries it has been practically extinct as a religion in India proper, although traces of its influence are discernible in the rites of certain castes. Only on the slopes of the Himalayas does it still partially maintain itself, though in a cor rupted form. The Buddhism of the native state Nepal has a special historical importance, since its uninterrupted literary tradition has preserved many theological works that would otherwise have perished.
The great expansion of Buddhism north wards and eastwards began about the Christian era, when under the Indo-Scythian kings it spread from the valley of the Indus over the Hindu Kush and the Pamirs into Turkestan.
Thence it was brought to China in the 1st century A.D., where it became firmly established in the course of the 4th century. China in turn transmitted the faith to Korea (384 A.D.), and Korea to Japan (552 A.D.). In the Far East, however, the Mahayana school early became predominant, and the history of the various Chinese and Japanese sects consequently is not within the scope of this article. In Tibet, which received Buddhism from India in the 7th and 8th centuries A.D., the Mahayana and Tantra doctrines were combined with the native super stitions and ultimately developed into the peculiar politico-religious system known as Lamaism. See LAMAISM.
The Buddhists of Ceylon, on the contrary, have held fast to the more primitive teaching of the Hinayana, or (iLittle Vehicle,)) through all the vicissitudes of their history, and this is still the principal religion of the island, al though others predominate in the northern portion. From Ceylon or southern India the Hinayana was conveyed to Pegu in Lower Burma not later than the 6th century A.D., and in the 1 lth century it overcame the Mahayana in Upper Burma, gaining over the entire country a sway that it still maintains. Throughout Indo-China Mahayana Buddhism appears to have been early introduced by colonists from India along with the rival religion of Hin duism; but the Hinayana gradually advanced from the coast inland and has been supreme in Siam and Cambodia since about the 14th cen tury. Buddhism also penetrated into Sumatra and Java but was supplanted by Mohamme danism in the course of the 14th and 15th centuries.
The Buddhism of the followers of Gotaina the so-called 'Sect of the Elders" (Theravada), consequently is found at the present day only in Ceylon and through the greater part of the Indo-Chinese Peninsula; but even in these countries the monks have deviated in many respects from the strictness of the ancient rule, and the mass of the laity, although paying a formal homage to the Buddha, the Law and the Order, are in fact more addicted in their daily lives to spirit-worship and other native superstitions.
Statistics.— In the British East Indian pos sessions, for which alone accurate statistics are available, there were, according to the census of 1911, 336,874 Buddhists in India proper, 10,384,579 in Burma and 2,474,170 in Ceylon. In Siam and French Indo-China the number of Buddhists is probably nearly 250,000. The M Lamaistic Buddhists of Tibet, Mongolia, the Russian empire and the Himalayan states of Nepal and Bhutan may amount to 10,000,000 more; and a large proportion of the 400,000,000 people of China and Japan may be reckoned as Buddhists in a measure, although the inter penetration of Buddhism with other forms of religion in these countries makes it impossible to give definite figures.
Bibliography.— Copleston, R. S., 'Bud dhism Primitive and Present in Magadha and in Ceylon) (2d ed., 1908) ; Davids, T. W. Rhys, 'Buddhism, being a sketch of the Life and Teachings of Gautama, the Buddha' (rev. ed„ 1903), 'Buddhism, its History and Literature' (2d ed., 1906), (Early Buddhism' (1908); Hackmann, H., 'Buddhism as a Religion: Its Historical Development and Its Present Con ditions) (Eng. trans., 1910) Kern, H., 'Manual of Indian Buddhism) (1896) ; Oldenberg, H., 'Buddha: sein Leben, seine Lehre, seine Gemeinde) (6th ed., 1913) ; Pischel, R., 'Leben and Lehre des Buddha) (2d ed., 1910) ; La Vallee-Poussin, L. de, opinions sur l'histoire de la dogmatique' (1909). Older, but valuable particularly for Ceylonese Bud dhism, are the works of Hardy, R. S., 'Eastern Monachism' (1850), and 'A Manual of Bud dhism, in its Modern Development' (2d ed., 1880). Warren, H. C., 'Buddhism in Trans lations' (1896), gives a selection of the most characteristic passages from the Pali writings. For further references, consult Edmunds, A. J, 'A Buddhist Bibliography' (in Journal of the Pali Text Society, 1902-03, pp. 1-60), and Pratt, Ida A., 'Buddhism, a list of references in the New York Public (1916).