Page:Asoka - the Buddhist Emperor of India.djvu/48

46 with the aid of his enormous imperial power, the most comprehensive scheme of religious missionary enterprise recorded in the history of the world. The scheme was not only comprehensive but successful. It resulted in Buddhism quickly becoming the dominant religion throughout India and Ceylon, and in its ultimate extension over Burma, Siam, Cambodia, the Indian Archipelago, China, Korea, Japan, Mongolia, Tibet, and other countries of Asia. In some of these countries Buddhism did not effect its entry until centuries after the time of Asoka, but the diffusion of the religion in them all was due to the impetus given by the great Buddhist emperor of India, who transformed the creed of a local Indian sect into a world-religion, the most important of all the religions, perhaps, if the numbers of its adherents be taken as the test.

The obvious comparison of Asoka with Constantine suggests the thought that the action of the Indian monarch was far more influential than that of the Roman emperor, whose official patronage of Christianity was rather an act of tardy and politic submission to a force already irresistible than the willing devotion of an enthusiastic believer. If Constantine had not