Page:Doughty--Mirrikh or A woman from Mars.djvu/20

 vast, circular stone terraces, platform placed upon platform, each slightly receding from the one beneath, until the apex  of the cone is reached. The central and largest of these remarkable piles, Maurice, when he first caught a glimpse of  it, compared to a huge Papal tiara—no inapt comparison,  by the way, for it certainly looked more like that than anything else. In spite of the distance we had climbed, there still remained three of the platforms to be passed before the  top could be reached.

“George, you don’t know these Buddhist priests,” Maurice said musingly. “Lazy and indifferent as they appear, they are the most inveterate fanatics on earth. If it were a part of their religion to witness the sunrise from the top of  this tower on this particular day, they would move heaven  and earth to get here—they would crawl up step by step on  their knees, if they could gain their end in no other way.”

“I saw enough of them in China, to understand pretty well what they are like,” I replied.

“Indeed you did not. The Chinese Buddhists are different. With them religion has little or no meaning. Like some of our Christians they make it but a fetich; a bald  formula of words and ceremonies which they are alike too  ignorant and too indifferent to understand.”

“And are these people different?” I asked skeptically.

“Very different. I have made a study of them since I have been in Cambodia. Of course with the masses it is the same the world over. The Chinese are too practical, too worldly to make deep spiritual thinkers, but among the  higher classes of Buddhists in Farther India there are  minds capable of the deepest metaphysical reflection; minds stored with an accumulation of spiritual knowledge such as  you and I are utterly unable to comprehend.”

“Bosh!” I exclaimed, lighting a cheroot. “Why to hear you talk, old fellow, one would think you were a convert to  Buddhism. What are these Buddhists but a parcel of ignorant idolators, worshiping gods of wood and stone, which neither see nor hear nor think nor smell, as the Scripture  says somewhere. Positively, Maurice, you surprise me—you do indeed.”

He sighed, gazing upon my face with a certain far-away look that I had often observed in his eyes, and had as often  set down to a morbid dreaminess of character which he  certainly possessed at times. Thrusting his hands into his