Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/810

786 786 INDIA [HISTORY. great value. After giving all these in alms lie buys them back at double price.&quot; The intellect of this king, we are told, was weak and narrow. 1 Similar &quot; fields of charity &quot; seem to have been held by many Buddhist princes in memory of the Great Renunciation. The vast monastery of Nalanda in Behar formed a seat of learning which recalls the universities of mediaeval Europe. Ten thousand monks and novices of the eighteen schools there studied theology, philosophy, law, science, especially medicine, and practised their devotions. They were supported from the royal funds. Hwen Tsang travelled from the Punjab to the mouth of the Ganges, and made journeys into southern India. But everywhere he found the two religions mingled. Gaya, which holds so high a sanctity in the legends of Buddha, had already become a great Brahman centre. On the east of Bengal, Assam had never been converted to Buddhism. In the south-west, Orissa was a stronghold of the faith ; at the seaport of Tamluk at the mouth of the Hugli (Hooghly), the temples to the Brahman gods were five times more numerous than the convents of the faithful. On the Madras coast Buddhism flourished; and indeed throughout southern India the faith seems still to have been in the ascendant, although struggling against Brahman heretics and their gods. Decline- During the next two centuries Brahmanism gradually of Bui- became the ruling religion. There are legends of persecu- dbisib. fcions instigated by Brahman reformers, such as Kumarila Bhatta and Sankar-Acharjya. But the downfall of Buddhism seems to have resulted from natural decay, and from new movements of religious thought, rather than from any general suppression by the sword. Its extinction is contemporaneous with the rise of Hinduism, and belongs to a subsequent part of this sketch. In the llth century, only outlying states, such as Kashmir and Orissa, remained faithful ; and before the Mahometans fairly came upon the scene Buddhism as a popular faith had disappeared from India. During the last ten centuries Buddhism has been a banished religion from its native home. But it has won greater triumphs in its exile than it could ever have achieved in the land of its birth. It has created a literature and a religion for more than a third of the human race, and has profoundly affected the beliefs of the rest. Five hundred millions of men, or 35 per cent, of the inhabitants of the world, still follow the teaching of Buddha. Afghanistan, Nepal, Eastern Turkistan, Tibet, Mongolia, Manchuria, China, Japan, the Eastern Archipelago, Siam, Burmah, Ceylon, and India at one time marked the magnificent cir cumference of its conquests. Its shrines and monasteries stretched in a continuous line from the Caspian to the Pacific, and still extend from the confines of the Russian empire to the equatorial archipelago. During twenty four centuries Buddhism has encountered and outlived a series of powerful rivals. At this day it forms one of the three great religions of the world, and is more numerously followed than either Christianity or Islam. In India its influsnce has survived its separate existence. It not only left behind it a distinct sect, but it supplied a basis upon which Brahmanism finally developed from the creed of a caste into the religion of the people. This Buddhistic influence on Hinduism will be afterwards noticed. The distinct sect is known as the JAIXS (r/.v.), who number about half a million 2 in India. The noblest survivals of Buddhism in India are to be found, not among any peculiar body, but in the religion of the people; in that principl : 1 Report of A rcli. Survey, Western India, for 1874-7?, p. 83. J Returned by the census of 1872 as 485,020 &quot;Buddhists&quot; in India, besides the 2,447,831 Buddhists in Burmah. Except, in a few spots, chiefly among the spurs of the Himalayas and in south-eastern Bengal, the Indian Buddhists may be generally reckoned as Jains. of the brotherhood of man, with the reassertion of which each new revival of Hinduism starts; in the asylum which tine great Hindu sects afford to women who have fallen victims to caste rules, to the widow and the out-caste; in that gentleness and charity to all men, which take the place of a poor-law in India, and give a high significance to the half-satirical epithet of the &quot;mild&quot; Hindu. Greek-Roman Period. The external history of India commences with the Greek Gr invasion in 327 B.C. Some indirect trade between India &quot;&quot; ) and the Levant seems to have existed from very ancient times. Homer was acquainted with tin 3 and other articles of Indian merchandise by their Sanskrit names ; and a long list has been made of Indian products mentioned in the Bible. 4 But the first Greek historian who speaks clearly of India was Hecatasus of Miletus (549-486 B.C.) ; the knowledge of Herodotus (450 B.C.) ended at the Indus ; and Ctesias, the physician (401 B.C.), brought back from his residence in Persia only a few facts about the products of India, its dyes and fabrics, monkeys and parrots. India to the east of the Indus was first made known in Europe by the historians and men of science who accompanied Alexander the Great in 327 B.C. Their narratives, although now lost, are condensed in Strabo, Pliny, and Arrian. Soon afterwards Megasthenes, as Greek ambassador resident at a court in the centre of Bengal (30G-298 B.C.), had oppor tunities for the closest observation. The knowledge of the Greeks and Romans concerning India practically dates from his researches, 300 B.C. 5 Alexander the Great entered India early in 327 B.C., Ale crossed the Indus above Attock, and advanced, without a aTul struggle, over the intervening territory of the Taxiles 6 to the Jhelurn (Hydaspes). He found the Punjab divided into petty kingdoms, jealous of each other, and most of them inclined to join an invader rather than to oppose him. One of these local monarchs, Porus, disputed the passage of the Jhelum, with a force which, substituting guns for chariots, exactly equalled the army of Ranjit Sinh, the ruler of the Punjab in the present century. 7 Plutarch gives a vivid description of the battle from Alexander s own letters. Having drawn up his troops at a bend of the Jhelum, about 14 miles west of the modern field of 3 Greek, Kassiteros ; Sanskrit, Kastira ; hence, subsequently, the name of Cassiterides given to the Scilly Islands. Elephas, ivory, through the Arabian eleph (from Arabic el, the, and Sanskrit ibha, domestic elephant), is also cited. 4 Dr Bird wood s Handbook to the British Indian Section of the Paris Exhibition 0/1878, pp. 20-35. 6 The fragments of the Indica of Megasthenes, collected by Dr Schwanbeck, with the first part of the Indica of Arrian, the Pcriplus Maris Erythrcci, and Arrian s Account of the Voyage of Nearchus, have been translated in two most useful volumes by Mr J. W. M Crindle, M.A. (Triibner, 1877 and 1879). The Indica of Ctesias, with the 15th Book of Strabo, is also promised; and the difficult sections referring to India in Ptolemy s Geographia, properly anno tated, would complete a work of the highest value to Indian history. 6 The Takkas, said to be a Turanian race, were the earliest inhabit ants of Rawal Pindi district. They gave their name to the town of Takshasila or Taxila, which Alexander found &quot;a rich and large city, the most populous between the Indus and Hydaspes &quot; (Arrian) ; it is identified with the ruins of Deri Shnhan. Taki or Asarur, on the road between Lahore and Pindi Bhatiyan, was the capital of the Punjab in 633 A.D. 7 Professor Cowell, who thinks that the Greeks probably exaggerated the numbers of the enemy, judiciously remarks: Torus, one of several who occupied the Punjab, is said to have had 200 elephants, 300 chariots, 400 horse, and 30,000 efficient infantry; which, as observed by Sir A. Burnes, is (substituting guns for chariots) exactly the establishment of Ranjit Sinh, who was master of the whole Punjab and several other territories&quot; (Cowell, App. iii. to Elphinstone s Hist. Ind., p. 262, ed. 1866). General Cunningham, who has given a lucid account of the battle, with an excellent map, Anc. Geoff, oj India, pp. 159-177 (ed. 1871), states the army of Alexander at &quot;about 50,000 men, including 5000 auxiliaries under Mophis of Taxila.&quot;