Page:Narratives of the Mission of George Bogle to Tibet (1879).djvu/46

Rh garia to the valley of the Jaxartes, crossed the Oxus into Balkh, and entered Kabul by the Bamian pass, finding the religion of Buddha in a flourishing state along the whole of his route.

It was, indeed, at about the period of Hiuen Thsang's journey that Buddhism first began to find its way into Tibet, both from the direction of China and that of India; but it came in a very different form from that in which it reached Ceylon several centuries earlier. Traditions, metaphysical speculations, and new dogmas had overlaid the original Scriptures with an enormous collection of more recent revelation. Thus Tibet received a vast body of truth, and could only assimilate a portion for the establishment of a popular belief. Since the original Scriptures had been conveyed into Ceylon by the son of Asoka, it had been revealed to the devout Buddhists of India that their Lord had created the five Dhyani or celestial Buddhas, and that each of these had created five Buddhisatwas, or beings in the course of attaining Buddha-hood. The Tibetans took firm hold of this phase of the Buddhistic creed, and their distinctive belief is that the Buddhisatwas continue to remain in existence for the good of mankind by passing through a succession of human beings from the cradle to the grave. This characteristic of their faith was gradually developed, and it was long before it received its present form; but the succession of incarnate Buddhisatwas was the idea towards which the Tibetan mind tended from the first. At the same time, as Max M&uuml;ller says: "The most important element of the Buddhist reform has always been its social and moral code, not its metaphysical theories. That moral code, taken by itself, is one of the most perfect which the world has ever known;" and it was this blessing that the introduction of Buddhism brought into Tibet.

It is said that a native king established the seat of government at Lhasa in 617 ; that he married a Chinese princess of the Buddhist persuasion, and that he sent his minister to India, who returned with the great body of truth contained in the Buddhist canonical Scriptures, framed the Tibetan alphabet