Page:Picturesque Nepal.djvu/225

 course of events, both religious and political, which affected Asia during the "Middle Ages." History tells us that the establishment of Buddhism in China was contemporaneous with its decline in India, its original seat. Buddhist Nepal, no longer able to look to Hindustan for its inspirations, naturally turned to the Celestial Empire for religious impulse, where the Newar's national creed was a living fact, and becoming more powerful day by day. A parallel case is to be observed in the story of the Christian Church. The modern student of Christianity would hardly look to Jerusalem for enlightenment on the principles of this religion, and in the same way, although Kapilavastu—the Buddhist Bethlehem—is on the confines of Nepal, the whole country around lay under the sway of the Brahman, just as the Holy Land at the present time lies in the hand of the Turk. The succeeding centuries tended to still further narrow the intercourse between the Valley and Hindustan, until eventually in 1204 the disused doorway was hermetically sealed by the Mohammedan conquest of Behar and 18