Page:Picturesque Nepal.djvu/76

 contrasts. India commenced with Brahmanism and then became Buddhist. It reverted to Brahmanism, and then was forced into Mohammedanism. Nepal began in the same way, being first Brahmanistic, and was subsequently gathered, with India, into the fold of Buddhism. At this point the analogy ceases. India eventually rejected Buddhism, and would have none of it. Nepal compromised, combined the two cults, and in the broad sense Brahmo-Buddhism is the religion of the State to the present day. But the most striking difference between the two countries is, that whereas the one was overwhelmed by the great wave of Mohammedanism which swept the peninsula from end to end in the twelfth and following centuries, Nepal was never affected by this great political cataclysm. The storm, raging in the plains of India, was spent ere it reached the natural ramparts of Nepal, and only distant echoes of the Islamic turmoil reached the seclusion of the valley.

The realization of this gives the country an added interest. Nepal illustrates, as approximately as time and ordinary