Page:Sagas from the Far East; or, Kalmouk and Mongolian traditionary tales.djvu/359

Rh Indra with the adjunctive appellation of Kaushika. Indra was at the time of Shâkjamuni himself the favourite god; the other great gods had not yet received the importance they afterwards acquired, nor had any thing like the idea of a trine unity or equality been broached as we shall presently see; even these allusions were but scanty. It was long before the whole Brahmanical system of divinities came to form an integral part of the Buddhist theosophy.

Hence Shâkjamuni, as well as his contemporary and earliest succeeding disciples, lived for the most part on good terms with the Brahmans, some of whom were among the most zealous in securing the custody of some part of his ashes. But they were not long ere they perceived that as this new teaching developed itself its tendency was to supersede their order. Then, a life and death struggle for the upper-hand ensued which lasted for centuries, for while the Buddhists were on the one side fighting against the attempted extermination, on the other side they were spreading their doctrines over an ever-fresh field by the journeyings of their missionaries, a proceeding the more exclusive Brahmans had never adopted. This went on till by the one means and the other Buddhism had been almost entirely banished from Central India, where it took its rise, but had established itself on an enduring basis as remote from its original centre as Ceylon, Mongolia, China, Japan, the Indian Archipelago, and perhaps even Mexico. This state of things was hardly established before the 14th century. But from information on the condition of religion in India preserved by the Chinese pilgrim Fahien, who traversed a great part of Asia, A.D. 399–414, Buddhism had already at that time suffered great losses, for at Gaja itself the temple of Buddha was a deserted ruin. From the writings of another Chinese pilgrim, Hiuen Thsang, whose travels took place in the 7th century, it would seem that the greatest Brahmanical persecution of the Buddhists did not take place before 670. That it had cleared them out of Central India by the