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336 date I have named above is further confirmed by Mâdhava, a writer of the 14th century, quoted by Professor Wilson, who "declares that at his date not a follower of Buddha was to be found in all Hindustan, and he had only met some few old men of that faith in Kashmir." "At the present day," adds Wilson, "I never met with a person who had met with natives of India Proper of that faith, and it appears that an utter extirpation of the Buddha religion in India Proper was effected between the 12th and 16th centuries." Nevertheless it is the system of religion which next after the Catholic Church counts the greatest number of followers.

Dr. Gützlaff (in his "Remarks on the Present State of Buddhism," in "Journ. of R. As. Soc." xvi. 73.) tells us two-thirds of the population of China is Buddhist. In Ungewitter's Neueste Erdebeschreibung, the whole population is stated from native official statistics at 360,000,000; whence it would follow that there are 270,000,000 Buddhists in China alone; probably, however, the Chinese figures are to some extent an exaggeration.

Before concluding this brief notice of Buddhism it remains to say a few words on the later developments of the system which have too often been identified with its original utterances.

It does not appear to have been before the 10th century that Shâkjamuni was reckoned to be an incarnation of a heavenly being; at least the earliest record of such an idea is found in an inscription at Gaya, ascribed to the year 948, while much of his own teaching bears traces of a lingering belief in a great primeval tradition of the unity of the Godhead and the promise of redemption , as well as the great primary laws of obedience and sacrifice more perfectly preserved to us in the inspired writings committed to the Hebrews. The history of the deluge, as given by Weber from the Mahâ Bhârata, is almost identical in its leading features with the account in Genesis, bearing of course some additions. A great ship was laden with pairs of beasts, and seeds of every kind of plants, and was steered safely through the floods by Vishnu under the form of a great fish, who ultimately moored it on the mountain Naubandhana, one of the Himâlajas in Eastern Kashmere. The early Vêda hymns, too, had thus spoken of the Creation, "At that time there was neither being nor no being; no world, no air, nor any