Page:Siam and Laos, as seen by our American missionaries (1884).pdf/281

 but sent out branches south and north, each taking root, and each perpetuating itself by further offshoots, whilst the parent stock was gradually withered, and finally decayed. Buddhism left but few traces behind in India, but it still lives in Ceylon and in the offshoots of the Singhalese Church in Burmah, Siam and Pegu. When Buddhism became almost totally extinct in India, the whole force of its vitality seemed to throw itself northward, and it spread with renewed vigor and widening shade over Cashmere and Nepaul to China and Thibet. Chinese Buddhism threw forth new branches, northward into Corea and Japan and southward over Cochin-China, Cambodia and Laos, whilst Thibetan Buddhism pushed its branches into Mongolia, Mantchuria and the greater part of Central Asia.

"Now, in each of these countries Buddhism established separate churches, each having its own locally diversified life, its own saplings, its own fruits, and yet all these many branches from one grove connected with each other and the old withered parent stock in India by a network of intertwining roots. Shivanism and Shananism, which saturated and leavened the churches of the north to a very considerable extent, now influenced the minds of Southern Buddhists. They clung to the old traditions, retained the ancient dogma, preserved their