compromise with heathenism at all calculated to strengthen the power of the priesthood, but it never had its Âsanga,[366] who cleverly succeeded in reconciling the demonolatry of the people of Nepāl and Tibet with the acceptance of the Buddhist system. This he did by placing their male and female devils in the inferior heavens as worshippers of Buddha and Avalôkitês’vara, and by thus making it possible for the half-savage tribes to bring their sacrifices, even of blood, to their congenial shrines, and under cover of allegiance to the priests of the new to continue the old hideous idolatry. This discovery of Âsanga’s is said to have secured the rapid extension of the Buddhist hierarchy in these half-barbarous regions; but the hierarchy itself indicated a complete reversal of the primitive constitution of the Order. Buddha endeavoured to emancipate his fellow-men from faith in the efficacy of a priesthood to mediate between men and Deity, or to secure deliverance. He never dreamed that either temple or priest would arise in his system; but the temple grew naturally out of the dagoba and the relics which it enshrined, and the priesthood as naturally was evolved from the Sthavira or senior Bikkhu. In Southern Buddhism the priest is more like a Protestant minister of religion than like a priest in the Romish sense of the word; but in Northern Buddhism, and especially in that form of it dominant in Tibet, the people from the seventh century have been completely under the power of the Lamas who alone can work out their salvation. With the exception of a short interval of neglect and persecution, a hierarchy marvellously similar to, and no doubt in some respects suggested by, that of Romish Christianity, has completely controlled all the relations of life,[367] with the terrible result that cruelty and immorality most abhorrent to the good and gentle Buddha have been permitted to assert themselves unopposed, though a devotee who slaughters his fellow-men in cold blood will shudder with horror if by accident he should tread upon a worm or crush an over-irritating flea.[368]