We ought also to notice the Kumbhāṇḍas, a class of demons who attend on Virūḍhaka (p. 206); the Garuḍas, a bird-like race ruled over by the mythical Garuḍa, king of birds and enemy of the Nāgas and serpents; the Apsarases, or nymphs produced at the churning of the ocean. These last are sometimes described in Hindū mythology as the Hūrīs of Indra’s heaven, who are assigned to heroes killed in battle. In Buddhist sculptures they are represented as beautiful females, who are properly the wives of Indra’s celestial musicians called Gandharvas. Finally, mention should be made of the Kinnaras and Kinnarīs—beings who ought properly to be represented with human bodies and equine heads, and are, like the Gandharvas, heavenly musicians. It is even recorded in one legend that the Buddha himself in a former life was a Kinnarī. All this proves the close connexion of Buddhism with the Hindūism which, like Buddhism, grew out of Brāhmanism. In short, the one mythology is so interpenetrated with the other, that Buddhism in making proselytes throughout Eastern Asia could not avoid propagating Hindū mythological doctrines along with its own. The consequence was that Hindūism, though often regarded as an unproselyting and wholly national religion, really exercised a vast influence outside its own boundaries and among alien races. It is, at any rate, a remarkable fact that no mythological system has ever spread over so large an area of the earth’s surface as that which, originating in India, was accepted to a great extent by all Buddhist communities. And this Indo-Buddhistic system of mythology, with its, to us, absurd idolatry, rests on an extremely subtle form of pantheism, which is not to be brushed aside as too contemptible for investigation. It is usual to denounce all such systems as simple Heathenism; but ‘Heathenism’ means the religion of ‘the nations’—the religion evolved by the men of all countries out of their own imaginations and by their own natural faculties, without the aid of any true supernatural revelation. And assuredly this religion of human nature is still a strong citadel entrenched behind the formidable forces of pride, passion, prejudice, and ignorance. Yet the walls of the fortress have numerous weak places, which the wise missionary, armed with the still more powerful forces at his command, will endeavour to discover and quietly undermine. By patient and quiet working he must win the day.