The best proof of the truth of this view of the matter is, that after a layman had attached himself to the Buddha, the Law, and the Order, he was not required to undergo any initiatory ceremony, like baptism, or to receive any stamp of membership, or to assume a peculiar dress, or to give up all belief in his family religion, or caste-customs. In short, he did not as a lay-brother break entirely with Hindūism. That universal tolerance was of the very essence of Buddhism is indicated by Aṡoka’s twelfth edict:—‘The beloved of the gods honours all forms of religious faith—there ought to be reverence for one’s own faith and no reviling of that of others.’ Compare p. 126. Nor did Gautama himself ever set an example of intolerance. He never railed at the Brāhmans. He treated them with respect, and taught others to do so; and even adopted the title Brāhmaṇa for his own saints and Arhats (Dhamma-pada 383-423). What he opposed was priestcraft and superstition, not Brāhmanism; as indeed other reformers had done before him. Probably the great receptivity of Buddhism was one of the causes that led to its decay in India. Yet Gautama’s victory over one of the most inveterate propensities in human nature—the tendency to seek salvation through a mediatorial caste of priests—was a wonderful achievement. This is proved by the fact that his followers in other countries became re-entangled in a network of priestcraft, even more enslaving than that out of which he had rescued them. Koeppen, Rhys Davids, and other writers have well shown that the Buddhism of Tibet, with its Pope-like grand Lāmas—its cardinals and abbots, monks and mendicant friars, nuns and novices, canonized saints and angelic hosts, temples and costly shrines, monasteries and nunneries, images and pictures, altars and relics, robes and mitres, rosaries and consecrated water, litanies and chants, processions and pilgrimages, confessions and penances, bell-ringing and incense—is in everything, except doctrine, almost a counterpart of the Romish system. How little could the Buddha have foreseen such a development of his brotherhood of monks, whose chief duties were meditation and itineration! And what is to be said of the present condition of the Buddhist monkhood? Do we see anywhere evidences of that enlightenment of mind which Buddhism claims as its chief characteristic? When I was travelling in Ceylon, I met a few learned monks, but the majority seemed to me idle, ignorant, and indifferent. In Burma the monks are called Pungīs (Phongies), and are a little more active. Every youth in Burma is supposed for a time to inhabit a monastery. In Tibet the monks are called Lāmas (a lower title being Gelong) and constitute a large proportion of the population. They are slaves to gross superstitions. Some are mere devil-charmers, a belief in the power of evil spirits being the chief religion of the people.