Let us begin with Buddhism. We know, indeed, very little of its origin and earliest growth, for the earliest beginnings of all religions withdraw themselves by necessity from the eye of the historian. But we have something like contemporary evidence of the Great Council, held at Pâṭaliputra, 246 B.C., in which the sacred canon of the Buddhist scriptures was settled, and at the end of which missionaries were chosen and sent forth to preach the new doctrine, not only in India, but far beyond the frontiers of that vast country.[5] We possess inscriptions containing the edicts of the king who was to Buddhism what Constantine was to Christianity, who broke with the traditions of the old religion of the Brahmans, and recognized the doctrines of Buddha as the state religion of India. We possess the description of the Council of Pâṭaliputra, which was to India what the Council of Nicæa, 570 years later, was to Europe; and we can still read there[6] the simple story, how the chief elder who had presided over the Council, an old man, too weak to travel by land, and carried from his hermitage to the Council in a boat--how that man, when the Council was over, began to reflect on the future, and found that the time had come to establish the religion of Buddha in foreign countries. He therefore dispatched some of the most eminent priests to Cashmere, Cabul, and farther west, to the colonies founded by the Greeks in Bactria, to Alexandria on the Caucasus, and other cities. He sent others northward to Nepal, and to the inhabited portions of the Himalayan mountains. Another mission proceeded to the Dekhan, to the people of Mysore, to the Mahrattas, perhaps to Goa; nay, even Birma and Ceylon are mentioned as among the earliest missionary stations of Buddhist priests. We still possess accounts of their manner of preaching. When threatened by infuriated crowds, one of those Buddhist missionaries said calmly, “If the whole world, including the Deva heavens, were to come and terrify me, they would not be able to create in me fear and terror.” And when he had brought the people to listen, he dismissed them with the simple prayer, “Do not hereafter give way to anger, as before; do not destroy the crops, for all men love happiness. Show mercy to all living beings, and let men dwell in peace.”