Moreover, their own religions have long since taken too firm a hold. An old and respected friend of mine, who had laboured in this direction for about five-and-thirty years, told me plainly the strongholds of the two great religions of India were, so far as the adult population was concerned, all but impregnable; the only prospect of a measure of success lies in those orphanages, the inmates of which are as yet subject to only the indirect influence of heredity and free from contact with their co-religionists; once they are back among their own people, preaching to stones would be about as effectual. Further, we are not to the manner born; besides which, our position in the land constitutes an impediment. Another great and peaceful revolution effected by the teachings of Buddha was the overthrow of the rigid, unnatural system of caste. Whatever benefit this order of things may have been to us in India as a bar to combination, no other scheme has ever been devised better calculated to keep men asunder and clog the wheels of progress. It hampers all enterprise, causing the machinery of government and industry to creak along after the fashion of a native bullock-cart. No such arrangement exists in Burmah, and, if only for this reason, its inhabitants will soon forge ahead of India. Years of meditation convinced Buddha of the lasting evils of such a system, and he therefore expunged it—another instance of the difference existing between the influence on matters temporal exerted by both these great religions. In order to gauge with any accuracy the general effects of Buddha’s doctrines in controlling such propensities to evil as his devotees may have possessed, some knowledge of their condition before the promulgation of such teachings would be indispensable; and I am further prevented from forming a judgment in the matter by the fact that my ignorance of their language, at the period of which I am writing, afforded me but scant opportunity of mixing with the inhabitants.