The original Buddhism can’t be called a religion, for it knew no god and didn’t believe in a personal immortality. But like any other creation of time and of human desire to form and reform again and again, Buddhism also lost much of its original character, and so it came to pass that Buddhism in the first year of our era after its separation into two main sections, the so-called _southern_ and _northern_ churches, especially the last mentioned or the _Mahâyâna_ acknowledged, besides the Buddha of this world, quite other Buddhas to be the redeemers of former and future worlds, whilst the Buddhists thought all of them to be the revelations of a same original and impersonal deity, _Adi-Buddha_; and even the gods or some of the gods of the Hindus were admitted as the awatâras of the same first _Buddha_[2]. It may be easily understood that this Buddhism also invented hell in contradiction to heaven. However, by no means an abode for the eternal damned, such as the hell of Christianity alludes to. But the southern church, the Hînayâna swerved less far from the ancient doctrine, though it may be true that it did not always keep its originality, for in its pagodae, are also found a few sculptures honoured there as the representations of Buddha himself[3]. Since some centuries Buddhism has been repelled from its country of birth by the ancient Hinduism. Its place was taken by the shivaistic and other Hindu religions which at their turn again were partly superseded by Islâmism. But the Hînayânistic worship still exists in _Ceylon_ and in Further-India at _Burma_, and _Siam_ and _Kamboja_ and Mahâjânism at _Népâl_ and at _Tibet_ and, more or less degenerated, in _China_ and _Japan_. It flourished for some centuries in the island of Java, but became entirely exterminated by the fanatic and absolutely intolerant followers of _Allah_ and _Mohammed_. This was death after life; slavery after the command of senses; the decline of a civilisation lost for ever, and of a highly developed art whose products, by time’s tooth changed into ruins, still testify to her lost greatness.