“This is precisely the way in which Buddhism propagated itself. It germinated in India, but sent out branches south and north, each taking root, and each perpetuating itself by further offshoots, whilst the parent stock was gradually withered, and finally decayed. Buddhism left but few traces behind in India, but it still lives in Ceylon and in the offshoots of the Singhalese Church in Burmah, Siam and Pegu. When Buddhism became almost totally extinct in India, the whole force of its vitality seemed to throw itself northward, and it spread with renewed vigor and widening shade over Cashmere and Nepaul to China and Thibet. Chinese Buddhism threw forth new branches, northward into Corea and Japan and southward over Cochin-China, Cambodia and Laos, whilst Thibetan Buddhism pushed its branches into Mongolia, Mantchuria and the greater part of Central Asia. “Now, in each of these countries Buddhism established separate churches, each having its own locally diversified life, its own saplings, its own fruits, and yet all these many branches from one grove connected with each other and the old withered parent stock in India by a network of intertwining roots. Shivanism and Shananism, which saturated and leavened the churches of the north to a very considerable extent, now influenced the minds of Southern Buddhists. They clung to the old traditions, retained the ancient dogma, preserved their primitive monastic and ecclesiastical forms in languid torpor, but with tolerable fidelity. Yet still, Burmese and Siamese Buddhism under the influence of Brahmanism went so far as to amalgamate with the Buddhist religious notions derived from the primitive tree- and serpent-worship, which was a form of religion not only prior to Buddhism, but indigenous in Burmah and Siam. The consequence is, that practical Buddhist worship there is marked by the prevalence of Brahmanic mythology.” At the cremations, during plagues, epidemics and floods, our missionaries tell us, more attention is given to spirit-worship than to Buddhism proper. During the rice-planting and harvest the favor of the spirits of the air, earth and water is sought. Spirit-offerings may be found in the homes of the people, in the boats, fish-poles, threshing-floors, and even hanging to the sacred Bô tree itself. As you turn into the principal avenue of the grounds of a wat you will be very apt to find figures of enormous stone griffins, representing the demon kings of the four regions who guard the world against the attacks of evil spirits; and crouching lions, stone emblems of Shakyamuni (literally, “Shakya the lion”), who is, according to the Buddhists, by his strength the king of the beasts, as he is by his moral excellence the king of men. [Illustration: TEMPLE AT AYUTHIA.]