It is these ideals of self-control, self-culture and heroic endeavour, the graces of wisdom, purity and love, the eternal law of _Karma_, or causality and moral retribution--under which every deed, good or bad, comes back most to the doer and yields fruit, helping or marring his progress--that are enshrined in the _Dhammapada_ in luminous, pithy verse which lingers in the memory as a fountain of noble inspiration. They are almost too ethereal for human nature's daily food, and it is granted to few to realise in actual life these counsels of perfection unaided. Buddha failed to make allowance for the weakness of humanity. His stoic agnosticism and self-reliant courage ignored God, denied the soul, repudiated worship and prayer and made man the master of his fate. This line of thought was not new to India, however stamped with his own personality. But human needs and aspirations have asserted themselves, and Buddhism has been compelled to absorb elements of doctrine and practice which he condemned. This has happened, especially, in the countries where the doctrine of the Mahāyāna (the Great Vehicle) prevails. In China, Amitābha (Boundless Light), of whom Gautama Buddha is held to be an incarnation, and Kwanyin the Goddess of mercy, have laid great hold on the affections of the Buddhist population. Kwanyin (Sansk. _Kanyā_, the Virgin) is the gracious _Sakti_ (Cosmic Power) of the Hindus, Mother of millions of world-clusters, Yet Virgin by the Vedas called. In Japan, Amitābha is the Eternal one who is the Light, the Way, and the Life, and took human form to open the door of salvation to all. Kwanyin shares with him the sovereignty of Heaven. In Tibet are worshipped these and other emanations of heavenly beings--Manju Sri, the personification of wisdom, Avalokitesvara, "the Lord who looketh down" on the world with mercy to help and protect, Vajrapāna, and others, with a host of minor deities. In Ceylon, which claims to belong to the purer faith, Buddhism is interwoven with the worship of, the popular gods of the Hindus and with animism and demonology. Under Mahāyānist influence Buddha has become a God, greater than others, but worshipped less fervently, for (as Robert Knox[5] found during his twenty years' residence in the island in the seventeenth century) the popular mind looks to Buddha for the soul, to the gods for the things of this world. His own doctrine remains a dream of philosophers.