Just as the Anglo-Saxon language, although it originated in Germany, has survived and developed itself in Britain only, the Buddhist creed, once indigenous to the continent of Hindostan, is now found nowhere between the Himalayas and Cape Comorin; whilst beyond the pale of India, it is as widely extended as the English language is beyond the limits of Germany. The rival religion of the Brahmins expelled it. Which of the two was the older is uncertain. Still more difficult is it to determine how far each is a separate substantive mythological growth, or merely a modification of the rival creed. I lay but little stress upon the internal evidence derivable from the character of the religions themselves. Both are complicated and artificial--both, perhaps, equally so. In contrast, however, to the more speculative and transcendental points, suggestive of recent development, there are others indicative of great antiquity. Nevertheless, it is as difficult to affirm that the primitive parts of the one creed are older than the most primitive parts of the other, as it is to affirm that the highest transcendentalisms are more recent. The fact of the oldest inscriptions being in the Pali dialect, is favourable to the greater antiquity of Buddhism, but it is not conclusive. The notion that Sanskrit itself is comparatively recent, of course subtracts from that of Brahminism. But this is far from being admitted. Besides which, it by no means follows, that because Brahminism is, comparatively speaking, recent, Buddhism must be ancient. The best clue in this labyrinth of conflicting opinions is the study of the superstitions of the ruder tribes of the hill-ranges of India itself, of the sub-Himalayas, and of the Indo-Chinese peninsula; the result of which investigation will be that that creed which has most points in common with the primitive and unmodified mythologies of the Tamulian stock, and of those branches of the monosyllabic populations nearest akin thereto, has also the best claim to be considered as the older.