In my own mind, I believe that the _Bedo_ of the Rajmahali mountaineers, is the _Batho_ of the Bodo, the _Pennu_ of the Khonds, and the _Potteang_ of the Kukis,[54]--name for name. I believe this without doubt or hesitation. But if I ask myself the import of this identity, the answer is unsatisfactory. There is doubt and hesitation in abundance. _Bedo_, _Batho_, _Petto_, and _Potteang_, _may_ represent the germ of what afterwards became _Buddh-ism_. They may exhibit the Indian creed in its _rudiments_. True. But they may also represent it in its _fragments_, so that _Bedo_ and _Batho_ may be but _Buddh_, distorted in form, and but imperfectly comprehended in import. In our own Gospel, the name for the place of punishment, which the Greeks called _Hades_, and the Hebrews typified by _Gehenna_, is the name of a Saxon goddess _Hela_; and, in this particular instance, a point of our original paganism has been taken up into our present Christianity. The same is the case with the Finnic nation, where _Yumala_ signifies _God_; Yumala being as truly heathen as _Jupiter_. On the other hand we find amongst the genuine pagan Gallas of Africa, an object of respect or worship called _Miriam_. What is this? No true piece of heathendom at all. Dr. Beke has given good reasons for believing that it means the Virgin Mother of the Saviour, the only extant member of the Christian Revelation now known to that once imperfectly Christianized community. Buddhism, then, may claim a higher antiquity than Brahminism under the two following conditions. 1. That the names _Batho_, &c., be really a form of _Buddh_. 2. That they have belonged to superstitions in which they occur from the beginning; and are not in the same category with the _Miriam_ of the Gallas, _i.e._, recent introductions from a wholly different religion--grafts rather than embryos. How far this latter is the case must be ascertained by a wide and minute inquiry, foreign to the present work. It is no wonder that, side by side with a semi-philosophical creed like Buddhism, we should have such a phenomenon as Devil-worship. When the spirit falls short of its due degree of self-sustained hardihood, fear finds its way to the heart. The evil powers are then propitiated; sometimes in a manner savouring of dignity, sometimes with groveling and grotesque cowardice. The Yezid of Mesopotamia, whose belief in the power of an evil spirit is derived from the Manicheism of old, shows his fear of the arch-enemy by simple and not unreasonable acts of negation. He does nothing that may offend; never mentions his name; and dwells on his attributes as little as possible. The devil-worshipper of Ceylon uses such invocations as the following:-- I. Come, thou _sanguinary Devil_, at the sixth hour. Come, thou _fierce Devil_, upon this stage, and accept the offerings made to thee!