What he preached, then, was not quite unselfishness as we understand it; for our unselfishness seems to imply an active concern for the selves of other people. Buddha's idea was much more passive than active. We might better call it selflessness. His great thought was how to get rid of all self, both a man's own self and that of all others. He did, however, devote himself to what we may describe even in our sense as a perfectly unselfish life, for he not only denied himself all but the barest necessities, but went through northern India trying to save other men from what he considered, and pitied, as their misery, by explaining to them how he thought they might escape from it. The theory of re-incarnation opened a way for the union of Buddhism with the older Brahmanism, for the priests taught that in Buddha himself was the incarnated soul of Vishnu, the supreme spirit of the Brahmans. So they taught, and who was there to contradict them? For the regulation of social life the maxims of Buddha are such as the highest Christian morality must approve. Hatred was to be conquered by love. Wives, children, and servants were to be treated with {31} wise kindness. After a while, as has happened with other religions, the followers of Buddhism split up into sects, and especially into what were called the Northern and the Southern Churches. Although it was in the north of India that Buddha had preached, it was there that his rules of life were modified and made less severe. The Southern Church observed them more strictly. In the centuries that followed, the doctrines of Buddha won converts far beyond India itself--in Tibet in the north, in Burma and Siam in the east and south, and so to the Malay Peninsula and to the islands of the Malay Archipelago. Farther west it was carried down into Ceylon. Whatever, we may think of the religion of Buddha, it is obvious that it was in no sense a "fighting religion." It did not inspire its followers to be soldiers. Perhaps this is the reason why the Hindus never seem to have been able to resist the incursions of warlike neighbours. In the fourth century B.C. came Alexander of Macedon and pushed his wonderful conquests into the very heart of India. His general, Seleucus, organised part of the conquered territory under his rule, but it made little lasting impression on the story of the country. About the middle of the second century A.D., the wild hordes of the Parthians, the people who gave such continual trouble to the mighty Roman Empire, swept into Northern India, and with them they brought Christianity. Christianity, too, came early to that Malabar coast where the Portuguese, more than a thousand years later, found the Moslems in full possession. But Christianity was not imposed by force.