The _religion_ of Burmah is Buddhism. Here and in the Island of Ceylon, this cult exists in its purest form. Buddhism originated in India about 500 years before Christ. Here it succeeded in supplanting the ancient religion of the Hindoos, derived from the Vedas, and called Brahminism. India was in former times saturated with Brahminical philosophy and Brahminical ceremonial. The people were completely priest-ridden. Buddhism was an outgrowth from Brahminism, or perhaps rather a recoil from it. It was related to it somewhat as Christianity is to Judaism, or Protestantism to the Romish Church. For one hundred and fifty years Buddhism had a very rapid and vigorous growth in India, but soon after the beginning of the Christian era it began to decay, and in the eighth and ninth centuries A.D., in consequence of a great persecution, Buddhism was completely extirpated in India. The ancient religion, Brahminism, was reinstated, and Gaudama has no worshipper in the land of his birth. But a prophet is not without honor save in his country. Buddhism is pervaded by a missionary spirit, and has won its way by peaceful persuasion into Ceylon, Burmah, Siam, Thibet, and China. It is, at the present day, the religion of more than four hundred millions of human beings—about one-third of the population of the globe. Having considered the distribution of Buddhism, let us contrast it with Brahminism. Buddhism, like Brahminism, holds the doctrine of transmigration of souls. The soul is at first united with the lowest forms of organic life. By successive births it may climb into the bodies of spiders, snakes, chameleons, and after long ages may reach the human tenement. Then comes the period of probation. According to its behavior in the flesh it either rises still higher to occupy the glorious forms of demigods and gods, or it relapses little by little into its low estate, and again takes up its wretched abode in the degraded forms of the lower animals. “Life runs its rounds of living, climbing up, From mote, and gnat, and worm, reptile and fish, Bird and shagged beast, man, demon, deva, God, To clod and mote again.”[14] “He who is now the most degraded of the demons may one day rule the highest of the heavens: He who is at present seated on the most honorable of the celestial thrones, may one day writhe amidst all the agonies of a place of torment; and the worm that we crush under our feet may in the course of ages become a supreme Buddha.”[15] “Eternal process moving on, From state to state the spirit walks, And these are but the shattered stalks, And ruined chrysalis of one.”[16]