Philosophy, which, in its too often erratic rambles in search of truth, changes, corrects, improves, destroys, and, in numberless ways, modifies all that it meets, never flourished in these parts; and, therefore, did not work on the religious institutions, which accordingly have remained up to this day nearly the same as they were when first imported into Burmah. The free discussion of religious and moral subjects, which constituted the very life of the Indian schools, and begat so many various, incoherent, and contradictory opinions on the most essential points of religion and philosophy, is the sign of an advanced state of civilisation, such as does not appear to have ever existed on the banks of the Irrawaddy. Owing to its geographical position, and perhaps, also, to political causes, Burmah has ever remained out of the reach of Hindu influence, which in Nepaul has coloured Buddhism with Hindu myths, and habited it in gross forms of idolatry. In China, where there already subsisted at the time of the arrival of the preachers of the new doctrine the worship of heroes and ancestors, Buddhism, like an immense parasitic plant, extended itself all over the institutions which it covered rather than destroyed, allowing the ancient forms to subsist under the disguise it afforded them. But such was not the state of Burmah when visited by the first heralds of Buddhism. The epoch of the introduction of Buddhism in Burmah has hitherto been a matter of conjecture. According to Burmese annals, Boudha-gautha, at the end of the fourth century of our era, brought from Ceylon a copy of the scriptures, and did for Burmah what Fa-Hian, the Chinese pilgrim, accomplished a few years afterwards in India and Ceylon for the benefit of his country. But Burmans maintain that they were followers of Buddha long before that epoch. If an inference may be drawn from analogy, it is probable that they are right in their assertion. China is fully as far from the ancient seat of Buddhism as Burmah. Yet it appears from the Chinese annals that the doctrines of the Indian philosopher were already propagated in some parts of that empire in the middle of the first century of our era, and probably at an earlier date. There is no improbability in concluding that, at least at the same time, Buddhist missionaries had penetrated into this country to propagate their tenets. According to Buddhistic annals, it was after the holding of the 3d Council, 236 after Gaudama's death, 207 B.C., that two missionaries carried religion to Thaton, the ruins of which are still to be seen between the mouths of the Tsitang and Salween rivers, and established Buddhism in Pegu. Be that as it may, we know, from the magnificent Buddhist monuments of Pagan, that that religion had reached, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a degree of splendour that has never since been equalled.