When we turn to India, to Ceylon, and more especially to Burmah, we are brought face to face with a very different state of things. It is true that in some parts--Thibet, for instance--Buddhism has been debased to an even worse state than Christianity in Europe; but, after all, that is merely asserting that human nature is human nature. The broader aspect of Buddhism in Asia must, to any unprejudiced observer, appear in striking contrast to the prostitution to which other religions in other corners of the earth have been subjected. It seems to be one of the unalterable laws which govern human conduct that the teaching of any great religious reformer should, in the centuries which follow his disappearance from the arena in which he had striven, be brought low and narrowed down, partly by the short-sightedness of its adherents, but mostly owing to the unhealthy influences of ecclesiastical domination such as was typical of mediæval Europe and Brahmanical India. That Buddhism should in great degree have escaped such a fate must be attributed, not only to the intrinsic value of the system itself, but also to the character of the people among whom it has survived. There have been many calumniators, from interested motives, of Buddhism; but no false representations, however frequently reiterated, can serve to mask the purity and nobility of this remarkable religion. It has never, like Christianity, been made the pretext of warfare and the conquest of alien races; no blood has ever been shed in its propagation; no despairing cries of martyred wives and orphan children rise up from the centuries that are past to stamp its forehead with the brand of Cain. By reason alone has it spread and become endeared to the many millions who now owe it allegiance; reason and truth are the only swords which have been unsheathed in the cause of its promulgation.[AT] It has, in fact, conquered by its sweet reasonableness alone, unaided by artificial and compulsory means. [AT] "No ravished country has ever borne witness to the prowess of the followers of the Buddha; no murdered men have poured out their blood on their hearthstones, killed in his name; no ruined women have cursed his name to high heaven. He and his faith are clean of the stain of blood. He was the preacher of the Great Peace, of love, of charity, of compassion; and so clear is his teaching that it can never be misunderstood" (_The Soul of a People_, by H. Fielding, p. 88).