ine of Nirvana, or the attainment of a sinless
state of existence, has grown out of the idea of final union of the
individual soul with the Universal Soul, which is also inculcated in the
Upanishads. Yet, as we shall see, the Buddhists were, in the eyes of the
Brahmans, atheists, because in the ken of these new levellers gods and
men were put on the same plane. Brahmanism has never forgiven Buddhism
for ignoring the gods, and the Hindoos finally drove out the followers
of Gautama from India. It eventuated that after a millenium or so of
Buddhism in India, the old gods, Brahma, Indra, etc., which at first had
been shut out from the ken of the people, by Gautama, found their places
again in the popular faith of the Buddhists, who believed that the gods
as well as men, were all progressing toward the blessed Nirvana--that
sinless life and holy calm, which is the Buddhist's heaven and
salvation.

It is certainly very curious, and in a sense amusing, to find
flourishing in far-off Japan the old gods of India, that one would
suppose to have been utterly dead and left behind in oblivion. As
acknowledged devas or kings and bodhisattvas or soon-to-be Buddhas, not
a few once defunct Hindu gods, utterly unknown to early Buddhism, have
forced their way into the company of the elect. Though most of them have
not gained the popularity of the indigenous deities of Nippon, they yet
attract many worshippers. They remind one that amid the coming of the
sons of Elohim before Jehovah, "the satan" came also.[10]

From another point of view Buddhism was a new religion; for it swept
away and out of the field of its vision the whole of the World or
Universal Soul theory. "It proclaimed a salvation which each man could
gain for himself and by himself, in this world during this life, without
the least reference to God, or to gods, either great or small." "It
placed the first importance on knowledge; but it was no longer a
knowledge of God, it was a clear perception of the real nature as they
supposed it to be of men and things." In a word, Gautama never reached
the idea of a personal self-existent God, though toward that truth he
groped. He was satisfied too soon.[11] His followers were even more
easily satisfied with abstractions. When Gautama saw the power over the
human heart of inward culture and of love to others, he obtained peace,
he rested on certainty, he became the Buddha, that is, the enlightened.
Perhaps he was not the first Buddhis