the pale
of Islam, the history of religion has been very different. Religious
wars--I mean wars caused by the conflict of militant faiths contending
for superiority--were, I believe, unknown on any great scale to the
ancient civilisations. It seems to me that until Islam invaded India
the great religious movements and changes in that region had seldom or
never been the consequence of, nor had been materially affected by,
wars, conquests, or political revolutions.

Throughout Europe and Mohammedan Asia the indigenous deities and their
temples have disappeared centuries ago; they have been swept away by
the forces of Church and State combined to exterminate them; they have
all yielded to the lofty overruling ideal of monotheism. But the tide
of Mohammedanism reached its limit in India; the people, though
conquered, were but partly converted, and eastward of India there have
been no important Mohammedan rulerships. On this side of Asia,
therefore, two great religions, Buddhism and Brahmanism, have held
their ground from times far anterior to Christianity; they have
retained the elastic comprehensive character of polytheism, purified
and elevated by higher conceptions, developed by the persistent
competition of diverse ideas and forms among the people, unrestrained
by attempts of superior organised faiths to obliterate the lower and
weaker species. In that region political despotism has prevailed
immemorially; religious despotism, in the sense of the legal
establishment of one faith or worship to the exclusion of all others,
of uniformity imposed by coercion, of proselytism by persecution, is
unknown to history: the governments have been absolute and personal;
the religions have been popular and democratic. They have never been
identified so closely with the ruling power as to share its fortunes,
or to be used for the consolidation of successful conquest. Nor, on
the other hand, has a ruler ever found it necessary, for the security
of his throne, to conform to the religion of his subjects, and to
abjure all others. The political maxim, that the sovereign and his
subjects should be of one and the same religion,[59] has never
prevailed in this part of the world. And although in India, the land
of their common origin, Buddhism widely displaced and overlaid
Brahmanism, while it was in its turn, after several centuries,
overcome and ejected by a Brahmanic revival, yet I believe that
history records no violent contests or colli