ndia, and
giving practical form to Indian ideas, it spread rapidly and widely
both in the country of its birth and in neighbouring lands. It is now
extinct in India, yet it numbers more adherents than any other
religion. It has been divided since the Christian era into two great
branches. Southern Buddhism is the religion of Ceylon, of Burmah, and
of Siam; while Northern Buddhism extends over Tibet, China, and
Japan, and the islands of Java and Sumatra.

The Literature.--These two branches of Buddhism have different
literary traditions, though some works are common to both; and these
literatures, differing from each other in language, also differ
widely in contents and in spirit. The southern tradition, composed in
Pali, the literary language of Ceylon, has recently been opened up to
scholars, and has greatly changed their views of the origin and the
true nature of this religion. The Canon of Southern Buddhism, which
we might call the Pali Bible, is a literature about twice as large as
the Bible of Europe, although if the repetitions in it were removed,
it would be somewhat smaller than the Bible. It consists of three
Pitakas, baskets or collections. The first is the Vinaya Pitaka,
dealing with discipline, but including the Mahavagga, a history of
the first beginnings of the order as the founder gathered it around
him. The second is the Sutta Pitaka or collection of teachings. It
contains the earliest account of the later life of the founder, books
of meditation and devotion, collections of sayings by the Master,
poems, fairy tales, and fables, stories about Buddhist saints, and so
on. The third collection, the Abidhamma, contains speculations and
discussions on various subjects. Much of these materials is not
peculiar to Buddhism, there is much pre-Buddhistic speculation, and
there are many stories which are not peculiar even to India. Along
with all this, however, the books give us the earliest accounts of
the life and of the death of the founder, and contain a
representation written a century after his death, of what he was
considered to have taught. The founder himself wrote nothing; but the
work of composing books about him and his doctrine began early, and
much of the canon is considered, especially by English scholars, to
have been in existence during the first Buddhist century.[1] For many
centuries they were preserved by memory alone.

[Footnote 1: The Buddhist literature given in the _Sacred Books of
the Ea