d.

=Buddha Transformed into a God.=--It no longer satisfied the Buddhists
to honor their founder as a perfect man; they made him a god, erecting
idols to him, and offering him worship. They adored also the saints,
his disciples; pyramids and shrines were built to preserve their
bones, their teeth, their cloaks. From every quarter the faithful came
to venerate the impression of the foot of Buddha.

=Mechanical Prayer.=--Modern Buddhists regard prayer as a magical
formula which acts of itself. They spend the day reciting prayers as
they walk or eat, often in a language which they do not understand.
They have invented prayer-machines; these are revolving cylinders and
around these are pasted papers on which the prayer is written; every
turn of the cylinder counts for the utterance of the prayer as many
times as it is written on the papers.

=Amelioration of Manners.=--And yet Buddhism remains a religion of
peace and charity. Wherever it reigns, kings refrain from war, and
even from the chase; they establish hospitals, caravansaries, even
asylums for animals. Strangers, even Christian missionaries, are
hospitably received; they permit the women to go out, and to walk
without veiling themselves; they neither fight nor quarrel. At
Bangkok, a city of 400,000 souls, hardly more than one murder a year
is known.

Buddhism has enfeebled the intelligence and sweetened the
character.[27]

FOOTNOTES:

[22] The process is as follows: when a word (or rather a root) is found
in several Aryan languages at once, it is admitted that this was in use
before the dispersion occurred, and therefore the people knew the object
designated by the word.

[23] The Punjab.--ED.

[24] Prayer of the Mahabarata cited by Lenormant.

[25] A spirituous liquor made by the natives.--ED.

[26] A high estimate.--ED.

[27] India is for us the country of the Vedas, the Brahmans, and Buddha.
We know the religion of the Hindoos, but of their political history we
are ignorant.

CHAPTER VI

THE PERSIANS

THE RELIGION OF ZOROASTER

=Iran.=--Between the Tigris and the Indus, the Caspian Sea and the
Persian Gulf rises the land of Iran, five times as great as
France,[28] but partly sterile. It is composed of deserts of burning
sand and of icy plateaux cut by deep and wooded valleys. Mountains
surround it preventing the escape of the rivers which must lose
themselves in the sands or in the salt lakes. The climate is harsh,
very uneven, to