his rude dominion was
eventually to give political equality to the two great rival
religions. The Buddhist and the Brahman lived at last if not
harmoniously, at least pacifically, side by side. Members of the same
reigning family would profess Buddhism or Brahmanism indifferently.
One king would sometimes patronize both religions. And this continued
to be the case till Buddhism faded out, replaced by that Hinduism
which owed its origin partly to native un-Aryan influence (paganism),
partly to this century-long fusion of the two state religions.

To review these events: In the first decades of the fourth century
(320 or 315-291 B.C.) Candragupta, Sandrocottos, had built up a
monarchy in Beh[=a]r[3] on the ruins left by the Greek invasion,
sharing his power with Seleucus in the Northwest, and had thus
prepared the way for his grandson, Acoka, the great patron of Buddhism
(264 or 259). This native power fell before the hosts of Northern
barbarians, which, after irruptions into India in the second century,
got a permanent foothold there in the first century B.C. These
Northern barbarians (their nationality is uncertain), whose greatest
king was Kanishka, 78 A.D., ruled for centuries the land they had
seized; but they were vanquished at last in the sixth century,
probably by Vikram[=a]ditya,[4] and were driven out. The
breathing-space between Northern barbarian and Mohammedan was
nominally not a long one, but since the first Moslem conquests had no
definitive result the new invaders did not quite overthrow Hindu rule
till the end of the tenth century. During this period the native
un-Aryan tribes, with their Hinduizing effect, were more destructive
as regards the maintenance of the old Brahmanic cult than were
outsiders.[5]

When Tamerlane invaded India his was the fourth invasion after the
conquest of the Punj[=a]b by the Moslem in 664.[6] In 1525 the fifth
conqueror, Baber, fifth too in descent from Tamerlane, founded the
Mogul empire that lasted till the fall of this dynasty (nominally till
1857). But it must be remembered that each new conqueror from 997 till
1525 merely conquered old Mohammedan dynasties with new invasions. It
was all one to the Hindu. He had the Mohammedan with him all this time
only each new rival's success made his lot the harder, But Baber's
grandson, the Great Mogul, Akbar (who reigned from 1556 to 1605), gave
the land not only peace but kindness; and under him Jew, Christian,
Hindu, and Mohamme