nd creeds, the
equality of the rich and the poor, the foolish and the wise, the
'twice-born' and the outcast. Buddhism, as a religion and as a
political fact, was a reaction against Brahmanism, though it retained
much of that more primitive form of faith and worship. Buddhism, in
its historical growth, presupposes Brahmanism, and, however hostile
the mutual relation of these two religions may have been at different
periods of Indian history, it can be shown, without much difficulty,
that the latter was but a natural consequence of the former.

The ancient religion of the Aryan inhabitants of India had started,
like the religion of the Greeks, the Romans, the Germans, Slaves, and
Celts, with a simple and intelligible mythological phraseology. In the
Veda--for there is but one real Veda--the names of all the so-called
gods or Devas betray their original physical character and meaning
without disguise. The fire was praised and invoked by the name of
"Agni" (_ignis_); the earth by the name of "P_r_ithvi" (the broad);
the sky by the name of "Dyu" (Jupiter), and afterwards of "Indra;" the
firmament and the waters by the name of "Varu_n_a," or [Greek:
Ovravos]. The sun was invoked by many names, such as "Surya,"
"Savit_r_i," "Vish_n_u," or "Mitra;" and the dawn rejoiced in such
titles as "Ushas," "Urva_s_i," "Ahana," and "Surya." Nor was the moon
forgotten. For though it is mentioned but rarely under its usual name
of "_K_andra," it is alluded to under the more sacred appellation of
"Soma;" and each of its four phases had received its own denomination.
There is hardly any part of nature, if it could impress the human mind
in any way with the ideas of a higher power, of order, eternity, or
beneficence,--whether the winds, or the rivers, or the trees, or the
mountains,--without a name and representative in the early Hindu
Pantheon. No doubt there existed in the human mind, from the very
beginning, something, whether we call it a suspicion, an innate idea,
an intuition, or a sense of the Divine. What distinguishes man from
the rest of the animal creation is chiefly that ineradicable feeling
of dependence and reliance upon some higher power, a consciousness of
bondage, from which the very name of "religion" was derived. "It is He
that hath made us, and not we ourselves." The presence of that power
was felt everywhere, and nowhere more clearly and strongly than in the
rising and setting of the sun, in the change of day and night, o