we see the disadvantages of
the omission to make the laity members of a special corporation and
the survival of the Jains, who do form such a corporation, is a clear
object lesson. Social life in India tends to combine men in castes or
in communities which if not castes in the technical sense have much
the same character. Such communities have great vitality so long as
they maintain their peculiar usages, but when they cease to do so they
soon disintegrate and are reabsorbed. Buddhism from the first never
took the form of a corporation. The special community which it
instituted was the sangha or body of monks. Otherwise, it aimed not
at founding a sect but at including all the world as lay believers on
easy terms. This principle worked well so long as the faith was in the
ascendent but its effect was disastrous when decline began. The line
dividing Buddhist laymen from ordinary Hindus became less and less
marked: distinctive teaching was found only in the monasteries: these
became poorly recruited and as they were gradually deserted or
destroyed by Mohammedans the religion of the Buddha disappeared from
his native land.

Even in the monasteries the doctrine taught bore a closer resemblance
to Hinduism than to the preaching of Gotama and it is this absence of
the protestant spirit, this pliant adaptability to the ideas of each
age, which caused Indian Buddhism to lose its individuality and
separate existence. In some localities its disappearance and
absorption were preceded by a monstrous phase, known as Tantrism or
Saktism, in which the worst elements of Hinduism, those which would
have been most repulsive to Gotama, made an unnatural alliance with
his church.

I treat of Tantrism and Saktism in another chapter. The original
meaning of Tantra as applied to literary compositions is a simplified
manual.[297] Thus we hear of Vishnuite Tantras and in this sense there
is a real similarity between Buddhist and tantric teaching, for both
set aside Brahmanic tradition as needlessly complicated and both
profess to preach a simple and practical road to salvation. But in
Hinduism and Buddhism alike such words as Tantra and tantric acquire a
special sense and imply the worship of the divine energy in a female
form called by many names such as Kali in the former, Tara in the
latter. This worship which in my opinion should be called Saktism
rather than Tantrism combines many elements: ancient, savage
superstitions as well as inge