se or semi-dome, round which the aisle is
carried. One at Karli, built in this manner, is one hundred and twenty-six
feet long and forty-five wide, with fifteen richly carved columns on each
side, separating the nave from the aisles. The facade of this temple is
also richly ornamented, and has a great open window for lighting the
interior, beneath an elegant gallery or rood-loft.

The Buddhist rock-cut monasteries in India are also numerous, though long
since deserted. Between seven and eight hundred are known to exist, most
of them having been excavated between B.C. 200 and A.D. 500. Buddhist
monks, then as now, took the same three vows of celibacy, poverty, and
obedience, which are taken by the members of all the Catholic orders. In
addition to this, _all_ the Buddhist priests are mendicants. They shave
their heads, wear a friar's robe tied round the waist with a rope, and beg
from house to house, carrying their wooden bowl in which to receive boiled
rice. The old monasteries of India contain chapels and cells for the
monks. The largest, however, had accommodation for only thirty or forty;
while at the present time a single monastery in Thibet, visited by MM. Huc
and Gabet (the lamasery of Kounboum), is occupied by four thousand lamas.
The structure of these monasteries shows clearly that the monkish system
of the Buddhists is far too ancient to have been copied from the
Christians.

Is, then, the reverse true? Did the Catholic Christians derive their
monastic institutions, their bells, their rosary, their tonsure, their
incense, their mitre and cope, their worship of relics, their custom of
confession, etc., from the Buddhists? Such is the opinion of Mr. Prinsep
(Thibet, Tartary, and Mongolia, 1852) and of Lassen (Indische
Alterthumskunde). But, in reply to this view, Mr. Hardwicke objects that
we do not find in history any trace of such an influence. Possibly,
therefore, the resemblances may be the result of common human tendencies
working out, independently, the same results. If, however, it is necessary
to assume that either religion copied from the other, the Buddhists may
claim originality, on the ground of antiquity.

But, however this may he, the question returns, Why call Buddhism the
Protestantism of the East, when all its external features so much resemble
those of the Roman Catholic Church?

We answer: Because deeper and more essential relations connect Brahmanism
with the Romish Church, and the Buddhis