276 TRANSACTIONS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. [VOL. II. 



preacher of peace, the reprover of idolatry, the friend of humanity, and 

 the moral reformer, but suprertie god, possessing omniscience and the 

 power to punish or to forgive sins. The Indian Sidhartta's creed was so 

 far atheistic that it asserted the humanity of the Brahman gods, and 

 maintained the possibility of any man attaining godhead or Budhaship 

 by the patient accumulation of merit. This the Khitan, like the Thibe- 

 tans and Budhists all the world over, failed to perceive. The instinct of 

 worship was strong in them, and, knowing no higher name than that of 

 Budha, to it they made their supplications and looked for future rest, 

 when death should transfer them from the Siberian land to another state 

 of existence. 



One cannot love the Budhist priests of the Yenisei. They were 

 greedy, vain-glorious, quarrelsome, and vindictive. Their master Gotama 

 was to them a mere commodity for buying and selling and getting gain. 

 To them, kings and queens were simply stalking horses, under cover of 

 which they brought work to the buildings that sheltered their lazy bodies, 

 and money into their coffers. Individual Budhists performed noble deeds 

 of self-sacrifice, but not a single good action worthy of notice is recorded 

 of a Budhist priest. Yet tiiese wretches were the repositories of learning. 

 They were scribes and engravers, and, had it not been for them, the 

 history of Siberia might have been a total blank. Happily, the Japanese 

 annals enable the student of history to read between the lines they 

 laboriously carved, and inspire him with a measure of respect for the 

 royal personages of Asia's northern kingdom, whom they valued simply 

 as the means of their own support. Budha as a deity is naught, but, 

 save for Budha, the world would not know ancient Siberia. Still, the 

 more I consider the evidence which history presents, the more convinced 

 I am that, in spite of its degradation and the moral worthlessness of its 

 ministers, Budhism was the salvation of the Khitan. It furnished to all 

 who gave heed to the better impulses within them, and, who, under more 

 favourable conditions, might have become poets, artists, or philosophers, 

 a moral ideal, which, entering into their lives, became a standing protest 

 against devotion to mere material prosperity, against the letting loose of 

 angry passions in strife and bloo ished, and against the utter abandon- 

 ment of self to sensual indulgence characteristic of the votaries of 

 heathen religions. The savour of the salt may not have been of the 

 best, but the salt was there. China was not unaffected by it ; Japan, and 

 even Corea, are evidences of its preserving power. It crossed the 

 northern Pacific and found a sphere for its valuable properties in America, 

 which is not deficient in Budhist, and even in Budhist dated, tablets; 

 but, as Rudyard Kipling says, " that is another story." 



