CLASSICAL GROUND. 75 



eventually adapted to the Hindu worship. Still Bud- 

 dhism lingered on until the seventh century, when 

 Brahminism took up its old position as the national 

 religion of India, and between that and the eleventh 

 and twelfth century, the last traces of the former dis- 

 appear from the Peninsula, excepting in the diluted 

 form of Jainism. Arts, sciences, and literature reached 

 their highest development in India during the earlier 

 and most brilliant epoch of Buddhism. The latter is 

 now the prevailing religion in China, Burmah, Siam, and 

 Ceylon, but only in the last named has it retained its 

 former purity. In Thibet, as well as in Nepaul, La- 

 maism, an unworthy offspring of Buddhism, exists in 

 full force, and is the universal religion of the people. 



The Punjab (Panj — nad, or five rivers) produces large 

 crops of grain — wheat, barley, Indian corn, and gram 

 {cicer arietiyium), also cotton and indigo, and the 

 range of hills extending from the Indus to the 

 Hydaspes, now called the Jelum, yields the famous 

 rock-salt which is largely exported to Bengal. 



It is within fifty miles of Lahore that we come 

 upon classical ground, where Alexander the Great, in 

 B.C. 327, had erected altars on the banks of the 

 Hyphasis, the modern Sutlej, to commemorate the 

 extent of his conquests. In the same region, Lord 



