202 COSMOS. 



besides the influence thus exercised on scientific cultivation, 

 they have also extended and opened new paths in the domain 

 of natural investigation. In our continent these disturbing 

 storms began under Valentinian I., when the Huns (of Finn- 

 ish, not Mongolian origin) penetrated beyond the Don in the 

 closing part of the fourth century, and subdued, first the Alani, 

 and subsequently, with their aid, the Ostrogoths. In the re- 

 mote parts of Eastern Asia, the stream of migratory nations 

 had already been moved in its onward course for several cen- 

 turies before our era. The first impulse was given, as we 

 have already remarked, by the attack of the Hiungnu, a 

 Turkish race, on the fair-haired and blue-eyed Usuni, prob- 

 ably of Indo-Germanic origin, who bordered on the Yueti 

 (Geti), and dwelt in the upper river valley of the Hoang-ho, 

 in the northwest of China. The devastating stream of mi- 

 gration directed from the great wall of China, which was 

 erected as a protection against the inroads of the Hiungnu (214 

 B.C.), flowed on through Central Asia, north of the chain of 

 the Celestial Mountains. These Asiatic hordes were unin- 

 fluenced by any religious zeal before they entered Europe, and 

 some writers have even attempted to show that the Moguls 

 were not as yet Buddhists when they advanced victoriously to 

 Poland and Silesia.* Wholly different relations imparted a 

 peculiar character to the warlike aggressions of a more southern 

 race — the Arabs. 



Remarkable for its form, and distinguished as a detached 

 branch of the slightly-articulated continent of Asia, is situated 

 the peninsula of Arabia, between the Red Sea and the Persian 

 Gulf, the Euphrates and the Syro-Mediterranean Sea.t It is 

 the most western of the three peninsulas of Southern Asia, 



* If, as has often been asserted, Charles Martel, by his victery at 

 Tours, protected Central Europe against the Mussulman mvasion, it can 

 not be maintained, with equal justice, that the retreat of the Moguls 

 after tt© battle of Liegnitz prevented Buddhism from penetrating to 

 the shores of the Elbe and the Rhine. The Mongolian battle, which 

 was fought in the plain of Wahlstatt, near Liegnitz, and in which Duke 

 Henry the Pious fell fighting bravely, took place on the 9th of April, 

 1241, four years after Kaptschak (Kamtschatka) and Russia became sub- 

 ject to the Asiatic horde, under Batu, the grandson of Genghis Khan. 

 T3ut the earliest introduction of Buddhism among the Mongolians took 

 place in the year 1247, when, in the east at Leang-tscheu, in the Chi- 

 nese province of Schensi, the sick Mongolian prince Godan caused the 

 Sakya Pandita, a Thibetian archbishop, to be sent for, in order to cure 

 and convert him. (Klaproth, in a MS. fragment, *' Ueber die Verbreitung 

 des Buddhismus im ostlichen nnd nordlichen Asien.^') The Mongolians 

 have never occupied themselves with the conversion of conquered na- 

 tions, t See vol. i., p. 291. 



