BUDDHISM, AND "THE LIGHT OP ASIA." 171 



part of tlie .subject entirely on one side ; but theve is another part of 

 it tbat I have been, brought into contact with, for, I may say, fifty 

 years, and that is the practical idea of Buddhism in the south of 

 India. It is very curious that Buddhism at one time swayed almost 

 the whole Tamil country. It had absolute possession of the minds 

 of the foremost race of India, for the Tamil people may, intellectu- 

 ally, be called so, and are the most progi'essive> Buddhism had 

 com^Dlete command over them. The evidence of this is quite clear 

 from the travels of the Chinese monks, the remnants of their old 

 buildings, and many other circumstances. But, at last Buddhism 

 died out so utterly that now there is scarcely a single vestige of it, 

 and one naturally asks what destroyed the influence of Buddhism in 

 the south ? There was another system— the Jain system which 

 still survives, but the Jains were persecuted, hundreds of them 

 were impaled, and the system was stamped out by horrors almost 

 as great as those of the Inquisition. Buddhism was never persecuted 

 in South India. There is no trace of any persecution of Buddhism, 

 as distinguished from Jainism, at all ; so that it did not lose its 

 influence owing to persecution. The turning point of Buddhist 

 history was somewhere about the ninth and tenth centuries — I ara 

 not quite certain of the date — but it was in the time of a very great 

 man, Manikka-Va9agar, an illustrious historic personage — one 

 whose whole history lies before us — a man who was a mixture of 

 St. Paul, and of St. Francis of Assisi. Of course, I do not mean 

 to say that Manikka-Va^agar taught the whole truth, certainly 

 not, but the spirit of the man was such that he renounced every- 

 thing to follow his convictions. He dated his conversion to his 

 God from a certain hour, and from the fact that from that hour he 

 was a new man. I think I may say that he lived very much the 

 life of St. Paul to the end. A greater man, outside Christianity, 

 than this sage, I believe never existed. He was the great reviver 

 of the ^aiva system, and is called in their writings, the " Hammer " 

 of the Buddhists. He went over to Ceylon, and there .saw the king, 

 preached ^aivism, was very ill-treated by the Buddhist monks, and 

 then went home. The Buddhist monks said, " This man has come 

 amongst us in this fanatical way, we shall have others coming. We 

 will go to Cithambaram," and so a body of them went over the sea to 

 the great (^aiva shrine, and established themselves there as a colony. 

 The king of Ceylon had a daughter who was dumb, and the 

 king said, " 1 will take my damb daughter to Manikka-Va^agar, 



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