480 THE BUDDHISTS, 



and devoted his life to the study of religion. After 

 long years of reading and reflection he took the 

 name of Buddha, or " the Awakened." He declared 

 that the soul after death migrates into another 

 form, according to its deeds and according to its 

 thoughts. This was the philosophy of the Brah- 

 mins. But he also proclaimed that all existence is 

 passion, misery, and pain, and that by subduing the 

 evil emotions of the heart, the soul will hereafter 

 finally obtain the calm of non-existence, the peace- 

 ful Nirwana, the unalloyed, the unclouded Not to Be. 

 A religion so cheerless, a philosophy so sorrowful, 

 could never have succeeded with the masses of man- 

 kind if presented only as a system of metaphysics. 

 Buddhism owed its success to its catholic spirit and 

 its beautiful morality. The men who laboured in the 

 fields had always been taught that the Brahmins were 

 the aristocracy of heaven, and would be as high above 

 them in a future state as they were upon the earth. 

 The holy books which God had revealed were not for 

 them, the poor dark-skinned labourers, to read ; burn- 

 ing oil poured into their ears was the punishment by 

 law for so impious an act. And now came a man 

 who told them that those books had not been revealed 

 at all, and that God was no respecter of persons ; that 

 the happiness of men in a future state depended, not 

 upon their birth, but upon their actions and their 

 thoughts. Buddhism triumphed for a time in Hin- 

 dostan, but its success was greatest amongst the 

 stranger natives in the north-west provinces, the Indo- 

 Scythians and the Greeks. Then came a period of 

 patriotic feeling ; the Brahmins preached a War of 

 Independence ; the new religion was associated with 

 the foreigners, and both were driven out together. 



