THE PAGANS. 481 



But Buddhism became the religion of Ceylon, Birmah, 

 and Siam, and finally entered the Chinese Empire. It 

 suffered and survived bloody persecutions. It became 

 a licensed religion, and spread into the steppes of 

 Tartary among those barbarians by whom China was 

 destined to be conquered. The religion of the Bud- 

 dhists was transformed ; its founder was worshipped 

 as a God ; there was a doctrine of the Incarnation ; 

 they had their own holy books, which they declared 

 to have been revealed ; they established convents and 

 nunneries, splendid temples, adorned with images, and 

 served by priests with shaven heads, who repeated 

 prayers upon rosaries, and who taught that happiness 

 in a future state could best be obtained by long 

 prayers and by liberal presents to the Church. At the 

 period of the importation of Buddhism into China, 

 a similar event occurred in the Roman world. It was 

 the pagan theory that each country was governed by 

 its own gods. The proper religion for each man, said 

 an oracle of Delphi, is the religion of his fatherland. 

 Yet these gods were cosmopolitan ; they punished or 

 rewarded foreigners. Imilkon having offended the 

 Greek gods in the Sicilian wars, made atonement to 

 them when he returned to Carthage : he offered sacrifices 

 in the Phoenician temples, but according to the milder 

 ceremonies of the Greeks. The Philistines sent back 

 the ark with a propitiatory present to Jehovah. Alex- 

 ander, in Asia Minor, offered sacrifices to the gods of the 

 enemy. The Romans, when they besieged a town, 

 called upon its tutelary god by name, and offered him 

 bribes to give up the town. Rome waged war against 

 the world, but not against the gods ; she did not de- 

 throne them in their own countries ; she offered them 

 the freedom of the city. Men of all races came to live 

 2 H 



