BUDDHISM* 
235 
It is singular that certain history begins for almost 
every nation of the East, at the moment when the 
chains of caste were broken ; and the sixth century 
before Christ, in which Cyrus commenced the great 
religious and political revolutions which Darius Hys- 
taspes and Zoroaster consummated,, is an important 
era not merely for Persia, but for India, for Ceylon, 
and the Indo-Chinese nations. 
We know the fact of the introduction of a new 
religion into Persia and central Asia about this 
period ; a religion more universal in its character than 
the Brahminical, which recognized no hereditary dis- 
qualifications, which either totally abolished or greatly 
modified the system of caste, and which, as a neces- 
sary consequence, elevated the character of saints and 
prophets, above that of the priestly tribe. Derived 
from a creed strictly exclusive, the new religion re- 
tained no trace of this characteristic of its parent, and 
yet preserved almost every other. It spread rapidly 
over Eastern Asia ; but in India, the country of its 
native birth, it was met by the fierce hostility of 
those whose supremacy rested on the system of caste, 
and it fell in the encounter. 
The new religion thus established in the countries 
round India received the name of Buddhism, from 
the word Buddha, which signifies a “ holy person / 5 
It borrowed from Brahminism, its mythology, its phi- 
losophy, and a part of its rites and ceremonies ; but it 
substituted for an hereditary priesthood, an organized 
hierarchy and monastic institutions. 
In speaking of Buddhism, too much caution cannot 
be used ; perhaps there is no subject on which so 
