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This snake appears sometimes, they say, of great size; when he does so; it is indieative of this being displeased with something. So long as he- remains of a-diminutive form, it is a sign ‘he is in good humour.* In the immediate neighbourhood of Manipur there are numerous tribes of aboriginal people, still called Nagas. From their name and locality it might be “supposed they must be serpent worshippers ; but no one has yet observed that form of faith among them. The subject must, therefore, be remitted for further inquiries. The locality of Janamejaya’s sacrifice is said in the Mahabharata to have bech the Kurukshetra, the famous battle-field of the Pandus and Kurus, north-west of Delhi, but another and more probable site is still pointed out at Agrahaut, in Orissa.f There, within the precincts of a very old and remote, but now ruined, temple, may be seen numerous small models of temples, said to have been there placed by Janamejaya, to represent those princes who could not*be present on the occasion. They are probably not so old; but it is strange to find the traditions of the Mahabharata still clinging to these spots, and Serpent Worship still prevailing there. ~ At least, not. far from this—at Sumbulpore—in 1766, Mr. Motte and anothert went to visit a.great snake that had been worshipped there since the world began! hey saw him emerge from his cave, which he does every seventh day,§ and accept the offering of a scat which his worshippers had provided. After devouring it, he took a bath in a canal that surrounded his dwelling place; and from the mark he left in the mud at the edge, Mr. Motte estimated his diamcter to have been about two- feet. He does not even guess his length, but it must have been considerable. When Major Kittoe visited Sumbulpore in 1886 he was still alive,|| and probably is so still; and I have no doubt but that numerous other deities of the same. sort could easily be found if only looked for; but attention has never hitherto been directed to the subject. - Rise oF BuppuIsM. | As has been frequently suggested in other works,’ the great characteristic of the ancient as well as of the modern history of India is the constant recurrence of one typical phenomenon: which controlled ‘the destiny of the nation in all ages to which our knowledge extends. From the earliest dawn of tradition to the present * Account of the Valley ‘of Munipur, by Major period of creation in Genesis being limited..to seven Maculloch : Records of Government of India, No. days is a part of the primwval Ophite faith ¢ 2 -X XVII’ 1859. || J. A. S. B, vol. VIII. p. 478. { Asiatic Researches, XV. 257. { History of Architecture, by the Author, aa IL, f Asiatic Register, vol. Je p. 82. p. 446, et seqq. &e." § Vide ante, note, p. 51. Is it possible that the 62 . INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. day the great underlying. stratum of the population of India seems to have been of Turanian race, very unwarlike, and incapable of any rise in civilization, except through admixture of blood. These consequently easily fell a prey to the hardier and more warlike races bred in the countries now known as Bokhara and_ Afghanistan, and the result has been that at periods of from five to ten centuries horde after horde has crossed the Indus, and settled in the fertile plains of India. For awhile these retained their freshness and vigour, but by degrees, partly from the enervating effects of the climate, but more from intermixture with the aboriginal races, they sunk to the lower level of the indigenous inhabitants, and in their turn became a prey to the next, horde that followed the steps of their forefathers across the Indus. _ For our present purpose it is not necessary to inquire when the first great immi- gration of the Aryans or Dravidians took place, or when they first settled in the north and south of India respectively. It is sufficient that-we are able to state that the less pure horde of the: Aryans known as the Iamar race probably reached the Ganges about the’ thirteenth or fourteenth century B.c. From that time till the third or fourth century, or for more than one thousand years, no horde of any race, so far as we know, crossed the Indus. This may, in a great measure, be owing ‘to. the existence of the powerful empires of Assyria and Persia on the other side of the river, which may have kept the barbarians in check, or to local causes we cannot now detect. Be that as it may, the fact that interests us here is, that during this long period the blood of the Aryans had become so mixed and so impure that the Veda was no longer possible as a rule of faith, and when Sikya-muni attempted to revive the religion of the aboriginal Turanians his call was responded to in a manner which led to the most important consequences, in a. religious point of view, not only in India, but to all the Turanian families of mankind. So far as we can-now see, Buddhism was little more than a revival of the coarser superstitions of the aboriginal races, purified and refined by the application of Aryan morality, and elevated by doctrines borrowed from the intellectual superiority of the Aryan races. Buddha himself was undoubtedly of purely Aryan race, being the descendant of a juniér branch of the Solar kings of Ayodhy&. Burmese traditions represent his son Rahula as assuming the garb of a priest ;* but the Hindus, with more probability, record his succeeding to the throne of his grandfather, and we gather from them, that the dynasty retained its Brahminical faith till its extinction shortly afterwards.f The dissemination of the Buddhist religion is wholly due to the - accident of its having been adopted by the low caste kings of Magadha, and to its having been elevated by one of them to the rank of the religion of the State. As a part of the reform which he introduced, ancestral worship was abolished, and the sepulchral tumulus became the depository of relics of Saints, Serpent Worship was repressed, and its sister faith of Tree Worship elevated to the first rank.{ Absolute negation of sensual enjoyment, which to the Turanian in all ages * Bigandet, Life and Legend of Guadama, p. 229. ~ { Wilson’s Vishnu Purana, p. 463. + When in 1866 I wrote the second volume of my History of Architecture, I, after hazarding the assertion “ that before the Aryans reached India, the inhabitants of the valley of the Ganges seem to have been Tree and Serpent Worshippers,” then added, in speaking of the Buddhist reform (p. 448) : “Serpent Worship was utterly _ rejected, but Tree Worship was adopted as an important part of the new. faith.” When in the following RISE OF BUDDHISM. 63 is as the breath of life, was elevated into a crucial test of faith, and asceticism’ became ultimately the one path to salvation, There is every reason to believe that human sacrifices were common ‘in ancient. India. War was the normal state of its kingdoms, and persecution is too essentially a characteristic of the Aryan races not to have flourished there. On the other hand, the Buddhist expanded the Jewish commandment “Thou shalt do no murder” into “Thou shalt not -kill,” and. extended it to the meanest of created beings. No war was ever waged by Buddhists, as such, and toleration of the faith of others was one of the most marked character- istics of the new religion. No faith was ever so essentially propagated by persuasion as that of Buddha, and though the Buddhists were too frequently persecuted even to destruction, there is no instance on record of any attempt to spread their faith by force in any quarter of the globe.: The Taranian of course had no caste, so that institution was put aside only to -- be revived when a second upheaval of local superstition under Aryan influence on _ the decay of. Buddhism brought Sivaism and Vishnuism to the SuruNeS, together with ° all the monstrosities of the modern Hindu pantheon. Although doubts have been expressed as to the exact date of Buddha’s birth to -the extent of about 60 years, the usual chronology,* which is that adopted through- out this work, represents him as born at Kapilavastu, a small principality on the north of the Ganges, in the year 623 B.c., and he died at Kusinagara, not far from the place of his birth, 548 B.c., in the eighth or eightcenth yearf of the reign of Ajatagatru, the sixth king of the Naga dynasty of Magadha, who was then the lord paramount of Northern India. . The name of Siguniga is applied by the Brahmans to the first king of this dynasty; the Buddhists give it to the tenth, and add the following legend:--On a certain occasion one of the chief ef the courtezans bore a child to one of the Lichchhawi Rajas, but the child proving an abortion was put into a basket, and . at night thrown on a dungheap. A certain Nigardja, the tutelar of the city, observing - it, encircled it with its folds, and sheltered it with its hood. The people who con- gregated there made a noise, “ Su, Su,” to frighten the snake, and on examining , the basket found the abortion matured into a male child with every mark of greatness on it. In eonsequence of this incident he received the name Sisundga, and in time ascended the throne of Magadha.t The second convocation was held 100 years after the death of Buddha, during the reign of his son Kéldsoka, and we gather, though somewhat indistinctly, that his successors, including the nine Nandas, till ‘spring I. discovered the Amravati ‘sculptures in the coach house at Fife House, I hastened to add as an erratum on the last page a recantation or at least modification of this assertion. Further investigations now incline me to go back to my old faith.