Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/19

India the Land of Religions 3



Hindu in its texture. It shares with Brahmanism its
dominant religious ideas. Transmigration of souls,
pessimism, and the all-absorbing desire to be re.-
leased from an endless chain of existences, linked
together by successive deathsmthese are the axioms
of both Brahmanism and Buddhism. After spread-—
ing over the continent of India Buddhism crossed
over into Ceylon, Farther India, and the islands of
the Asiatic Archipelago. To the north it passed
into and across the great Himalaya Mountains to
Nepaul, Thibet, Turkestan, China, Korea, and japan.
In its various forms it is to this day one of the
world’s great religions. There are no absolutely reu
liable statistics as to the number of Buddhists upon
the surface'of the earth; 300 millions may be re-
garded as a conservative estimate of the number of
people who either are Buddhists, or whose religion
has been shaped by Buddhist ideas. Brahmanism
and Buddhism, both Hindu products, together sup-
ply the religious needs of 500 millions of the earth’s
inhabitants.

In another sense India is the land of religionsl‘
Nowhere else is the texture of life so much im~
pregnated with religious convictions and practices.
At a very early time belief in the transmigration
of souls (metempsychosis), whose precise origin in
India is still something of a problem, planted itself