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There are Buddhists among the natives of India too, though not many, considering the population; there are many more Mohammedans, but by far the largest number of the people, outnumbering the Mohammedans by three to one, are the Hindus, and it is as a Hindu capital that Benares mainly exists.

There are Indian Mahomedans, sixty-two million of them; Indian Buddhists, a few the great majority of the Buddhists in the "Indian Empire" being in Burmah, not in India proper; there are Indian Christians, about three million in number; and there are Indian Parsees. A Hindu is the man who professes Hinduism.

How soon organizations arose for the care of the sick, and, in war-time, of the wounded, it would be difficult to say; for Buddhists and Hindus were of course earlier in the field than Muslims, inheriting as they did an older moral culture. We cannot help sympathizing with this, even though we think Abdul Baha's ideal richer and nobler than any as yet conceived by any Muslim saint.

So long as the gentry had no prospect of regaining control of the threads of political life that extended throughout China, they were not prepared to provide a class of officials and scholars for the anti-Confucian foreigners, who showed interest only in fighting and trading. Thus educated persons were needed at the courts of the alien rulers, and Buddhists were therefore engaged.

As repeatedly shown, religious instinct protects animal life among the Buddhists, but why an exception is made in regard to fish, it is impossible to explain. We have met rigid Buddhists, however, who would not eat fish, conscientious men, to whom the life in the sea was equally sacred with that found upon the land.

It is impossible to reduce these opposite theories to a common denominator. The Christians, the Hindoos, the Parsees, the Buddhists, and the Mohammedans have each their "Holy Bible" or "sacred book." Each religion claims that its own Bible is the direct revelation of God, and is the only true Bible teaching the only true faith. Each religion regards all the other religions as spurious.

This is a fair question, and one which demands an answer. There must have been a reason, and a deep-rooted one, for this remarkable reaction and volte-face which has characterized Christianity, and, perhaps to a lesser degree, other both earlier and later cults like those of the Buddhists, the Egyptians, the Aztecs, and so forth.

Jesus sojourned six years among the Buddhists, where he found the principle of monotheism still pure. Arrived at the age of twenty-six years, he remembered his fatherland, which was then oppressed by a foreign yoke.

Why should these strange men wish to stay upon the coast?" "What, the Buddhists?" I said lightly. "Oh, these fellows have continual feast-days and religious rites of all sorts. They have some very good reason for staying, you may be sure."

The Burmese are among the most cheerful people in the world and the Japanese among the most vigorous, and the latter are at least as much Buddhists as Europeans are Christians.