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Not only the older literature, Brahmanic as well as Buddhist, but most of the Purâṇas ignore the great stretch of Dravidian country which forms the southern portion of the peninsula and if the Râmâyaṇa sings of Râma's bridge and the conquest of Laṅka this is clearly an excursion into the realms of fancy.
The fragments of castings that are left are really fine, and it is a marvel how they ever were brought from Chengtu where they were made, for many are of great weight. A little below the trail by which we came was the pewter-roofed monastery, very appropriate here, as pewter is the only metal the Buddhist pilgrim is supposed to use or possess.
The sanctity of the mountain-top in the eyes of Buddhists is said to be due to the fact that on the summit alighted the royal missionary, Mahahindo, when he came from India, 307 B.C.; he there met the King, who was out hunting, and having listened to a discourse, the King became an ardent Buddhist, a fact which later resulted in the conversion of forty thousand of his followers.
To be a Brahmin a man must be born one, but a Buddhist priest might voluntarily come from any rank from the very dregs of society. In the former system marriage was absolutely essential to the ecclesiastical caste; in the latter it was not, for the priestly ranks could be recruited without it.
The Buddhist family worship coexists in the vast majority of Izumo homes with the Shinto family worship; and whether the dead be honoured in the mitamaya or before the butsudan altogether depends upon the religious traditions of the household.
Alas for poor Ama-Terace-Omi-Kami to have to wash away the impurities of Madame Prune! What a tedious and ungrateful task!! Chrysantheme, who is a Buddhist, prays sometimes in the evening before lying down; although overcome with sleep, she prays clapping her hands before the largest of our gilded idols. But she smiles with a childish disrespect for her Buddha, as soon as her prayer is ended.
It is difficult to admit that it might be of Malay origin, as tile head-dress, or to describe it more perfectly, the AUREOLA surrounding the head, is met with in Buddhist paintings or sculptures only as surrounding the head of gods, who can always be recognised by their peculiar and constant characteristics, and nowhere are these AUREOLAS surrounded with the rays in the shape of "FLAMECHES," which confront us in the drawing of the principal figure.
The Trinity is as much Pagan, as much Indian or Buddhist, as it is Christian. The idea of a Son of God is as old as the oldest cult. The sun is the son of heaven in all primitive faiths. The physical sun becomes in the course of evolution, the Son of Righteousness, or the Son of God, and heaven is personified as the Father on High.
Motorcars, gramophones, telephones, crystals, porcelains, pictures, perfumes, musical instruments, rare animals and birds; elephants, Himalayan bears, monkeys, Indian snakes and parrots all these were in the palace of "the god" but all were soon cast aside and forgotten. To Urga come pilgrims and presents from all the Lamaite and Buddhist world.
When once the passage from the one system of thought to the other has been effected, and the significance of the Christian system and life has been appreciated, in other words, when the Japanese Buddhist or Shintoist or Confucianist has become a Christian, he is as truly a Christian and as faithful as is the Englishman or American.
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