Page:The Religion of the Veda.djvu/19

Hindu in its texture. It shares with Brahmanism its dominant religious ideas. Transmigration of souls, pessimism, and the all-absorbing desire to be released from an endless chain of existences, linked together by successive deaths, – these are the axioms of both Brahmanism and Buddhism. After spreading 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 Himālaya 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 reliable statistics as to the number of Buddhists upon the surface of the earth; 300 millions may be regarded 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 supply the religious needs of 500 millions of the earth's inhabitants.

In another sense India is the land of religions. Nowhere else is the texture of life so much impregnated 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