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BUDDHA AND BUDDRISM.
trating his doctrine by the comparison generally employed of the exhaustion of the light of a lamp which goes out of itself. In the Brahma-jála *, a Páli Sútra, where again Sakya is made to confute sixty-two Brahmanical heresies, he winds up by saying: "Existence is a tree; the merit or demerit of the actions of men is the fruit of that tree and the seed of future trees; death is the withering away of the old tree from which the others have sprung; wisdom and virtue take away the germinating faculty, so that when the tree dies there is no reproduction. This is Nirvana.”
The segregation of the Buddhist priesthood from the people, although, in the first instance, probably popular, froin the priestly character being thrown open to all castes alike, must have been unpropitious to the continued popularity of the system, and its success can only be attributed to the activity of its propagators, and the indolent acquiescence of the Brahmans. When the influence acquired by the Buddhists with the princes of India gave them consideration, and diverted the stream of donations as well as of honours, the Brahmans began to be aroused from their apathy, and set to work to arrest the progress of the schism. The success that attended their efforts could have been, for a long time, but partial; but that they were ultimately successful, and that Buddhismi in India gave way before Brahmanism, is a historical fact: to what cause this was owing is by no means
* [Burnouf, Lotus, p. 850 ff. Journal Ceylon Br. R. A. Soc., 1, 2, p. 18 - 62.]
