ABSTRACT
All religions afford some emotional expression of man's attitude towards the unseen world and the spiritual reality with which he feels himself to be in contact. In speaking of the religions that bear their names we have to keep in mind that in the later doctrines and practice of each is inevitably on a lower level, and may even be in marked contrast with the teaching of its founder. A historical offshoot of Zoroastrianism was the widely spread cult of Mithras in the first centuries of the Christian era. The influence of Zoroastrianism has also been a factor in the development of other religions. In the great epic poems, the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, the ideas of Hinduism are presented in the form of myths. A world-religion that had its origin in India, though found in other Eastern countries than that of its birth, is Buddhism—the name, like that of Christianity, being taken from the title given to its founder.
