ABSTRACT
The best authority on the Southern Buddhism of Burma states that the history of the Master offers an almost complete blank as to what regards his doings and preachings during a period of nearly twenty-three years. A compendious view of Southern Buddhism, ancient and modern, will be found in Spence Hardy's Manual of Buddhism, translated from Singalese ms. The early struggles of Buddhism were neither with the old Aryan gods, nor with the Brahmans as a caste; but with rival orders of philosophers or ascetics, and with schismatics among its own followers. Buddhism has from the first been a missionary religion. Buddhism was at once the most intensely missionary religion in the world, and the most tolerant. The Greco-Bactrian kingdoms in the Punjab, and beyond it, afforded a favourable soil for the faith. The revival of Buddhism is always a possibility in India.
