ABSTRACT
It was only about a century and a half ago that England and Europe began to use the word Buddhism as a name for the religion nominally professed in countries of southern, south-eastern and eastern Asia. Indian literature down to medieval times spoke of adherents to Buddhism as Shakyas, that is, men of the cult of the Sakyas or Sakkas, the northern clan to which the Founder and many first disciples belonged. Now whereas, save in a very limited area of east and north India, Buddhism has died out of India for nearly seven centuries, the testimony yielded by epigraphy, archaeology. The preponderant 'anti'-emphasis has given rise, owing to the very partial way in which men are yet conversant with those scriptures, to a belief that, from the first, 'Buddhism' was wholly protestant and antagonistic to the accepted Indian religion of its birth-time. Many books have been written 'about Buddhism' based on this partial conversance.
