ABSTRACT
India lies between the Asiatic north and the Pacific south, between Tibet and Ceylon. India ends abruptly at the foothills of the Himalaya, and at Adam's Bridge. Buddha was an untimely intruder, upsetting the historical process, which afterwards got the better of him. Indian religion is like a vimana, or pagoda. The gods climb over one another like ants, from elephants carved on the base to the abstract lotus which crowns the top of the building. Buddha disturbed the historical process by interfering with the slow transformation of the gods into ideas. The true genius nearly always intrudes and disturbs. The Pali Canon is not precisely within their scope. Buddha does not represent a proper philosophy. In the mental make-up of the most spiritual one discern the traits of the living primitive, and in the melancholy eyes of the illiterate half-naked villager you divine an unconscious knowledge of mysterious truths.
