of their worship.  MAUPIED has correctly described Buddhism both in Ceylon and China as a system of refined atheism (Essai sur l’Origine des Peuples Anciens, ch. x. p. 277), and MOUNTSTUART ELPHINSTONE gives the weight of his high authority in the statement that “The most ancient of Baudha sects entirely denies the being of a God; and some of those which admit the existence of God still refuse to acknowledge him as the creator and ruler of the world....  The theistical sect seems to prevail in Nepaul, and the atheistical to subsist in perfection in Ceylon.”—­History of India, vol. i. pt. ii. ch. 4.  An able writer in the fourth volume of the Calcutta Review has also controverted the assertion of its atheistic complexion; but whatever truth may be developed in his views, their application is confined to Buddhism in Hindustan and Nepal, and is utterly at variance with the practice and received dogmas in Ceylon.]

Externally coinciding with Hinduism, so far as the avatar of Buddha may be regarded as a pendant for the incarnation of Brahma, the worship of the former is essentially distinguished from the religion of the latter in one important particular.  It does not regard Buddha as an actual emanation or manifestation of the divinity, but as a guide and example to teach an enthusiastic self-reliance by means of which mankind, of themselves and by their own unassisted exertions, are to attain to perfect virtue here and to supreme happiness hereafter.  Both systems inculcate the mysterious doctrine of the metempsychosis; but whilst the result of successive embodiments is to bring the soul of the Hindu nearer and nearer to the final beatitude of absorption into the essence of Brahma, the end and aim of the Buddhistical transmigration is to lead the purified spirit to Nirwana[1], a condition between which and utter annihilation there exists but the dim distinction of a name.  Nirwana is the exhaustion but not the destruction of existence, the close but not the extinction of being.

[Footnote 1:  “Nirwana” is Sanskrit, ni (r euphon. causa) wana desire.  The Singhalese name “Nirwana” is also derived from newanawa, to extinguish.  See J. BARTHELEMY SAINT-HILAIRE, Le Bouddha, 133, 177, &c.]

In deliberate consistency with this principle of human elevation, the doctrines of Buddha recognise the full eligibility of every individual born into the world for the attainment of the highest degrees of intellectual perfection and ultimate bliss; and herein consists its most striking departure from the Brahmanical system in denying the superiority of the “twice born” over the rest of mankind; in repudiating a sacerdotal supremacy of race, and in claiming for the pure and the wise that supremacy and exaltation which the self-glorified Brahmans would monopolise for themselves.