The history of Buddhism after the Master’s death has a certain analogy with that of Mohammedanism.  That is to say it was largely a political growth.  Further than this, of course, the comparison fails.  The religion was affected by heretical kings, and by nouveaux riches, for it admitted them all into its community on equal terms—­no slight privilege to the haughty nabob or proud king who, if a believer and follower of Brahman orthodoxy, would have been obliged to bend the head, yield the path, and fear the slightest frown of any beggar priest that came in his way.

The M[=a]ruya monarch Acoka adopted Buddhism as a state religion in the third century B.C., and taught it unto all his people, so that, according to his own account, he changed the creed of the country from Brahmanism to Buddhism.[59] He was king over all northern India, from Kabul to the eastern ocean, from the northern limit of Brahmanic civilization to its southern boundary.  Buddhist missionaries were now spread over India and beyond it.  And here again, even in this later age, one sees how little had the people to do with Buddha’s metaphysical system.  Like the simple confession ’I take refuge in Buddha, in the doctrine, and in the church’ was the only credo demanded, that cited above:  “Buddha has explained the cause of whatever conditions proceed from a cause, and he has declared their cessation.”  In this credo, which is en-graved all over India, everything is left in confidence to Buddha.  However he explained the reason, that creed is to be accepted without inquiry.  The convert took the patent facts of life, believing that Buddha had explained all, and based his own belief not on understanding but on faith.

With the council of Patna, 242 B.C, begins at thousands of the missionaries the geographical separation of the church, which results in Southern and Northern Buddhism.[60]

It is at this period that the monastic bodies become influential.  The original Sangha, congregation, is defined as consisting of three or more brethren.  The later monastery is a business corporation as well as a religious body.  The great emperors that now ruled India (not the petty clan-kings of the centuries before) were no longer of pure birth, and some heresy was the only religion that would receive them with due honor.  They affected Buddhism, endowed the monasteries, in every was enriched the church, built for it great temples, and in turn were upheld by their thankful co-religionists.  Among the six[61] rival heresies that of Buddha was predominant, and chiefly because of royal influence.  The Buddhist head of the Ceylon church was Acoka’s own son.  Still more important for Buddhism was its adoption by the migratory Turanians in the centuries following.  Tibet and China were opened up to it through the influence of these foreign kings, who at least pretended to adopt the faith of Buddha.[62] But as it was adopted by them, and as it extended beyond the limits of India, just so much weaker it became at home, where its strongest antagonists were the sectarian pantheistic parties not so heterodox as itself.