and now, when the second Sanchi tope was opened in 1851, by Major Cunningham, the relics of these very missionaries were discovered.[105] The tope was perfect in 1819, when visited by Captain Fell,—­“not a stone fallen.”  And though afterward injured, in 1822, by some amateur relic-hunters, its contents remained intact.  It is a solid hemisphere, built of rough stones without mortar, thirty-nine feet in diameter; it has a basement six feet high, projecting all around five feet, and so making a terrace.  It is surrounded by a stone railing, with carved figures.  In the centre of this tope was found a small chamber, made of six stones, containing the relic-box of white sandstone, about ten inches square.  Inside this were four caskets of steatite (a sacred stone among the Buddhists), each containing small portions of burnt human bone.  On the outside lid of one of these boxes was this inscription:  “Relics of the emancipated Kasyapa Gotra, missionary to the whole Hemawanta.”  And on the inside of the lid was carved:  “Relics of the emancipated Madhyama.”  These relics, with those of eight other leading men of the Buddhist Church, had rested in this monument since the age of Asoka, and cannot have been placed there later than B.C. 220.

The missionary spirit displayed by Buddhism distinguishes it from all other religions which preceded Christianity.  The religion of Confucius never attempted to make converts outside of China.  Brahmanism never went beyond India.  The system of Zoroaster was a Persian religion; that of Egypt was confined to the Valley of the Nile; that of Greece to the Hellenic race.  But Buddhism was inflamed with the desire of bringing all mankind to a knowledge of its truths.  Its ardent and successful missionaries converted multitudes in Nepaul, Thibet, Birmah, Ceylon, China, Siam, Japan; and in all these states its monasteries are to-day the chief sources of knowledge and centres of instruction to the people.  It is idle to class such a religion as this with the superstitions which debase mankind.  Its power lay in the strength of conviction which inspired its teachers; and that, again, must have come from the sight of truth, not the belief in error.

Sec. 4.  Leading Doctrines of Buddhism.

What, then, are the doctrines of Buddhism?  What are the essential teachings of the Buddha and his disciples?  Is it a system, as we are so often told, which denies God and immortality?  Has atheism such a power over human hearts in the East?  Is the Asiatic mind thus in love with eternal death?  Let us try to discover.

The hermit of Sakya, as we have seen, took his departure from two profound convictions,—­the evil of perpetual change, and the possibility of something permanent.  He might have used the language of the Book of Ecclesiastes, and cried, “Vanity of vanities! all is vanity!” The profound gloom of that wonderful book is based on the same course of thought as that of the Buddha, namely, that everything