Asoka wished to make Buddhism the creed not only of India but of the world as known to him and he boasts that he extended his “conquests of religion” to the Hellenistic kingdoms of the west.  If the missions which he despatched thither reached their destination, there is little evidence that they bore any fruit, but the conversion of Ceylon and some districts in the Himalayas seems directly due to his initiative.

5. Extension of Buddhism and Hinduism beyond India

This is perhaps a convenient place to review the extension of Buddhism and Hinduism outside India.  To do so at this point implies of course an anticipation of chronology, but to delay the survey might blind the reader to the fact that from the time of Asoka onward India was engaged not only in creating but also in exporting new varieties of religious thought.

The countries which have received Indian culture fall into two classes:  first those to which it came as a result of religious missions or of peaceful international intercourse, and second those where it was established after conquest or at least colonization.  In the first class the religion introduced was Buddhism.  If, as in Tibet, it seems to us mixed with Hinduism, yet it was a mixture which at the date of its introduction passed in India for Buddhism.  But in the second and smaller class including Java, Camboja and Champa the immigrants brought with them both Hinduism and Buddhism.  The two systems were often declared to be the same but the result was Hinduism mixed with some Buddhism, not vice versa.

The countries of the first class comprise Ceylon, Burma and Siam, Central Asia, Nepal, China with Annam, Korea and Japan, Tibet with Mongolia.  The Buddhism of the first three countries[11] is a real unity or in European language a church, for though they have no common hierarchy they use the same sacred language, Pali, and have the same canon.  Burma and Siam have repeatedly recognized Ceylon as a sort of metropolitan see and on the other hand when religion in Ceylon fell on evil days the clergy were recruited from Burma and Siam.  In the other countries Buddhism presents greater differences and divisions.  It had no one sacred language and in different regions used either Sanskrit texts or translations into Chinese, Tibetan, Mongolian and the languages of Central Asia.

1.  Ceylon.  There is no reason to doubt that Buddhism was introduced under the auspices of Asoka.  Though the invasions and settlements of Tamils have brought Hinduism into Ceylon, yet none of the later and mixed forms of Buddhism, in spite of some attempts to gain a footing, ever flourished there on a large scale.  Sinhalese Buddhism had probably a closer connection with southern India than the legend suggests and Conjevaram was long a Buddhist centre which kept up intercourse with both Ceylon and Burma.