received their final form.  These are on the whole text-books of Smarta Hinduism and two Gupta monarchs celebrated the horse sacrifice.  But the Mahabharata contains several episodes which justify the exclusive worship of either Vishnu or Siva, and the architecture of the Guptas suggests that they were Vishnuites.  They also bestowed favours on Buddhism which was not yet decadent, for Vasubandhu and Asanga, who probably lived in the fourth century, were constructive thinkers.  It is true that their additions were of the dangerous kind which render an edifice top-heavy but their works show vitality and had a wide influence[23].  The very name of Asanga’s philosophy—­Yogacarya—­indicates its affinity to Brahmanic thought, as do his doctrines of Alayavijnana and Bodhi, which permit him to express in Buddhist language the idea that the soul may be illumined by the deity.  In some cases Hinduism, in others Buddhism, may have played the receptive part but the general result—­namely the diminution of differences between the two—­was always the same.

The Hun invasions were unfavourable to religious and intellectual activity in the north and, just as in the time of Moslim inroads, their ravages had more serious consequences for Buddhism than for Hinduism.  The great Emperor Harsha ({~DAGGER~}647), of whom we know something from Bana and Hsuean Chuang, became at the end of his life a zealous but eclectic Buddhist.  Yet it is plain from Hsiian Chuang’s account that at this time Buddhism was decadent in most districts both of the north and south.

This decadence was hastened by an unfortunate alliance with those forms of magic and erotic mysticism which are called Saktism[24].  It is difficult to estimate the extent of the corruption, for the singularity of the evil, a combination of the austere and ethical teaching of Gotama with the most fantastic form of Hinduism, arrests attention and perhaps European scholars have written more about it than it deserves.  It did not touch the Hinayanist churches nor appreciably infect the Buddhism of the Far East, nor even (it would seem) Indian Buddhism outside Bengal and Orissa.  Unfortunately Magadha, which was both the home and last asylum of the faith, was also very near the regions where Saktism most flourished.  It is, as I have often noticed in these pages, a peculiarity of all Indian sects that in matters of belief they are not exclusive nor hostile to novelties.  When a new idea wins converts it is the instinct of the older sects to declare that it is compatible with their teaching or that they have something similar and just as good.  It was in this fashion that the Buddhists of Magadha accepted Saktist and tantric ideas.  If Hinduism could summon gods and goddesses by magical methods, they could summon Bodhisattvas, male and female, in the same way, and these spirits were as good as the gods.  In justice it must be said that despite distortions and monstrous accretions the real teaching of Gotama did not entirely disappear even in Magadha and Tibet.