and some kindred ethical and psychological matter.  It grew up in an atmosphere of animism which peopled the trees and streams and mountains with spirits.  It accepted and played with the idea, just as it might have accepted and played with the idea of radio-activity.  But such notions do not affect the essence of the Dharma and it might be preached in severe isolation.  Yet in Asia it hardly ever has been so isolated.  It is true that Indian mythology has not always accompanied the spread of Buddhism.  There is much of it in Tibet and Mongolia but less in China and Japan and still less in Burma.  But probably in every part of Asia the Buddhist missionaries found existing a worship of nature spirits and accepted it, sometimes even augmenting and modifying it.  In every age the elect may have risen superior to all ideas of gods and heavens and hells, but for any just historical perspective, for any sympathetic understanding of the faith as it exists as a living force to-day, it is essential to remember this background and frame of fantastic but graceful mythology.

Many later Mahayanist books are full of dharanis or spells.  Dharanis are not essentially different from mantras, especially tantric mantras containing magical syllables, but whereas mantras are more or less connected with worship, dharanis are rather for personal use, spells to ward off evil and bring good luck.  The Chinese pilgrim Hsuean Chuang[721] states that the sect of the Mahasanghikas, which in his opinion arose in connection with the first council, compiled a Pitaka of dharanis.  The tradition cannot be dismissed as incredible for even the Digha-Nikaya relates how a host of spirits visited the Buddha in order to impart a formula which would keep his disciples safe from harm.  Buddhist and Brahmanic mythology represent two methods of working up popular legends.  The Mahabharata and Puranas introduce us to a moderately harmonious if miscellaneous society of supernatural personages decently affiliated to one another and to Brahmanic teaching.  The same personages reappear in Buddhism but are analogous to Christian angels or to fairies rather than to minor deities.  They are not so much the heroes of legends, as protectors:  they are interesting not for their past exploits but for their readiness to help believers or to testify to the true doctrine.  Still there was a great body of Buddhist and Jain legend in ancient India which handled the same stories as Brahmanic legend—­e.g. the tale of Krishna—­but in a slightly different manner.  The characteristic form of Buddhist legend is the Jataka, or birth story.  Folk-lore and sagas, ancient jokes and tragedies, the whole stock in trade of rhapsodists and minstrels are made an edifying and interesting branch of scripture by simply identifying the principal characters with the Buddha, his friends and his enemies in their previous births[722].  But in Hinayanist Buddhism legend and mythology are ornamental, and edifying, nothing more.  Spirits may set a good example or send good luck:  they have nothing to do with emancipation or nirvana.  The same distinction of spheres is not wholly lost in Hinduism, for though the great philosophic works treat of God under various names they mostly ignore minor deities, and though the language of the Bhagavad-gita is exuberant and mythological, yet only Krishna is God:  all other spirits are part of him.