and speculations, but for almost everything else with which it came in contact in countries beyond India.  Instead of combating, it absorbed.  It adapted itself to circumstances, and finding certain beliefs prevalent among the people, it imbibed them, and thus gained by accretion until its bulk, both of beliefs and of disciples, was in the inverse ratio of its purity.  Even to-day, the occult theosophy of “Isis Unveiled,” and of the school of writers such as Blavatsky, Olcott, etc., seems to be a perfectly logical product of the Northern Buddhisms, and may be called one of them; yet it is simply a repetition of what took place centuries ago.  Most of the primitive beliefs and superstitions of Nepal and Tibet were absorbed in the ever hungry and devouring system of Buddhistic scholasticism.

The Making of a Pantheon.

Let us glance again at this Nepal Buddhism.  In the tenth century we find what at first seems to be a growth out of Polytheism into Monotheism, for a new Being, to whom the attributes of infinity, self-existence and omniscience are ascribed, is invented and named Adi-Buddha, or the primordial Buddha.  According to the speculations of the thinkers, he had evolved himself out of the five Dhyani-Buddhas by the exercise of the five meditations, while each of these had evolved out of itself by wisdom and contemplation, the corresponding Buddhas elect.  Again, each of the latter evolved out of his own essence a material world,—­our present world being the fourth of these, that is of Avaloki.  One almost might consider that this setting forth of the primordial Buddha was real Monotheism; but on looking more carefully one sees that it is as little real Monotheism as was possible in the system of Gnosticism.  Indeed the force of evolution could not stop here; for, since even this primordial Buddha rested upon Ossa of hypothesis piled upon Pelion of hypothesis, there must be other hypotheses yet to come, and so the Tantra system, a compound of old Brahminism with the magic and witchcraft and Shamanism of Northern Asia burst into view.  As this was to travel into Japan and be hailed as purest Buddhism, let us note how this tenth century Tantra system grew up.  To see this clearly, is to look upon the parable of the man with the unclean spirit being acted out on a vast scale in history.

In the sixth century of our era, one Asanga, or Asamga, wrote the Shastra, called the Shastra Yoga-chara Bhumi.[28] With great dexterity he erected a sort of clearing-house for both the corrupt Brahminism and corrupt Buddhism of his day, and exchanging and rearranging the gods and devils in both systems, he represented them as worshippers and supporters of the Buddha and Avalokitesvara.  In such a system, the old primitive Buddhism of the noble eight-fold path of self-conquest and pure morals was utterly lost.  Instead of that, the worshipper gave his whole powers to obtaining occult potencies by means of magic phrases and magic circles.