in Chinese thought, but though its fortunes varied it hardly ever became as in Burma and Ceylon the national religion.  It was, as a Chinese Emperor once said, one of the two wings of a bird.  The Chinese characters did not give way to an Indian alphabet nor did the Confucian Classics fall into desuetude.  The subjects of Chinese and Japanese pictures may be Buddhist, the plan and ornaments of their temples Indian, yet judged as works of art the pictures and temples are indigenous.  But for all that one has only to compare the China of the Hans with the China of the T’angs to see how great was the change wrought by India.

This outgrowing of Indian influence, so long continued and so wide in extent, was naturally not the result of any one impulse.  At no time can we see in India any passion of discovery, any fever of conquest such as possessed Europe when the New World and the route to the East round the Cape were discovered.  India’s expansion was slow, generally peaceful and attracted little attention at home.  Partly it was due to the natural permeation and infiltration of a superior culture beyond its own borders, but it is equally natural that this gradual process should have been sometimes accelerated by force of arms.  The Hindus produced no Tamerlanes or Babers, but a series of expeditions, spread over long ages, but still not few in number, carried them to such distant goals as Ceylon, Java and Camboja.

But the diffusion of Indian influence, especially in China, was also due to another agency, namely religious propaganda and the deliberate despatch of missions.  These missions seem to have been exclusively Buddhist for wherever we find records of Hinduism outside India, for instance in Java and Camboja, the presence of Hindu conquerors or colonists is also recorded.[2] Hinduism accompanied Hindus and sometimes spread round their settlements, but it never attempted to convert distant and alien lands.  But the Buddhists had from the beginning the true evangelistic temper:  they preached to all the world and in singleness of purpose:  they had no political support from India.  Many as were the charges brought against them by hostile Confucians, it was never suggested that they sought political or commercial privileges for their native land.  It was this simple disinterested attitude which enabled Buddhism, though in many ways antipathetic to the Far East, to win its confidence.

Ceylon is the first place where we have a record of the introduction of Indian civilization and its entry there illustrates all the phenomena mentioned above, infiltration, colonization and propaganda.  The island is close to the continent and communication with the Tamil country easy, but though there has long been a large Tamil population with its own language, religion and temples, the fundamental civilization is not Tamil.  A Hindu called Vijaya who apparently started from the region of Broach about 500 B.C. led an expedition to Ceylon and introduced a western Hindu