have read with pleasure, rather rapidly, the "Essence of
Buddhism" and glanced through the chapters: Historic
Buddha: Rationality of Buddhism; Morality of Buddhism;
Buddhism and Caste; Women in Buddhism; The Four
Great Truths; Buddhism and Asceticism; Buddhism and
Pessimism; The Noble Eightfold Path; The Riddle of
the World; Personality; Death and After; The Summum
Bonum.
The author is a scientist and as such deserves to be
heard. He has made a study of Buddhism from authorita-
tive sources, and as a scholar has analysed the comprehensive
system of religion founded by the Tathagato.
India is the home of Buddhism. It is to the people of
India that our Lord first proclaimed the Dhamma, 2496
years ago. His first five disciples were Brahman ascetics,
and His two prominent disciples, Sariputta and Maha
Moggallana, were Brahmans; the President of the first
Council, held three months after His Parinibbana, was Mahā
Kasyapa, a Brahman ; and the Upholder of the Faith in the
time of Asoka was Tissa the "son of the Brahmani Moggali of
Moggali." According to the prophetic utterance of our Lord
the Dhamma, shedding lustre in its purity, lasted for full 1,000
years in India, and then began the decline following the law
of disintegration five hundreds later, when it was brought
into contact with the cohorts of Allah, whose fire and sword
played havoc with the followers of our Blessed Tathagato.
The ruins in Bamian, Central Turkestan, Afghanistan, Kan-
dahar, Kashmir, the Gangetic Valley, and in distant Java,
testify to the extirpation of the great religion by the icono-
clastic Arabs, fresh in their zeal for the glorification of the
'Prophet of Arabia.'