A general history for colleges and high schools

Front matter

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Preface

THIS volume is based upon my Ancient History and Medieval a?td Modern History. In some instances I have changed the perspective and the proportions of the narrative ; but in the main, the book is constructed upon the same Hues as those drawn for the earher works. In deahng with so wide a range of facts, and tracing so many historic movements, I cannot hope that I have always avoided falling into error. I have, however, taken the greatest care to verify statements of fact, and to give the latest results of discovery and criticism.

Considering the very general character of the present work, an enumeration of the books that have contributed facts to my narration, or have helped to mould my views on this or that subject, would hardly be looked for ; yet I wish here to acknowledge my special indebtedness, in the earlier parts of the history, to the works of George Rawlinson, Sayce, Wilkinson, Brugsch, Grote, Curtius, Mommsen, Merivale, and Leigh ton ; and in the later parts, and on special periods, to the writings of Hodgkin, Emerton, Ranke, Freeman, Michaud, Bryce, Symonds, Green (J. R.), Motley, Hallam, Thiers, Lecky, Baird, Miiller.

Several of the colored maps, with which the book will be found liberally provided, were engraved especially for my Ancient History ; but the larger number are authorized reproductions- of charts accompanying Professor Freeman's Historical Geography of Europe. The Roman maps were prepared for Professor William iv PREFACE.

F. Allen's History of Rome, which is to be issued soon, and it is to his courtesy that I am indebted for their use.

The illustrations have been carefully selected with reference to their authenticity and historical truthfulness. Many of those in the Oriental and Greek part of the work are taken from Oscar Jager's Weltgeschichte ; while most of those in the Roman portion are from Professor Allen's forthcoming work on Rome, to which I have just referred, the author having most generously granted me the privilege of using them in my work, notwithstanding it is to appear in advance of his.

Further acknowledgments of indebtedness are also due from me to many friends who have aided me with their scholarly suggestions and criticism. My warmest thanks are particularly due to Professor W. F. Allen, of the University of Wisconsin ; to Dr. E. W. Coy, Principal of Hughes High School, Cincinnati; to Professor William A. Merrill, of Miami University ; and to Mr. D. H. Montgomery, author of The Leading Facts of History series.

College Hill, Ohio, July, 1889.

Table Of Contents

PAGE

Preface iii

List of Maps x

General Introduction: The Races and their Early Migrations. i

Section I. — The Eastern Nations. CHAPTER

I. India and China.

1. India 8

2. China 1 2

1. Political History i8

2. Religion, Arts, and General Culture 27

III. Chald^ea.

1 . Political History 4c

2. Arts and General Culture 4^

IV. Assyria.

1. Political History 48

2. Religion, Arts, and General Culture 52

V. Babylonia 58

VI. The Hebrews 63

VII. The Phoenicians 70

VIII. The Persian Empire.

1. Political History • 74

2. Government, Religion, and Arts 82

Section II. — Grecian History

IX. The Land and the People 87

X. The Legendary or Heroic Age , 93

VI

Contents

CHAPTER

XI.

XII.

Section III. — Roman History. The Early Roman Republic : Conquest of Italy 232

The Last Century of the Roman Republic 273

The Last Century of the Roman Republic {concluded^ 285

The Roman Empire (from 31 B.C. to a.d, 180) 305

Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire in the West (a.d.

180-476) 324

Roman Civilization.

CONTENTS.

Vll

Introduction

PAGE 366

Section I. — Medieval History. FIRST PERIOD. — THE DARK AGES

(From the Fall of Rome, a.d. 476, to the Eleventh Century.)

CHAPTER

XXXII. Migrations and Settlements of the Teutonic Tribes...... 371

XXXIII. The Conversion of the Barbarians 377

XXXIV. Fusion of the Latin and Teutonic Peoples 385

XXXV. The Roman Empire in the East 3^9

XXXVI. Mohammed and the Saracens - 39^

?vXXVII. Charlemagne and the Restoration of the Empire in the West 403

XXXVIII. The Northmen 4io

XXXIX. Rise of the Papal Power 4^4

SECOND PERIOD. — THE AGE OF REVIVAL.

(From the opening of the Eleventh Century to the Discovery of America by Columbus, in 1492.)

XL. FeudaHsm and Chivalry.

2. Chivalry 4^9

XLI. The Norman Conquest of England 433

XLII. The Crusades.

1. Introductory : Causes of the Crusades 43^

2. The First Crusade 44^

3. The Second Crusade 443

4. The Third Crusade 444

5. The Fourth Crusade 44^

6. Close of the Crusades : Their Results 447

XLIII. Supremacy of the Papacy: Decline of its Temporal Power. . 452

[LIV. Conquests of the Turanian Tribes 460

XLV. Growth of the Towns : The Italian City-Republics 464

-LVI. The Revival of Learning 47^ viii CONTENTS.

CHAPTER PAGE

XLVII. Growth of the Nations : Formation of National Governments and Literatures.

1. England 479

2. France 491

3. Spain 498

5. Russia , 508

6. Italy 509

7. The Northern Countries , 512

Section II. — Modern History. THIRD PERIOD.— THE ERA OF THE PROTESTANT REFORMATION

(From the Discovery of America to the Peace of Westphalia, in 1648.)

XLVIII. The Beginnings of the Reformation under Luther 519

XLIX. The Ascendency of Spain.

1. Reign of the Emperor Charles V 530

2. Spain under Philip II 535

L. The Tudors and the English Reformation.

1. Introductory 539

2. The Reign of Henry VII 541

3. England severed from the Papacy by Henry VIII. .... 543

4. Changes in the Creed and Ritual under Edward VI.. . 550

5. Reaction under Mary 552

6. Final Establishment of Protestantism under Elizabeth. 554 LI. The Revolt of the Netherlands : Rise of the Dutch Repubhc 563

LII. The Huguenot Wars in France ... 572

LIII. The Thirty Years' War 582

FOURTH PERIOD. —THE ERA OF THE POLITICAL REVOLUTION.

(From the Peace of Westphalia, in 1648, to the present time.)

LIV. The Ascendency of France under the Absolute Government

of Louis XIV 590

LV, England under the Stuarts: The English Revolution.

1. The First Two Stuarts 601

2. The Commonwealth 613

CONTENTS. IX

CHAPTEK PAGE

3. The Restored Stuarts , 618

4. The Orange-Stuarts 626

5. England under the Earher Hanoverians 630

LVI. The Rise of Russia : Peter the Great 633

LVII. The Rise of Prussia : Frederick the Great 642

LVIII. The French Revolution.

1. Causes of the Revolution: The States-General of 1789. . 647

2. The National, or Constituent Assembly ... 65 1

3. The Legislative Assembly 655

4. The National Convention 657

5. The Directory 667

LIX. The Consulate and the First Empire : France since the Second

Restoration.

1. The Consulate and the Empire. 673

2. France since the Second Restoration 688

LX. Russia since the Congress of Vienna 692

LXI. German Freedom and Unity 700

LXII. Liberation and Unification of Italy 708

LXIII. England since the Congress of Vienna.

1. Progress towards Democracy 715

2. Expansion of the Principle of Religious Equality 720

3. Growth of the British Empire in the East 723

Conclusion : The New Age 729

Index. Pronouncing Vocabulary, and Glossary 733

LIST OF COLORED MAPS.

PAGE

■ I. Ancient Egypt i8

2. The Tigris and the Euphrates 42

3. Greece and the Greek Colonies iii

4. Greece in the Fifth Century b.c 147

, 5. Dominions and Dependencies of Alexander, c. B.C. '323 163

\ 6. Kingdoms of Successors to Alexander, c. B.C. 300 171

7. Italy before the Growth of the Roman Power ' 222

8. Mediterranean Lands at the Beginning of Second Punic War 254

9. Roman Dominions at the End of the Mithridatic War 282

10. The Roman Empire under Trajan, A.D. 117 318

11. Roman Empire divided into Prefectures 333

12. Europe in the Reign of Theodoric, c. A.D. 500 371

13. Europe in the Time of Charles the Great, 814 408

14. Central Europe, 1360 506

15. The Spanish Kingdom and its European Dependencies under

Charles V 530

16. Central Europe, 1801 674

17. Central Europe, 1810 681

18. Central Europe, 1815 684

19. South-Eastern Europe under the Treaty of Berlin, 1878 696

GENERAL HISTORY.

-oOitHc

GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

THE RACES AND THEIR EARLY MIGRATIONS.

Divisions of History. — History is usually divided into three periods, — Ancient, Mediaeval, and Modern. Ancient History begins with the earliest nations of which we can gain any certain knowledge, and extends to the fall of the Roman Empire in the West, A.D. 476. Mediaeval History embraces the period, about one thousand years in length, lying between the fall of Rome and the discovery of the New World by Columbus, a.d. 1492. Modern History commences with the close of the Mediaeval period and extends to the present time.^

Antiquity of Man. — We do not know when man first came into possession of the earth. We only know that, in ages vastly remote, when both the climate and the outhne of Europe were very different from what they are at present, man lived on that continent with animals now extinct ; and that as early as 4000 or 3000 B.C., — when the curtain first rises on the stage of history, — in some favored regions, as in the Valley of the Nile, there were nations and civilizations already venerable with age, and possessing languages, arts, and institutions that bear evidence of slow

1 It is thought preferable by some scholars to let the beginning of the great Teutonic migration (a.d. 375) mark the end of the period of ancient history. Some also prefer to date the beginning of the modern period from the capture of Constantinople by the Turks, a.d. 1453; while still others speak of it in a general way as commencing about the close of the 15th century, at which time there were many inventions and discoveries, and a great stir in the intellectual world.

GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

growth through very long periods of time before written hist*, begins.^

The Races of Mankind. — Distinctions in form, color, an. physiognomy divide the human species into three chief types, o races, known as the Black (Ethiopian, or Negro), the Yellow (Turanian, or Mongolian), and the White (Caucasian). But we must not suppose each of these three types to be sharply marked off from the others ; they shade into one another by insensible gradations. There has been no perceptible change in the great types during historic times. The paintings upon the oldest Egyptian monuments show us that at the dawn of history, about five or six thousand years ago, the principal races were as distinctly marked as

now, each bearing its racial badge of color and physiognomy. As early as the times of Jeremiah, the permanency of physical characteristics had passed into the proverb, " Can the Ethiopian change his skin?"

Of all the races, the White, or Caucasian, exhibits by far the most perfect type, physically, intellectually, and morally.

The Black Race. — Africa is the home of the peoples of the Black Race, but we find tliem on all the other continents, whither they have been carried as slaves by the stronger races ; for since time immemorial they have been " hewers of wood and drawers of water " for their more favored brethren.

The Yellow, or Turanian Race. — The term Turanian is very loosely applied by the historian to many and widely separated famihes and peoples. In its broadest application it is made to include the Chinese and other more .or less closely alhed peoples of Eastern Asia ; the Ottoman Turks, the Hungarians, the Finns,

1 The investigation and study of this vast background of human life is left to such sciences as Ethnology, Comparative Philology , and Prehistoric Archceology.

NEGRO CAPTIVES, From the Monuments of Thebes,

(Illustrating the permanence of race characteristics.)

THE RACES AND THEIR EARLY MIGRATIONS. 3

e Lapps, and the Basques, in Europe ; and (by some) the Esquimaux and American Indians.

The peoples of this race were, it seems, the first inhabitants of Europe and of the New World ; but in these quarters, they have, in the main, either been exterminated or absorbed by later comers of the White Race. In Europe, however, two small areas of this primitive population escaped the common fate — the Basques, sheltered among the Pyrenees, and the Finns and Lapps, in the far north j^ while in the New World, the Esquimaux and the Indians still represent the race that once held undisputed possession of the land.

The polished stone implements found in the caves and rivergravels of Western Europe, the shell-mounds, or kitchen-middens, upon the shores of the Baltic, the Swiss lake-habitations, and the barrows, or grave-mounds, found in all parts of Europe, are supposed to be relics of a prehistoric Turanian people.

Although some of the Turanian peoples, as for instance the Chinese, have made considerable advance in civilization, still as a rule the peoples of this race have made but httle progress in the arts or in general culture. Even their languages have remained undeveloped. These seem immature, or stunted in their growth. They have no declensions or conjugations, like those of the languages of the Caucasian peoples.

The White Race and its Three Families. — The White Race embraces the historic nations. This type divides into three families, — the Hamitic, the Semitic, and the Aryan, or Indo-European (formerly called the Japhetic).

The ancient Egyptians were the chief people of the Hamitic branch. In the gray dawn of history we discover them already settled in the Valley of the Nile, and there erecting great monuments so faultless in construction as to r&nder it certain that those who planned them had had a very long previous training in the art of building.

^ The Hungarians and Turks are Turanian peoples that have thrust themselves into Europe during historic times.

4 GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

The Semitic family includes among its chief peoples the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians, the Hebrews, the Phoenicians, and the Arabians. We are not certain what region was the original abode of this family. We only know that by the dawn of history its various clans and tribes, whencesoever they may have come, had distributed themselves over the greater part of Southwestern Asia.

It is interesting to note that the three great historic religions of the world, — the Hebrew, the Christian, and the Mohammedan, — the three religions that alone (if we except that of Zoroaster) teach a belief in one God, arose among peoples belonging to the Semitic family.

The Aryan, or Indo-European, though probably the youngest, is the most widely scattered family of the White Race. It includes among its members the ancient Hindus, Medes, and Persians, the classic Greeks and Romans, and the modern descendants of all these nations ; also almost all the peoples of Europe, and their colonists that have peopled the New World, and taken possession of other parts of the earth. This is the family to which we ourselves belong.

Migrations of the Aryans. — The original seat of the Aryan peoples was, it is conjectured, somewhere in Asia. At a period that cannot be placed later than 3000 B.C., the Aryan household began to break up and scatter, and the different clans to set out in search of new dwelling-places. Some tribes of the family spread themselves over the table-lands of Iran and the plains of India, and became the progenitors of the Medes,- the Persians, and the Hindus. Other clans entering Europe probably by the way of the Hellespont, pushed themselves into the peninsulas of Greece and Italy, and founded the Greek and Italian states. Still other tribes seem to have poured in successive waves into Central Europe. The vanguard of these peoples are known as the Celts. After them came the Teutonic tribes, who crowded the former out on the westernmost edge of Europe — into Gaul and Spain, and out upon the British Isles. These hard-pressed Celts are represented to-day by the Welsh, the Irish, and the Highland Scots. Behind the

THE RA CES AND THEIR EARL V MIGRA TIONS. 5

Teutonic peoples were the Slavonic folk, who pushed the former hard against the Celts, and, when they could urge them no farther to the west, finally settled down and became the ancestors of the Russians and other kindred nations.

Although these migratory movements of the various clans and tribes of this wonderful Aryan family began in the early morning of history, some five thousand or more years ago, still we must not think of them as something past and unrelated to the present. These movements, begun in those remote times, are still going on. The overflow of the population of Europe into the different regions of the New World, is simply a continuation of the prehistoric migrations of the members of the primitive Aryan household.

Everywhere the other races and families have given way before the advance of the Aryan peoples, who have assumed the position of leaders and teachers among the families of mankind, and are rapidly spreading their arts and sciences and culture over the earth.

Early Culture of the Aryans. — One of the most fascinating studies of recent growth is that which reveals to us the customs, beliefs, and mode of life of the early Aryans, while they were yet living together as a single household. Upon comparing the myths, legends, and ballads of the different Aryan peoples, we discover the curious fact that, under various disguises, they are the same. Thus our nursery tales are found to be identical with those with which the Hindu children are amused. But the discovery should not surprise us. We and the Hindus are kinsmen, children of the same home ; so now, when after a long separation we meet, the tales we tell are the same, for they are the stories that were told around the common hearth-fire of our Aryan forefathers.

And when we compare certain words in different Aryan languages, we often find them alike in form and meaning. Thus, take the word father. This word occurs with but little change of form in several of the Aryan tongues.^ From this we infer that

6 GENERAL INTRODUCTION.

the remote ancestors of the now widely separated Aryan peoples once lived together and had a common speech.

Our knowledge of the prehistoric culture of the Aryans, gained through the sciences of comparative philology and mythology, may be summed up as follows : They personified and worshipped the various forces and parts of the physical universe, such as the Sun, the Dawn, Fire, the Winds, the Clouds. The all-embracing sky they worshipped as the Heaven-Father {Dyaus-Pitar, whence Jupiter). They were herdsmen and at least occasional farmers. They introduced the sheep, as well as the horse, into Europe : the Turanian people whom they displaced had neither of these domestic animals. In social life they had advanced to that stage where the family is the unit of society. The father was the priest and absolute lord of his house. The families were united to form village-communities ruled by a chief, or patriarch, who was assisted by a council of elders.

Importance of Aryan Studies. — This picture of life in the early Aryan home, the elements of which are gathered in so novel a way, is of the very greatest historical value and interest. In these customs and beliefs of the early Aryans, we discover the germs of many of the institutions of the classical Greeks and Romans, and of the nations of modern Europe. Thus, in the council of elders around the village patriarch, political historians trace the beginnings of the senates of Greece and Rome and the national parhaments of later times.

Just as the teachings of the parental roof mould the life and character of the children that go out from under its disciphne, so have the influences of that early Aryan home shaped the habits, institutions, and character of those peoples and families that, as its children, went out to establish new homes in their " appointed habitations."

RACES OF MANKIND.

(races of mankind, with chief families and peoples.

Black Race f Tribes of Central and Southern Africa, the Papuans and (Ethiopian, or -j the Australians. (This group includes two great divis- Negro). [ ions, the Negroid and Australoid.)

(i) The Chinese, Burmese, Japanese, and other kindred peoples of Eastern Asia; (2) the Malays of Southeastern Asia, and the inhabitants of many of the Pacific islands; (3) the nomads (Tartars, Mongols, etc.) of Northern and Central Asia and of Eastern Russia; (4) the Turks, the Magyars, or Hungarians, the Finns and Lapps, and the Basques, in Europe; (5) the Esquimaux and the American Indians. Languages of these peoples are monosyllabic or agglutinative. (Note that the Malays and American Indians were formerly classified as distinct races.)

Yellow Race (Turanian, or - Mongolian).

White Race (Caucasian).

Hamitic Family

Semitic Family r Egyptians, \ Libyans, [ Ethiopians.

Chaldseans (partly Turanian), Assyrians, Babylonians, \ Canaanites (chiefly Semitic), Phoenicians, Hebrews, Arabs.

Aryan, or Indo-European Family

Indo-Iranic Branch

Grseco-Italic Branch

Hindus,

Medes,

Persians.

Greeks,

Romans.

Gauls,

Celtic Branch -( ^ ^ /■% • x,\

J Scots (Irish),

Teutonic Branch

Picts.

High Germans,

Low Germans,

Scandinavians.

Slavonic Branch / Russians,

Poles, etc.

The peoples of modern Germany are the descendants of various Germanic tribes. The Swedes, Norwegians, and Danes represent the Scandinavian branch of the Teutonic family. The Irish, the Welsh, the Scotch Highlanders, and the Bretons of Brittany (anciently Armorica), in France, are the present representatives of the ancient Celts. The French, Spaniards, Portuguese, and Italians have sprung, in the main, from a blending of the Celts, the ancient Romans, and the Germanic tribes that thrust themselves within the limits of the Roman Empire in the West. The English are the descendants of the Angles, Saxons, and Jutes (Teutonic tribes), slightly modified by interminglings with the Danes and Normans (also of Teutonic origin). (See MedicEval and Modern History, pp. 169-178.)

Part I.

ANCIENT HISTORY

SECTION I. — THE EASTERN NATIONS.

Chapter I. India And China

I . India.

The Aryan Invasion. — At the time of the great Aryan migration (see p. 4), some Aryan bands, journeying from the northwest, settled first the plains of the Indus and then occupied the valley of the Ganges. They reached the banks of the latter river as early probably as 1500 B.C.

These fair-skinned invaders found the land occupied by a darkskinned, non-Aryan race, whom they either subjugated and reduced to serfdom, or drove out of the great river valleys into the mountains and the half-desert plains of the peninsula.

The Origin of Castes. — The conflict of races in Northern India gave rise to what is known as the system of castes ; that is, society became divided into a number of rigid hereditary classes. There arose gradually four chief castes: (i) Brahmans, or priests ; (2) warriors ; (3) agriculturists and traders ; and (4) serfs, or Sudras. The Brahmans were those of pure Aryan blood, while the Sudras were the despised and oppressed non- Aryan aborigines. The two middle classes, the warriors and the cultivators of the soil, were of mixed Aryan and non-Aryan blood. Below these several

THE FED AS. 9

castes were the Pariahs, or outcasts, the most degraded of the degraded natives.^

The system of castes, modified however by various influences, particularly by the later system of Buddhism (see p. ii), has characterized Hindu society from the time the system originated down to the present, and is one of the most important facts of Indian history.

The Vedas. — The most important of the sacred books of the Hindus are called the Vedas. They are written in the Sanscrit language, which is believed to be the oldest form of Aryan speech. The Rig- Veda, the most ancient of the books, is made up of hymns which were composed chiefly during the long period, perhaps a thousand years or more, while the Aryans were slowly working their way from the mountains on the northwest of India across the peninsula to the Ganges. These hymns are filled with memories of the long conflict of the fair-faced Aryans with the dark-faced aborigines. The Himalayas, through whose gloomy passes the early emigrants journeyed, must have deeply impressed the wanderers, for the poets often refer to the great dark mountains.

Brahmanism. — The religion of the Indian Aryans is known as Brahmanism. This system gradually developed from the same germs as those out of which grew the Greek and Roman religions. It was at first a pure nature -worship, that is, the worship of the most striking phenomena of the physical world as intelligent and moral beings. The chief god was Dyaus-Pitar, the Heaven-Father. As this system characterized the early period when the oldest Vedic hymns were composed, it is known as the Vedic religion.

1 At a later period, the Brahmans, in order to perpetuate their own ascendancy and to secure increased reverence for their order, incorporated among the sacred hymns an account of creation which gave a sort of divine sanction to the system of castes by representing the different classes of society to have had different origins. The Brahmans, the sacred books are made to say, came forth from the mouth of Brahma, the soldier from his arms, the farmer from his thighs, and the Sudra from his feet.

10 INDIA AND CHINA.

In course of time this nature-worship of the Vedic period developed into a sort of pantheism, that is, a system which identifies God with the universe. This form of the Indian rehgion is known as Brahmanism. Brahma, an impersonal essence, is conceived as the primal existence. Forth from Brahma emanated, as heat and light emanate from the sun, all things and all life. Banish a personal God from the universe, as some modern scientists would do, leaving nothing but nature with her original nebula, her endless cycles, her unconscious evolutions, and we have something very like Brahmanism.

A second fundamental conception of Brahmanism is that all life, apart from Brahma, is evil, is travail and sorrow. We can make this idea intelligible to ourselves by remembering what are our own ideas of this earthly life. We call it a feverish dream, a journey through a vale of sorrow. Now the Hindu regards all conscious existence in the same light. He has no hope in a better future ; so long as the soul is conscious, so long must it endure sorrow and pain.

This conception of all conscious existence as necessarily and always evil, leads naturally to the doctrine that it is the part of wisdom and of duty for man to get rid of consciousness, to annihilate himself, in a word, to commit soul-suicide. Brahmanism teaches that the only way to extinguish self and thus get rid of the burden of existence, is by re-absorption into Brahma. But this return to Brahma is dependent upon the soul's purification, for no impure soul can be re-absorbed into the primal essence. The necessary freedom from passion and the required purity of soul can best be attained by self-torture, by a severe mortification of the flesh ; hence the asceticism of the Hindu devotee.

As only a few in each generation reach the goal, it follows that the great majority of men must be born again, and yet again, until all evil has been purged away from the soul and eternal repose found in Brahma. He who lives a virtuous life is at death born into some higher caste, and thus he advances towards the longedfor end. The evil man, however, is born into a lower caste, or

BUDDHISM.

perhaps his soul enters some unclean animal. This doctrine of re-birth is known as the transmigration of souls (metempsychosis^.

Only the first three classes are admitted to the benefits of religion. The Sudras and the outcasts are forbidden to read the sacred books, and for any one of the upper classes to teach a serf how to expiate sin is a crime.

Buddhism. — In the fifth century before our era, a great teacher and reformer, known as Buddha, or Gautama (died about 470 B.C.), arose in India. He was a prince, whom legend represents as being so touched by the universal misery of mankind, that he voluntarily abandoned the luxury of his home, and spent his life in seeking out and making known to men a new and better way of salvation, He condemned the severe penances and the self-torture of the Brahmans, yet commended poverty and retirement from active life as the best means of getting rid of desire and of attaining Nirvana, that is, the repose of unconsciousness.

Buddha admitted all classes to the benefits of religion, the poor outcast as well as the high-born Brahman, and thus Buddhism was a revolt against the earlier harsh and exclusive system of Brahmanism. It holds somewhat the same relation to Brahmanism that Christianity bears to Judaism.

Buddhism gradually gained the ascendancy over Brahmanism ; but after some centuries the Brahmans regained their power, and by the eighth century after Christ, the faith of Buddha was driven out of almost every part of India. But Buddhism has a profound missionary spirit, hke that of Christianity, Buddha having com-

STATUE OF BUDDHA.

12 INDIA AND CHINA.

manded his disciples to make known to all men the way to Nirvana ; and consequently during the very period when India was being lost, the missionaries of the reformed creed were spreading the teachings of their master among the peoples of all the countries of Eastern Asia, so that to-day Buddhism is the religion of almost one third of the human race, Buddha has probably nearly as many followers as both Christ and Mohammed together.

During its long conflict with Buddhism, Brahmanism was greatly modified, and caught much of the gentler spirit of the new faith, so that modern Brahmanism is a very different religion from that of the ancient system ; hence it is usually given a new name, being known as Hinduism.^

Alexander's Invasion of India (327 b.c). — Although we find obscure notices of India in the records of the early historic peoples of Western Asia, yet it is not until the invasion of the peninsmla by Alexander the Great in 327 b.c. that the history of the Indian Aryans comes in significant contact with that of the progressive nations of the West. From that day to our own its systems of philosophy, its wealth, and its commerce have been more or less important factors in universal history. Greece carried on an intellectual commerce with this country ; Rome, and the Italian republics of the Middle Ages, a more material but not less important trade. Columbus was seeking a short all-sea route to this country when he found the New World. And in the upbuilding of the imperial greatness of the England of to-day, the wealth and trade of India have played no inconsiderable part.