Buddhism: In its Connexion With Brahmanism and Hinduism, and In Its Contrast

Since writing the foregoing prefatory remarks, I have observed with much concern that a prevalent error, in regard to Buddhism, is still persistently propagated. It is categorically stated in a newspaper report of a quite recent lecture, that out of the world’s population of about 1500 millions at least 500 millions are Buddhists, and that Buddhism numbers more adherents than any other religion on the surface of the globe.

Almost every European writer on Buddhism, of late years, has assisted in giving currency to this utterly erroneous calculation, and it is high time that an attempt should be made to dissipate a serious misconception.

It is forgotten that mere sympathizers with Buddhism, who occasionally conform to Buddhistic practices, are not true Buddhists. In China the great majority are first of all Confucianists and then either Taoists or Buddhists or both. In Japan Confucianism and Shintoism co-exist with Buddhism. In some other Buddhist countries a kind of Shamanism is practically dominant. The best authorities (including the Oxford Professor of Chinese, as stated in the Introduction to his excellent work ‘The Travels of Fa-hien’) are of opinion that there are not more than 100 millions of real Buddhists in the world, and that Christianity with its 430 to 450 millions of adherents has now the numerical preponderance over all other religions. I am entirely of the same opinion. I hold that the Buddhism, described in the following pages, contained within itself, from the earliest times, the germs of disease, decay, and death, and that its present condition is one of rapidly increasing disintegration and decline.