the historical view as best explaining the facts.

In order to understand a religion, in its origin at least, we must know
some of the conditions out of which it arose. Buddhism is one of the
protestantisms of the world. Yet, is not every religion, in one sense,
protestant? Is it not a protest against something to which it opposes a
difference? Every new religion, like a growing plant, ignores or rejects
certain elements in the soil out of which it springs. It takes up and
assimilates, also, other elements not used before, in order to produce a
flower or fruit different from other growths out of the same soil. Yet
whether the new religion be considered as a development, fulfilment, or
protest, we must know its historical perspective or background. To
understand the origin of Buddhism, one of the best preparations is to
read the history of India and especially of the thought of her many
generations; for the landmarks of the civilizations of India, as a Hindu
may proudly say, are its mighty literatures. At these let us glance.[3]

The age of the Vedas extends from the year 2000 to 1400 B.C., and the
history of this early India is wonderfully like that of America. During
this era, the Hindus, one of the seven Aryan tribes of which the
Persian, Greek, Latin, Celtic, Sclav and Teutonic form the other six,
descending from the mid-Asian plateau, settled the Punjab in Northwest
India. They drove the dark-skinned aborigines before them and reclaimed
forest and swamp to civilization, making the land of the seven rivers
bright with agriculture and brilliant with cities. This was the glorious
heroic age of joyous life and conquest, when men who believed in a
Heavenly Father[4] made the first epoch of Hindu history.

Then followed the epic age, 1400-1000 B.C., when the area of
civilization was extended still farther down the Ganges Valley, the
splendor of wealth, learning, military prowess and social life excelling
that of the ancestral seats in the Punjab. Amid differences of wars and
diplomacy with rivalries and jealousies, a common sacred language,
literature and religion with similar social and religious institutions,
united the various nations together. In this time the old Vedas were
compiled into bodies or collections, and the Brahmanas and the
Upanishads, besides the great epic poems, the Mahabharata and the
Ramayana were composed.

The next, or rationalistic epoch, covers the period from 1000 B.C. to
320 B.C., when the