ould turn for information to them
exclusively. This, indeed, becomes obvious when it is understood that the
Buddhism, of which these books profess to treat, is not the Buddhism of
history and the sacred books, not the Buddhism which forms the popular
religion of hundreds of millions of Asiatics at the present day, but an
"esoteric" Buddhism, a knowledge of which, it is admitted, is confined to
a comparative few, even in the country where it is said to be most
prevalent.(7) In short, the "esoteric Buddhism" of Mr. Sinnett and his
friends would seem to be scarcely, if at all, distinguishable from the
movement which has recently acquired a brief notoriety in England under
the name of Theosophy; and with this, Buddhism proper--i.e. the historical,
popular Buddhism with which we have to do--can hardly be said to have
anything in common.

With the book, however, which probably more than any other work of the day
has been the means of drawing the attention of English-speaking people to
Buddhism, we cannot deal in so summary a fashion. For in Sir Edwin
Arnold's poem, _The Light of Asia_, we have a work which is simply a
rendering of the life of Buddha, in general accordance with the received
traditions, and one, moreover, which has met with a cordial welcome at the
hands of Buddhists. Nor can it be questioned that the book is a production
of great power, or that it appeals altogether to a very different class of
readers from that likely to be influenced by the _Occult World_, or _Isis
Unveiled_.

It is indeed, the great beauty of its poetry, and the book's consequent
popularity, that only make the more necessary a reference which must to
some extent take the form of a protest. To put it briefly, the case is
this:--Men and women have risen from a perusal of the _Light of Asia_ with
a sense of damage done to their Christian faith, and with a
feeling--confused, perhaps, but not the less real--that in Gautama Buddha
they have been confronted with a formidable rival to Jesus Christ. How far
the poem is responsible for this result we will not attempt to determine;
and that such was no part of the author's intention we may readily
believe. But that the minds of not a few have been perplexed and disturbed
by the reading of this book is a certain fact; making it neither
surprising nor regrettable that its publication should have been followed
by works on the subject, written from an emphatically Christian point of
view. To the fullest