The power shown by Buddhism to win the faith of the Birmese I should rather trace to the superiority of the Hindoo race over the mountain tribes of the Indo-Chinese peninsula. The Birmese belong, with the Thibetans, to the Bod race, which, having no intellectual development of its own, accepted the Hindoo religion when brought them by the Buddhist teachers. The superiority of Hindoo arts and civilisation helped Buddhism to make this conquest. Bishop Bigandet says: "The Birmese want the capability to understand the Buddhist metaphysics. If the Buddhist moral code in itself has the power to influence a people so far as to render them virtuous and devotional, independently of the element of intellectual superiority, we still lack the evidence of it.

"The success of Buddhism is in this respect the reverse of the success of Christianity, which, originating in Judea, subjugated both Greece and Rome without aid from intellectual superiority."

I just add here that the Confucianists do not allow that kindness to animals was first taught them by Buddhism.

[paragraph continues] They find it in their own ancient books. Thus Mencius made the compassion felt by a prince, Tsi Siuen-wang, for a bullock about to be slaughtered, a ground for his exhibiting compassion still more for the people he governed. He had been distressed at the shuddering of the bullock chosen for sacrifice, and ordered it to be changed for a sheep, which was done. Confucianism assumes that pity for animals is natural for the human heart. The mother of Mencius moved her residence from the neighbourhood of a butcher's shop because she would not have her boy, while of tender years, witness daily that which would make him cruel.

Yet it cannot fairly be denied that beneficial effects must follow from the great prominence and publicity assigned to compassion as an attribute of Buddha to be imitated by every devout believer. The salvation of multitudes from suffering is held up as his great achievement, and to this he was prompted by disinterested pity.

This the Confucianists would probably admit, while they would never allow that there is any ground to believe in the Buddhist metempsychosis, on which pity for animals is often made to rest for its basis. With Buddhist temples and monks everywhere, the Chinese do not accept the teaching that the souls of men migrate into animals, nor do the monks cordially maintain it.

Among the reasons the Buddhists give for sparing the life of all animals, they do not mention the duty of not inflicting unnecessary pain, nor do they say that Buddha has a sovereign power to make laws, and he having made this law it must be obeyed.