and a countless number of Bodhisattwas, who perform to him an act of worship, and humbly receive his instructions.

The same work also describes the ten worlds that come next to the one in which we live, on the east, south, west, and north, and the other directions as before. Each of them is ruled by a Buddha, to whom prayers are to be offered, in which he is to be addressed under ten different names.

The moral import of these worlds and their Buddhas is contained in the names that are given them. These names are formed symmetrically, and carry the reader and the worshipper round a circle of Buddhist ideas. Thus the significations of the appellations given to the Buddhas are such as surpassing wisdom, self-possessed wisdom, Brahmanical wisdom, &c. The leading Bodhisattwas receive such denominations as chief in the law, chief in merit, chief in visual power, &c.

It was thus that these Buddhist philosophers employed the imagination as an instrument of moral instruction, just as western authors write a poem or a novel for a similar end. They were men whose minds were cultivated to the utmost subtlety in argument, as the Shastras, works by the same authors, and taken up exclusively with philosophical discussions, abundantly show. They did not, therefore, believe in the truth of these fanciful creations. Their metaphysical creed would prevent it, and there is not wanting such indirect evidence to the fact as has been already adduced. But what shall be said to the morality of such modes of teaching a religion? These sceptical writers cannot be shielded from the charge of practising a vast and systematic deception on the common people, in inducing them to regard these imaginary beings with religious reverence. Falsehood is involved in the very form of the Buddhist Sutras, for they are attributed unhesitatingly in all their multitudinous variety and voluminous extent to Shakyamuni himself. Ananda, the cousin and favourite disciple of the sage in his declining years, is put

forward as the compiler from memory of all these works. The practice of worshipping the divinities introduced in these new mythological creations was also directly encouraged, and this new idolatry spread with great rapidity throughout the countries where Northern Buddhism prevails.