world. There was everything to fill a Buddhist monk possessing a statesman's mind, one capable of taking a wide outlook over the world, with anxiety as to the future. India was a political cypher, divided among weakling princes. On its north-western frontier lay the dreaded Scythian, whose invasion of the land would certainly not be delayed for many years to come. He was very possibly a Buddhist, but his Buddhism, already mixed with alien elements, was not of the same type as that of Magadha. If he came, he would not help the poor distracted Hinayanist; if he only threatened to come, he was still a Buddhist and an alien enemy, and the patriotism of India was asserting itself by a return to the old Indian gods whom had persuaded it to lay aside. Go away he certainly would not. Is it to be wondered at that at such a time our monk should turn his thoughts to him that had "thus gone"? I have already, in a previous chapter, spoken of the change that comes over the Buddhist architecture, and of the significant change in the Chinese word for the Tathagata. I will now quote from another of the Pali Sutras, one which surely referred not merely to the Buddha that once was and now had gone, but much more to him that was to come, and whose coming was to give new hope of life.

"Ananda, the future Buddha, is mindful and conscious when he is born with the Tushita Body... . (he) is mindful and conscious when he vanishes from the Tushita Body and descends into his mother's womb... When he vanishes from the Tushita Body and descends into his

mother's womb, then, in the world of the angels, of Mara, of Brahma, unto the philosophers and Brahmans, princes and peoples, there appears a splendour, limitless and eminent, transcending the angelic might of the angels," etc.