Buddhism has always been the religion of merchants. The Sutras tell us of many wealthy traders who supported the order by their generous donations. There must have been a great volume of trade. The S'akyan nobles, who constantly address S'akyamuni as gotama, "herdsman" (apparently a common mode of address), were of the same race as the herdsmen of the Himalayas. There is at least one Sutra which speaks of the wool merchant from across the mountains, and it is indeed to wandering S'akyan herdsmen that is attributed the opening up of the valley of Lhassa in Thibet. One of S'akyamuni's earliest disciples was a merchant's son from Benares named Yas'as. He has been identified (wrongly, as I think) with S'anavas'as, the third patriarch of the Northern succession. Now, S'anavas'as is described as having been a ship-captain. True, he may only have been the skipper of a Ganges barge; but there are two later patriarchs of whom it is expressly stated that they had penetrated as far as Turkestan in their travels.

To the lowest class, the Sudras, belonged one at least of S'akyamuni's disciples, Upali, the barber. But there are traces of lower strata of society more degraded even than the Sudras. There is a record of a mission, conducted by the master in person, to a tribe of cannibals, whom he

converted to better ways; and many have seen in the Nagas, Gandharas, Kinnaras, and other half-mythical companies of beings, the traces of aboriginal tribes of a low order. This is especially the case with the Nagas, who are so constantly appearing in the Sutras. They were most probably savages whose name was given to them from their worship of serpents (still practised in India). In the Nepaulese legend they appear as the original inhabitants of the swamps opened up by the civilizing Manjus'ri. Driven out by Manjus'ri, they take refuge in Nagaloka, the world of the Nagas, or serpents, which to the Nepaulese is Thibet. Strange to say, the Thibetan records also speak of Nagas and Nagaloka; but in their case Nagaloka is China. This seems to me to be another instance of a very early intercourse between India and China, or at least with those districts of Central Asia which had early connections with that empire.

Hindoo philosophy, such as we now understand it,