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Excerpt from The Great Indian Religions, Being a Popular Account of Brahmanism, Hinduism, Buddhism, and Zoroastrianism: With Accounts of the Vedas and Other Indian Sacred Books, the Buddhist Sacred Books, the Zendabesta, Sikhism, Jainism, Mithraism, Etc Buddhism is really an offshoot of early Brahmanism, and was in part a revolt against the iron tyranny of the Brahmans, in part a revolt against polytheism and a re action towards unbelief in any knowledge of the gods or certainty of immortality. The idea of seeking absorp tion in the Infinite was however conjoined with a practical moral discipline that long gave Buddhism an enormous vitality and power of increase. Later, like most religions, it became degraded, practically polytheistic, and full of meaningless or superstitious rites. In power to develop and influence people for good it appears now to be far inferior to Hinduism. Zoroastrianism was a simpler yet a kindred system, reversing early Vedism in some curious features. In its simple worship of God by the symbol of fire it had a lofty side. In its conception of a dual government of the universe by'good and evil powers it contributed most importantly to world-philosophy. It never appears to have degenerated like Hinduism, for Mohammedanism violently expelled it, and was manifestly a higher religion. Until modern days its few surviving representatives were sunk in ignorance even of their own religion; but a re vival of learning has taken place among the Parsees, which bids fair to keep their religion alive in its purer aspects for a long time. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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