them a certain amount of Zoroastrian theology and Hellenistic art, but
the compound resulting from the mixture of these elements with
Buddhism was re-exported to the north and to China.

I shall discuss below the grounds for believing that Buddhism was
known in China before A.D. 62, the date when the Emperor Ming Ti is
said to have despatched a mission to enquire about it. For some time
many of its chief luminaries were immigrants from Central Asia and it
made its most rapid progress in that disturbed period of the third and
fourth centuries when North China was split up into contending Tartar
states which both in race and politics were closely connected with
Central Asia. Communication with India by land became frequent and
there was also communication _viâ_ the Malay Archipelago, especially
after the fifth century, when a double stream of Buddhist teachers
began to pour into China by sea as well as by land. A third tributary
joined them later when Khubilai, the Mongol conqueror of China, made
Lamaism, or Tibetan Buddhism, the state religion.

Tibetan Buddhism is a form of late Indian Mahayanism with a
considerable admixture of Hinduism, exported from Bengal to Tibet and
there modified not so much in doctrine as by the creation of a
powerful hierarchy, curiously analogous to the Roman Church. It is
unknown in southern China and not much favoured by the educated
classes in the north, but the Lamaist priesthood enjoys great
authority in Tibet and Mongolia, and both the Ming and Ch́ing
dynasties did their best to conciliate it for political reasons.
Lamaism has borrowed little from China and must be regarded as an
invasion into northern Asia and even Europe[8] of late Indian religion
and art, somewhat modified by the strong idiosyncrasy of the Tibetan
people. This northern movement was started by the desire of imitation,