Buddhism in Its Connexion with Brahmanism and Hinduism and in Its Contrast with Christianity

It is forgotten that mere sympathizers with Buddhism who occasionally conform to Buddhistic practices are not true Buddhists. In China the great majority are first of all Confucianists and then either T?oists or Buddhists or both. In Japan Confucianism and Shintoism co-exist with Buddhism. In some other Buddhist countries a kind of Shamanism is practically dominant. The best authorities (including the Oxford Professor of Chinese as stated in the Introduction to his excellent work ‘The Travels of F?-hien’) are of opinion that there are not more than 100 millions of real Buddhists in the world and that Christianity with its 430 to 450 millions of adherents has now the numerical preponderance over all other religions. I am entirely of the same opinion. I hold that the Buddhism described in the following pages contained within itself from the earliest times the germs of disease decay and death and that its present condition is one of rapidly increasing disintegration and decline.