The true history of the world must always be the history of the few; and as we measure the Himalaya by the height of Mount Everest, we must take the … - Friedrich Max Müller

पाँचवीं सदी ईस्वी पूर्व में बौद्ध धर्म का उदय हुआ। यह ऐसा धर्म था जो वैदिक धर्म के अवशेषों पर निर्मित हुआ और इसने परम्परावादी ब्राह्मणों के द्वारा वेदों को जो दैवी सत्ता प्रदान की गई थी उसको अस्वीकार किया।

जिस प्रकार प्रकृति की देदीप्यमान शक्तियों से देवों का उदय हुआ था उसी प्रकार मृतकों के कथनों से कुछ बातें उभरीं, जैसे पितृ, पिता, प्रेत, गत, दयालु, पूर्वज, छाया, आत्माएँ या प्रेत, जिनकी उपासना जितने पूर्ण रूप से भारत में विकसित हुई थी उतनी और कहीं नहीं।

If there is one thing which a comparative study of religions places in the clearest light, it is the inevitable decay to which every religion is exposed. It may seem almost like a truism, that no religion can continue to be what it was during the lifetime of its founder and its first apostles. Yet it is but seldom borne in mind that without constant reformation, i.e. without a constant return to its fountan-head, every religion, even the most perfect, nay the most perfect on account of its very perfection, more even than others, suffers from its contact with the world, as the purest air suffers froln the mere fact of its being breathed. Whenever we can trace back a religion to its first beginnings, we find it free from many of the blemishes that offend us in its later phases. The founders of the ancient religions of the world, as far as we can judge, were minds of a high stamp, full of noble aspirations, yearning for truth, devoted to the welfare of their neighbors, examples of purity and unselfishness. What they desired to found upon earth was but seldom realized, and their sayings, if preserved in their original form, offer often a strange contrast to the practice of those who profess to be their disciples. As soon as a religion is established, and more particularly when it has become the religion of a powerful state, the foreign and worldly elements encroach more and more on the original foundation, and human interests mar the simplicity and purity of the plan which the founder had conceived in his own heart, and matured in his communings with his God. Even those who lived with Buddha misunderstood his words, and at the Great Council which had to settle the Buddhist canon, Asoka, the Indian Constantine had to remind the assembled priests that "what had been said by Buddha, that alone was well said;" and that certain works ascribed to Buddha, as, for instance, the instruction given to his son, Râhula, were apocryphal, if not heretical.