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BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM.
purity acquired during a succession of births. The notion of Buddha's supremacy once established, the worship of the gods became superfluous; but as the mass of mankind are in need of sensible objects to which their devotions are to be addressed, Buddha came to be substituted for the gods, and his statues to usurp their altars. In the course of time, in some of the Buddhist countries, at least other idols, several of them very uncongenial with the spirit of Buddhism, and evidently borrowed from Hinduism, came to be associated with him, particularly in Tibet and China, in which latter country the temples commonly present three principal colossal images, which are the representatives of Buddha and two of his chief disciples, Śákya, Sáriputra, and Maudgalyayana; or, according to some authorities, of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, or Buddha, the Law and the Community. They are sometimes also said to be the Buddhas of the past, present, and future ages. The temples, however, present many other idols, such as a goddess of mercy, a queen of heaven, a god of war, a god of wealth, a tutelary divinity of sailors, tutelary divinities of cities, and various other fanciful and not unfrequently grotesque beings, amongst whom we have Ganesa with his elephant head. In Japan, if we may trust to Kæmpfer, we have representations of the avatárs of Vishnu; and in Nepal and western Tibet, as already remarked, we have the Dhyani Buddhas, and Bodhisattwas, Manipadma, Manjuśrí, and Avalokiteswara, and a host of inferior spirits and divinities, of whom
