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110 BIRMAH.
Buddhic system are not purely accidental.* The
zarado who furnished the account, already referred
to, of the religion of Birmah, mentions six impostors,
teachers of false doctrine, who had appeared prior to
the coming of Guadma.
" The second of these pretenders
taught," he says, "that after death, men are
by no means changed into animals, and that animals,
on being slain, are not changed into men ; but that
after death, men are always born men, and animals
born animals." "This," remarks Dr. Buchanan,
" was probably the doctrine adopted by the Birmans
before they embraced the religion of Buddha, for it is
yet retained by the Pegu and Birman Carayns."f
According to Mr. Judson, it is not more than about
eight hundred years ago, that the religion of Boodha
was first publicly recognised as the religion of this
country. J
The resemblances between some of the rites and
regulations of the Romish Church and the monastic
institutions of the Birman religion, are so striking as
to suggest the idea that one must have been copied
from the other, or both from a common model. Indeed,
Father Boori, a Portuguese missionary who
visited Cochin China in the sixteenth century, pro-
* The Cingalese annals record that, in the fourth century, the
throne of that island was usurped by two Malabar missionaries,
who administered the government for upwards of twenty years,
and were at length slain by a member of the royal family.
HARVARD, p. Ixii.
t Asiat. Research, vol. vi. p. 267.
1 " Here, about eight hundred years ago, Ah-rah-ran, the first
Boodhist apostle of Birmah, under the patronage of king Anan-ra-
tha-men-zan, disseminated the doctrines of atheism, and taught
his disciples to pant after annihilation as the supreme good."
JUDSON, p. 224.