Note 51 — Chapter III · PROGRESS UNDER ANCIENT RELIGIONS

The circumstances, however, that the Buddhist writings were from the first in vernacular dialects, not in Sanskrit,51 and that the mythical matter which accumulated round the story of the Buddha is in the main aboriginal, and largely common to the myth of Krishna,52 go to prove that Buddhism spread specially in the non-Aryan sphere.53 Its practical (not theoretic)54 atheism seems to have rested fundamentally on the conception of Karma, the transition of the soul, or rather of the personality, through many stages up to that in which, by self-discipline, it attains the impersonal peace of Nirvana; and of this conception there is no trace in the Vedas,55 though it became a leading tenet of Brahmanism.