M. Notovitch is equally uncharitable in imputing

motives to the late M. Renan, who seems to have leceived him most kindly, and to have offered to submit his discovery to the Academy. M. Notovitch says that be never called on Renan again, but actually waited for his death, because he was sure that M. Renan would have secured the best part of the credit for himself leaving to M. Notovitch nothing but the good luck of having discovered the Tibetan manuscript at nimis. Whatever else Renan was, he certainly was
S'* ffIous> and he would have acted towards AL. JN otovitch in the same spirit with which he welcomed e discoveries which Hamdy Bey lately made in byna on the very ground which had been explored before by Renan himself. Many travellers who discover
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manuscripts, or inscriptions, or antiquities, are too apt to forget how much they owe to good luck and to the spades of their labourers, and that, though a man who disinters a buried city may be congratulated on his devotion and courage and perseverance, he does not thereby become a scholar or antiquary. The name of the discoverer of the Rosetta stone is almost forgotten, the name of the decipherer will be remembered for ever.
The worst treatment, hpwever, is meted out to the missionaries in Tibet. It seems that they have written to say that M. Notovitch had never broken his leg 01 been nursed in the monastery of Himis. This is a point that can easily be cleared up, for there are at the present moment a number of English officers at Leh, and there is the doctor who either did or did not set the traveller’s leg. M. Notovitch hints that the Moravian missionaries at Leh are distrusted by the people, and that the monks would never have shown them the manuscript containing the Life of Issa. Again I say, why not '? If Issa was Jesus Christ, either the Buddhist monks and the Moravian mission- aries would have seen that they both believed in the same teacher, or they might have thought that this new Life of Issa was even less exposed to objections than the Gospel-story. But the worst comes at the end. 4 How can I tell,’ he writes, 4 that these mission- aries have not themselves taken away the documents of which I saw the copies at the Himis monastery 1 ’ But how could they, if the monks never showed them these manuscripts'? M. Notovitch goes even further. ‘ This is simply a supposition of my own,’ he writes ; ‘but, if it is true, only the copies have been made
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to disappear, and the originals have remained at as^a. . . . I piopose to start at the end of the present year for Tibet, in order to find the original documents having reference to the life of Jesus Christ. I hope to succeed in this undertaking in spite of the wishes of e missi°naries, for whom, however, I have never ceased to profess the profoundest respect.’ Any one who can hint that these missionaries may have stolen and suppressed the only historical Life of Christ which is known to exist, and nevertheless express the pro- foundest respect for them, must not be surprised if the missionaries and their friends retaliate in the same spmfi We still prefer to suppose that M. Notovitch hke Lieutenant Wilford, like M. Jacolliot, like Madame Blavatsky and Mr. Sinnett, was duped. It is pleasanter to believe that Buddhist monks can at times be wags than that M. Notovitch was a rogue.
All this, no doubt, is very sad. How long have we wished for a real historical Life of Christ without the legendary halo, written, not by one of His disciples, jut by an independent eye-witness who had seen and heard Christ during the three years of His active life and who had witnessed the Crucifixion and whatever happened afterwards ! And now, when we seemed to have found such a Life, written by an eye-witness of His death, and free as yet from any miraculous accre- tions, it turns out to be an invention of a Buddhist monk at Hums, or, as others would have it, a fraud committed by an enterprising traveller and a bold French publisher. We must not lose patience. In these days of unexpected discoveries in Egypt and elsewhere, everything is possible. There is now at Vienna a fragment of the Gospel-story more ancient
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than the text of St. Mark. Other things may follow. Only let us hope that if such a Life were ever to be discovered, the attitude of Christian theologians would not be like that which M. Notovitch suspects on the part of an Italian cardinal or of the. Moravian mis- sionaries at Himis, but that the historical Christ, though different from the Christ of the Gospels, would be welcomed by all who can believe in His teaching, even without the help of miracles.
It is curious that at the very time I was wiiting this paper I received a letter from an English la*!} dated Leh, Ladakh, June 29, 1894. She writes
much ! There had been only one English lady here for over three years. Two German ladies live there, missionaries, a Mr. and Mrs. Weber, a girl, and another English missionary. They have only twenty Christians, though it has been a mission-station for seven years. We saw a polo match which was played down the principal street. Yesterday we were at the great Himis monastery, the largest Buddhist monastery up here— 800 Lamas. Did you hear of a Russian who could not gain admittance to the monastery in any way, but at last broke his leg outside, and was taken in ! His object was to copy a Buddhist Life of Christ which is there. Ho says he got it, and has published it since in French. There is not a single word of truth in the whole story ! There lias been no Russian there. No one has been taken into the Seminary for t le past fifty years with a broken leg ! There is no Life of Christ there at all ! It is dawning on me that people who in England profess to have been living in Buddhist monasteries in Tibet and to have learnt there the mysteries of Esoteric Buddhism are frauds. The monasteries one and all are the most filthy places. I have asked many travellers whom I have met, and they all tell the same story They acknowledge that perhaps at the Lama University at Lassa it may be better, but no Englishman is allowed there. Captain Bower (the discoverer of the famous Bower MS.) did his very best to get there, but failed. ... We are roughing it now very much. I have not tasted bread for five weeks, and shall not foi two months more. We have “ chappaties” instead. We rarely get any butter. We carry a little tinned butter, but it is too precious
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to eat much of. It was a great luxury to get some linen washed in Leh, though they did starch the sheets. We are just starting on our 500 miles’ march to Simla. We hear that one pass is not open yet, about which we are very anxious. We have one pass of 18 000 feet to cross, and we shall be 13,000 feet high for over a fortnight ; but I hope that by the time you get this we shall be down in beautiful Kulu, only one month from Simla ! ’
THE CHIEF LAMA OF HIMIS ON THE ALLEGED ‘UNKNOWN LIFE OF CHRIST.’
By Me. J. Aechibald Douglas1.
IT is difficult for any one resident in India to esti- mate accurately the importance of new departures in European literature, and to gauge the degree of acceptance accorded to a fresh literary discovery such as that which M. Notovitch claims to have made. A revelation of so surprising a nature could not, how- ever, have failed to excite keen interest, not only among theologians and the religious public generally, but also among all who wish to acquire additional information respecting ancient religious systems and civilizations.
Under these circumstances it was not surprising to find in the October (1894) number of this Review an article from the able pen of Professor Max Muller dealing with the Russian traveller’s marvellous ‘ find.’ I confess that, not having at the time had the pleasure of reading the book which forms the subject of this article, it seemed to me that the learned Oxford professor was disposed to treat the discoverer somewhat harshly, in holding up the Unknown Life
1 Nineteenth Century, April, 1896.
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of Christ as a literary forgery, on evidence which did not then appear conclusive.
A caieful perusal of the book made a less favourable impiession of the genuineness of the discovery therein described ; but my faith in M. Notovitch was some- what revived by the bold reply which that gentleman made to his critics, to the effect that he is ‘ neither a “hoaxer” nor a “ forger,5” and that he is about to undertake a fresh journey to Tibet to prove the truth of his story.
In the light of subsequent investigations I am bound to. say that the chief interest which attaches, in my mind, to M. Notovitch's daring defence of his book is the fact that that defence appeared immediately before the publication of an English translation of his work.
I was resident in Madras during the whole of last year, and did not expect to have an opportunity of investigating the facts respecting the Unknown Life of Christ at so early a date. Removing to the North-West Provinces in the early part of the present year, I found that it would be practicable during the three months of the University vacation to travel through Kashmir to Ladakh, following the route taken by M. Notovitch, and to spend sufficient time at the monastery at Himis to learn the truth on this important question. . I may here mention, en passant, t. at I did not find it necessary to break even a little finger, much less a leg, in order to gain admittance to Hums Monastery, where I am now staying for a few days, enjoying the kind hospitality of the Chief Lama (or Abbot), the same gentleman who according to M. Notovitch, nursed him so kindly
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under the painful circumstances connected with his memorable visit.
During his journey up the Sind Valley M. Notovitch was beset on all sides by f panthers, tigers, leopards, black bears, wolves, and jackals.’ A panther ate one of his coolies near the village of Ha'iena before his very eyes, and black bears blocked his path in an aggressive manner. Some of the old inhabitants of Ha'iena told me that they had never seen or heard of a panther or tiger in the neighbourhood, and they had never heard of any coolie, travelling with a Euro- pean sahib, who had lost his life in the way described. They were sure that such an event had not happened within the last ten years. I was informed by a gentleman of large experience in big-game shooting in Kashmir that such an experience as that of