M. Notovitch remembers that he left Leh on that

occasion, after two days’ stay, on foot, with the intention of proceeding to Srinagar by way of Niniu and Dras. The crushing refutation of the details of the Russian ‘ discoverer’s ’ story is the clear, straight- forward statement of that most respectable old monk, the Chief Lama of Himis, who thoroughly understood the matter, inquiring most carefully into the details of the story told by M. Notovitch. He was naturally most indignant at the misuse of his name and authority, and at the manner in which Buddhism had been burlesqued and its teachings travestied.
Still more worthy of condemnation is the injury which this pretended ‘ Gospel,’ this forged life of Christ, was designed to inflict on the Christian religion. It seeks to deny the divinity of Jesus Christ, the working of miracles, and the story of the Resurrection (which is described as a piece of de-
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liberate deception on the part of the Apostles), and thus assails what are regarded by the vast majority of professing Christians as vital truths of Christianity. And yet there were a large number of religious people, in Europe and America, who accepted as genuine this marvellous ‘ discovery ’ ; and one well-known religious paper, The Christian, published a discussion as to the authenticity of this ‘New Gospel,’ as it began to be called.
In India, M. Notovitch’s publication was welcomed ecstatically by a certain class of Hindu, as a proof that the Christian faith was but a corrupt offshoot of that pure, ancient, original Brahmanism of which we read so much and really know so little. The genuine pundits, who are in the habit of mistrusting nearly all new literature, did not, as a rule, notice the ‘discovery but the younger generation, who had received at Indian colleges what is known as an English education, read of and revelled in it. One Bengali paper greeted the ‘find ’ as ‘ a clear proof that Christianity, like Buddhism, is simply an offshoot of Hinduism, and that Jesus Christ learnt His doc- trines at the feet of Brahmans.’ Further comment on the result of the forgery in India is needless. In justice to these Hindus it may be premised that few, if any, of them had ever seen the clumsy forgery. Their impressions of it were derived from reviews and book notices in European journals, and some of these were most absurd and ignorant effusions. The Gospel ‘according to Notovitch’ teems with absurdi- ties and errors, which is hardly to be wondered at, as its author was not in any sense an Orientalist, and failed utterly to catch the keynote of Tibetan
ALLEGED SOJOURN OF CHRIST IN INDIA. 209
Buddhism. The careful examination of the ‘ Gospel ’ which I made after leaving Himis revealed discre- pancies too numerous to describe here. The conver- sations of M. Notovitch with the Lamas of other monasteries may be safely regarded as equally unreliable and imaginary, as visits to these places and talks with the superior monks soon convinced me. The exposure of the Notovitch forgery was accepted everywhere except in the case of an in- genious Hindu editor, who regarded my statements simply as a striking instance of the racial prejudices of the English against the Russ.’ I had several letters from people in England and America thanking me for my work, and acknowledging that they had been deceived by M. Notovitch’s book; but what repaid me most for my trouble was Professor Max Muller’s verdict that I had proved the case to the hilt, and that M. Notovitch was ‘annihilated.’ In a private letter Professor Max Muller expressed the opinion that we should hear no more of M. Notovitch, who would see that ‘ the game was up,’ so far as the chance of getting any acceptance for his daring imposture was concerned. Personally I feel almost grateful to him, as his forged ‘ Gospel gave me a pretext and opportunity to visit the Buddhists of Western Tibet, and to become the guest of the Chief Lama of Himis Monasteiy an experience well worth many journeys thiough snowy Himalayan passes, and far greater privations and hardships than those which I had to endure between the smiling valley of Kashmir and the inhospitable and rugged regions of the trans- Himalayan tableland.
II.
P
THE KUTHO-DAW1.
IT has been said that through the introduction of railways, steamships, telegraphs, newspapers, and International Congresses, our terrestrial globe has shrunk to half its former size. We can now travel round the globe in less time than was formerly re- quired for a journey from one end of Europe to the other. Within my own recollection, which goes back now to many years, a journey from Berlin to Paris or London was looked upon in Germany as a great event. The adventurous traveller before starting was expected to pay farewell visits to all his friends and relations, tears were shed in abundance, and no one would have started on so perilous an expedition without making his will and insuring his life. A journey to Egypt or India or America was an event discussed in all the papers. W e know from Goethe what a grand thing it was supposed to be in his time to travel to Italy and explore its antiquities. To have travelled to Greece or to Constantinople, to have seen the Parthenon or St. Sophia, made a man a celebrity not only in his own native town, but all over Germany. Now three or four days bring us to Athens or Constantinople, and a small caique or a penny steamer takes us across the Bosphorus in a few minutes, and we are in Asia, on the very spot
1 Nineteenth Century , September, 1S95.
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where Xerxes is supposed to have whipped the sea in his anger. A week takes us to America, a fortnight to India, and we travel all the time with perfect comfort and with hardly any effort or danger.
With the same ease, however, with which we travel to distant countries, people from distant countries are now beginning to come to us. I have had in my own study at Oxford, not only Turks, Arabs, Hindus, Siamese, Japanese, and Chinese, but I received only the other day a visit from one of the Blackfoot Indians, the first of that tribe who had ever set foot on English soil, a most interesting and intelligent man, who was bewailing to me the fate of his race, doomed, as he thought, to disappear from the face of the earth, as if Babylonians and Assyrians, Accadians and Hittites had not disappeared before. His name was Strong Buffalo (not Buffalo Bill), and a most powerful, determined, and sensible man he seemed. He reminded me of a young Mohawk who also used to deplore to me the fate of his race. He came to Oxford many years ago to study medicine. He came in his war-paint and feathers, but left in his cap and gown, and is now a practising physician at Toronto.
These visits of strangers from distant lands are often highly instructive : I extracted some knowledge of the Mohawk language from Dr. Oronyha Teka. One is thus brought in contact with some of the leading spirits all over the world. I have now, or have had, pupils, friends, and correspondents in India, Burmah, Siam, Japan, China, Corea, aye, even in the Polynesian and Melanesian Islands, in South America, and in several African settlements.
But here surgit amari aliquid. People in these
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happy far-off countries have evidently less to do than we have, and the number of letters, newspapers, pamphlets, and books which the Indian post brings every week to my door is sometimes appalling. It would be physically impossible to acknowledge, much less to answer, all these letters and parcels, and I sometimes feel as if, in England at all events, there had been a shrinkage not only in space, but also in time. What used to be an hour is now scarcely half an hour, and a morning is gone before I have an- swered half the letters from every part of the world that lie scattered about on my table. A collection of the letters asking advice and help from me on the most heterogeneous and the most heterodox subjects, all beginning with the well-known phrase, ‘Though I have not the honour of your personal acquaintance,’ would form a most interesting and amusing volume. ■Still, there is both good and bad in all this. I have received most useful information and help from some of my unknown friends, and I trust that the unknown friends whose letters I have not been able to answer, whose books and MSS. I have not had time to examine, will forgive me if only they remember that the number of those whose personal acquaintance I have not the honour to possess is very large indeed.
And not only have letters and telegrams drawn the minds and hearts of men in every part of the world more closely together, but newspapers and reviews seem to have changed the world into one large debating club. If my friends were to see the Oriental newspapers which I have to read, or at all events to open and to glance at — I say nothing of German and French and Italian papers, I only think of the
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journals from India, from America, from Japan, and from the Australian colonies — they would be surprised to see not only how telegrams are published in the Eastern papers almost before the time that the events happen in the West, but how every political question, every literary publication of any importance, is fully criticized in Bombay, in Tokio, or in Melbourne, often far more carefully and conscientiously than in the best of our own papers.
It is a curious sensation to see one’s book not only praised, and praised in Oriental fashion, at Benares, but to receive a slashing criticism from an injured Buddhist who thinks that I have been unfair to Buddha, or a withering review from an enraged bishop who thinks that I have been too fair to him. Still, as one grows old one learns to bear all this, as the lotus leaf, to quote an Eastern phrase, is neither heated by the sun nor wetted by the rain. If in this way persons interested in literary, political, or philo- sophical work have been drawn together more and more closely, if a scholar has now to write and to hold his own, not only in Europe, but against critics in every part of the world, this process has culminated in what are known as International Congresses. Here people from all countries, of every colour and every creed, have really the honour of making personal acquaint- ances, and far be it from me to depreciate the good that has been done by these meetings. But again, they consume much valuable time and much valuable money. Think only of five hundred scholars travel- ling to England and spending a fortnight in London devouring science, literature, and a great many other things besides, and you have, if you reckon a working
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day at eight hours, which I believe is now the correct number, no less than 56,000 hours taken away from the literary workshops of the world ! If it were all rest and relaxation it would be different, but, as a matter of fact, a week or a fortnight of an inter- national congress is about the hardest work that can fall to any mortal being in the pursuit of science.
The most celebrated of these international congresses was no doubt the so-called Parliament of Religions held at Chicago in 1893. There representatives of all the religions of the world were gathered together — Brahmans and Buddhists, Jainas and Parsees, Moham- medans and Chinese, people from Siam, Japan, China, and last, not least, Jews and Christians of every description and denomination. A Roman Catholic cardinal presided ; the blessing was given one day by a rabbi, the next by an Anglican bishop, the next by a Buddhist priest, and last, not least, by an Italian archbishop ; the Lord’s Prayer was joined in by hundreds, nay, by thousands who were assembled there in their gorgeous costumes — in black silk, white lawn, scarlet brocade, yellow satin, with wonderful head-gears, golden chains and crosses ; and — what was the most extraordinary of all — though everybody spoke up for his own religion, not one unkind word was said to disturb the perfect harmony of that won- derful meeting. Such a gathering was unique in the whole history of the world ; it could not have taken place at any earlier time ; nay, it may be said to have given the first practical recognition to the teaching of St. Peter, that in every nation he that feareth God and worketh righteousness is accepted with Him.
Nor is this first truly Oecumenical Council likely
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to remain without results. Already several of the religions of the East begin to set their house in order, try to reform abuses that have crept into their churches, and challenge comparison with other reli- gions, Christianity not excepted.
Of course, every religion has its weak points, every church has its abuses which must be reformed from time to time, and the followers of other religions are very quick in finding out these vulnerable points. But every religion has also its strong points, and it is far better that they also should be pointed out, and not the weak points only, and that they should be held up for the admiration and imitation of other religions.
If we hold that a religion should be judged by its fruits, can we wonder that the Mohammedans, yes, even the unspeakable Turks, should pride themselves on the fact that their religion has succeeded in stamp- ing out drunkenness, which no other religion, not even our own, has been able to achieve, or that the Jainas should take some credit for never touching animal food1? I had a Jaina dining with me only a few weeks ago, and I confess I envied him when he told me that during the whole of his life he had never eaten the flesh of animals, not even an egg, because it contained a genn of life. I do not say that we can measure the excellence of a religion by these outward tokens, by the mere keeping the outside of the cup and the platter clean ; still, suppose that we Christians were the only total abstainers and vegetarians in the world, should we not point to this as one of the great triumphs of our religion ? There can be no doubt that, for the future, Christians, and particularly
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Christian missionaries, will have to see to the joints of their armour. You may have heard that not only the Mohammedans, hut even the Buddhists in Japan, are going to send their own missionaries all over the world. There are mosques springing up in England, and I read of Buddhist temples in Paris and in America, where thousands go to listen to what is called the teaching of Buddha. There can be little doubt, to judge from Indian and Japanese papers, that these people have studied our Bible, our Old and New Testaments, far more carefully than we have their Tripkaka or their Koran.
It was for this very purpose, for the purpose of enabling missionaries to study the religion of those whom they wish to convert, that I published a series of translations of the Sacred Books of the East, which now amounts to nearly fifty volumes. If governments send out officers to explore the foi'tresses and to examine the strategic peculiarities of the frontiers of their neighbours, would it not be well that mis- sionaries also, who are to conquer the whole world, should act as spies, should make themselves acquainted with the sacred books of other religions, the very fortresses of those whom they wish, if not to conquer, yet to convince and to convert?
Much has been written of late of the comparative merits and defects of the principal religions of man- kind. Some of the Orientals who attended the Congress at Chicago have been lecturing before large audiences in the principal towns of America, and some of them are lecturing now in England and in Germany. There has been some skirmishing between these defenders of the Faith, most of them maintaining
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that their religion is as good as any other, some that it is a great deal better. It would, however, be far too large and too serious a matter to attempt to institute here a compai’ison between the sacred books of the world, and to bring out the strong and the weak points of each.
I only intend to report on some very slight skir- mishes that have lately taken place between the defenders of different religions of the world — skir- mishes in which, so far as I can judge, little or nothing -was really at stake, whatever the fortune of war might have been — and I shall then proceed to show in the Kutho-dciw a kind of religious strong- hold which in its way is certainly amazing, but which after hardly half a century begins already to show sad signs of decay, as one can see in the photographs lately sent home from Mandalay.
The skirmishes or reconnoitrings to which I refer were three, and they referred to matters of very small importance, nay, to my mind, of no importance at all. The questions that have been discussed were, (i) the relative age of the Sacred Books, (2) the number of followers that each religion may claim, and (3) the bulk of the sacred texts on which the various religions of the world profess to be founded.
Some religions have prided themselves on the age of their sacred books. The Brahmans more particu- larly represent their Vedas as far more ancient than any other Bible. Suppose it were so, would that in any way affect their value or prove their truth ? I should think quite the contrary. Certainly, in the age in -which we live, old age carries very little weight —old institutions are generally treated as old rubbish,
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old men as old fogeys. We might therefore safely leave to the Brahmans the glory of possessing the oldest sacred book. They would soon find out that the walls of fortresses do not grow stronger by old age, and that books dating so far back as, according to some authorities, 6000 B.G., according to others 2000 b. c., must needs contain many things, many forms of thought, many modes of expression, that have grown not only old, but antiquated, and are no longer in harmony with the truth as we see it. Besides, what do we gain if we push back the date of the Old Testament or of the Veda ever so far? Are there not the higher critics who tell us that 2000 B. c. and even 4000 b. c. is quite a modern date compared with the dates of Egyptian and Babylonian monuments? And are there not still higher critics who assure us that even that ancient Egyptian and Babylonian civilization, as represented in hieroglyphic and cuneiform writings, must be looked upon as quite modern, and as the last outcome only of a much earlier and far m-ore primitive civilization or non-civilization which has to be studied among the Palaeolithic savages of Tasmania or the Andaman islanders ? We should gain, therefore, very little by a few thousand years more or less. If Mr. Tilak, in a very learned work lately published, claims 6000 B.c. as the very lowest date of Vedic literature, if Professor Jacobi insists on 4000 B. c. as the last concession that can be made, I still keep to the date which I originally claimed for the Hymns of the Rig-veda, namely, 1200 or 1500 B.C., and I always take care to add that even this date requires a certain amount of willingness on the part of historical critics. But even this more
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moderate date goes far beyond that of the Old Testa- ment, whether we accept the conclusions of the higher or the lower critics, and it seems to me far better to yield that point and let the Brahmans have the full credit — if it is any credit — of possessing the oldest, the most remote, and in consequence the most obscure, and the most difficult among the sacred books of the world.
Another equally useless skirmish has been that about the number of followers which each religion may claim. Here again two distinctions have to be made. If we ask for the number of human beings who have entrusted their souls to one or other of the sacred books as the safest vessel to carry them across this life, naturally the number of those who believed in the Veda, or the Old Testament, or the Buddhist Tripkaka during all the centuries that had elapsed before the rise of Christianity or Mohammedanism must have been much larger than the number of Christians or Mohammedans. And who could ever guess what may have been the number of Neolithic and Palaeolithic believers during the untold ages since the surface of the earth became cool and habitable ? Remember that, according to Sir Charles Lyell, 270,000,000 years must have elapsed since the Cambrian period, and that traces of human life go back as far at least as the Post-Pleiocene period. Every pebble on the seashore may have been one of their fetishes, every shell we pick up or find petrified may have been a sacred totem of our primitive ancestors. From a purely statistical point of view, we should therefore again have to concede to Buddhists, to Brahmanists, and still more to those primitive
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troglodyte ancestors of the whole human race, a con- siderable superiority in numbers ; and we should probably do it without the least misgivings.
Still, it is strange that the superiority in numbers which has been claimed for Buddhism above all other religions seems to have greatly disturbed certain theologians ; and as the numbers themselves could not well be disputed, attempts have lately been made to distinguish between real and purely nominal Buddhists, particularly in the vast empire of China. No doubt, millions of people who are classed as Buddhists in China and Mongolia have no notion of what Buddhism really is ; they have never read a line of the TripBaka, and could not pass an examination even in Olcott’s Short Catechism of Buddhism. Their Buddhism often consists in no more than their going to the monastery for medicine, and, if that fails, for a decent burial. Still, such a distinction between real and nominal Buddhists is simply impracticable. Are there not Christians also who have never read a line of the Bible, and who could not pass an examination in the Catechism ? It is difficult enough to have any trustworthy census whatever in so vast a country as China ; a question whether a man or a woman was a real or a nominal Buddhist would convey no meaning at all to the shepherds in the steppes of Asia, and could elicit no answer, except perhaps a broad grin. Malte Brun used to say years ago : ‘ If a geographer means to be honest, he has to confess that there is no more reason for assigning to Asia 500 than 250 millions of inhabitants.’ And though some progress has no doubt been made since his time, still Chinese statistics are guess-work and no more.
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The worst of it is that some of the authorities whose statements are repeated over and over again have guessed with a purpose.
Missionaries, more particularly, are sorely tempted to guess the number of Buddhists and Mohammedans as small, that of the Christians, whether Protestant or Roman Catholic, as large. It is all the more creditable, therefore, to the Roman Catholic missionary societies that they should openly admit that, so far as they know, the number of Buddhists is as yet the largest. They claim 420,000,000 for Christianity, but allow
423.000. 000 to Buddhism. Of these Christians, how- ever, they claim 212,000,000 for themselves, and allow only 208,000,000 to the Reformed Churches, while the Mohammedans follow very close after with about
200.000. 000. I attach very little value to these
statistics, still less to the conclusions drawn from them. Truth fortunately is not settled by majorities. You remember the saying of Frederick Maurice, when he was told that in his views about eternal punish- ment he was in a minority, or, what is the same, unorthodox. ‘ I have often been in a minority,’ he said, £in this life, and I hope I shall be so in the next.’
If, therefore, in this second skirmish also we have been beaten, we have lost nothing. On the contrary, the fact that Buddhism counts as yet 3,000,000 more than Christianity may prove an incentive to our missionaries, nor need the Reformed Churches despair when by this time it counts only 4,000,000 less than the unreformed Churches. Here also there are worlds still to conquer, as the son of Philip used to say.
The third skirmish is even of less practical impor-
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tance, though we shall see that it is interesting from a purely literary point of view.
The question has frequently been discussed of late, Which religion possesses the largest Bible ? Most people would probably argue that the smaller a Bible, the better for those who have to study, to believe, and to obey it. But there is hardly a subject, if connected with religion, on which opposite opinions have not been held and defended with great ingenuity and obstinacy.
To count the words even of a book like the Old Testament is no easy undertaking, but the Rabbis, who are famous for their patient labours, have not shrunk from the trouble of counting the words in the Hebrew text, and they have found out, as Dr. Neubauer informs me, that the Old Testament in Hebrew con- tains 593,493 words, 2,728,100 letters, and 23,214 verses. This estimate is not made by taking the words of one page and multiplying it by the number of pages — a most uncertain proceeding — but by actual counting word for word.
These rabbinical labours, however, astounding as they are, have been surpassed by Christian students. I regret I cannot find out their names, but I see it stated that by counting each word in the Authorized Version of the Old and the New Testaments, they found out that the number of words of the whole Bible amounted to 773,692, that of the lettei’s to 3,586,489, and that of the verses to 31,173. If this is correct — and who would venture either to doubt or to verify such labours? — the number of words in the English New Testament would be about 773,692 - 593,493 = 180,199. Here, however, one estimate is
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made from Hebrew, the other from English, which naturally vitiates the calculation.
Much as one may admire such gigantic patience, the results produced by it are comparatively small. I shall only mention a few, such as they are. It has been found out that the eighth verse in the 118th Psalm forms the centre of the whole Bible ; that the twenty- first verse of the seventh chapter of Ezra con- tains all the letters of the English alphabet, except the letter F ; that the nineteenth chapter of the second book of Kings is identically the same as the thirty- seventh chapter of Isaiah ; that the word Lord occurs 1,855 limes, the word reverend but once, and the word and 46,277 times. This may seem very unprofitable labour, yet I must plead guilty of having gone through the same kind of drudgery myself. Before I could venture to edit the text and the ancient commentary of the Rig-veda, I had to make an index verborum, containing every word as many times as it occurred in this the oldest of all sacred books. The Rig-veda contains about 10,500 verses and 153,826 words, and the word and, the Sanskrit cha , occurs, unless I have added wrongly, which is not impossible, 1,149 times. I need hardly say that I did not go through all this drudgery from mere curiosity. It was a dire necessity. In order to edit and translate a text like that of the Rig-veda, which had never been edited before, it was absolutely necessary, as in the case of deciphering an inscription, to have every passage in which the same word occurs placed side by side before our eyes, so as to be able to find out which meaning would suit them all. Without such an index verborum, Vedic philology would have been impossible, and I flatter myself that
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this index has served, and will serve for centuries to come, as the best and most solid foundation for a scholarlike study of these ancient hymns. I must not indulge in any more statistics, though I ought to add that two thousand years ago the native scholars of India had, like the Rabbis, counted not only the words, but even the syllables of their Rig-veda, and that they state the number of syllables to amount to 432,000. I have to confess again that I have not tried to check this account. What must strike every one in these statistical researches is the great amount of repetition in all the sacred books. Thus, while the number of words actually occurring in the Old Testament is, as we saw, 593,493, the number of separate words used again and again — in fact, the number of words in a dictionary of the Old Testament — is said to amount to no more than 5,642, thus showing that, on an average, every word was used in the Bible one hundred times. Comparing, then, the principal sacred books, we find that the Avestic texts, as we now possess them, are the shortest. They were not so originally, for we possess two only out of the twenty- one Nasks of which the Avesta originally consisted. The total of words in our present text amounts to 73,020. Then follows the Rig-veda, then the New, and then the Old Testament. I am sorry I have not been able to find out the exact number of words in the Koran, though I have little doubt that they too have been counted. The Koran, as far as the number of words goes, would probably stand between the Old and the New Testament.
If now in conclusion we turn to the sacred books of the Buddhists, we come at last to the Kutho-daiv.
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The sacred books of the Buddhists are perfectly appalling in their bulk. They are called the Triphaka, the Three Baskets, and were originally written in Pali, a vernacular form of Sanskrit. They have been translated into many languages, such as Chinese, Tibetan, and Mandshu. They have also been written and published in various alphabets, not only in Devanagari, but in Singhalese, Burmese, and Siamese letters. The copy in nineteen volumes lately presented to the University of Oxford by the King of Siam con- tains the Pali text written in Siamese letters, but the language is always the same ; it is the Pali or the vulgar tongue, as it was supposed to have been spoken by Buddha himself about 500 b.c. After having been preserved for centuries by oral tradition, it was reduced for the first time to writing under King Vattagamini in 88-76 b.c.1, the time when the truly literary period of India may be said to begin. But besides this Pali Canon there is another in Sanskrit, and there are books in the Sanskrit Canon which are not to be found in the Pali Canon, and vice versa.
According to a tradition current among the Southern as well as the Northern Buddhists, the original Canon consisted of 84,000 books, 83,000 being ascribed to Buddha himself and 2,000 to his disciples. Book, however, seems to have meant here no more than treatise or topic.
But, as a matter of fact, the Pali Canon consists, according to the Rev. R. Spence Hardy, of 275,250 stanzas, and its commentary of 361,550 stanzas, each stanza reckoned at thirty-two syllables. This would give us 8,808,000 syllables for the text, and 11,569,600
1 Dipavansa, xx. p. 21.
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syllables for the commentary. This is, of course, an enormous amount ; the question is only whether the Rev. R. Spence Hardy and his assistants, who are responsible for these statements, counted rightly. Professor Rhys Davids, by taking the average of words in ten leaves, arrives at much smaller sums, namely, at 1,752,800 words for the Pali Canon, which in an English translation, as he says, would amount to about twice that number, or 3,505,600 words. Even this would be ample for a Bible ; it would make the Buddhist Bible nearly five times as large as our own ; but it seems to me that Spence Hardy s account is more likely to be correct. Professor Rhys Davids, by adopting the same plan of reckoning, brings the number of words in the Bible to about ()oo,ooo. We found it given as 773,692. But who shall decide 1
What the bulk of such a work would be, we may gather from what we know of the bulk of the trans- lations. There is a complete copy of the Chinese translation at the India Office in London, also in the Bodleian, and a catalogue of it, made by a Japanese pupil of mine, the Rev. Bunyiu Nanjio, brings the number of separate works in it to 1,662. The Tibetan translation, which dates from the eighth century, consists of two collections, commonly called the Kanjur and Tanjur.
The Kanjur consists of a hundred volumes in folio, the Tanjur of 225 volumes, each volume weighing between four and five pounds. This collection, pub- lished by command of the Emperor of China, sells for ^630. A copy of it is found at the India Office. The Buriates, a Mongolian tribe converted to Bud-
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dhism, bartered 7,000 oxen for one copy of the Kanjur, and the same tribe paid 12,000 silver roubles for a complete copy of both Kanjur and Tanjur.
What must it be to have to believe in 325 volumes each weighing five pounds, nay, even to read through such a Bible ! True, the Buddhist Canon is full of repetitions, but at present we need only think of the number of volumes, of pages, and of words, whether repeated or not. It is not easy to realize such a number as 8,808,000 syllables, but we may try to do so, and then think of the Kutho-daw, which is a Buddhist monument near Mandalay in Burma, consisting of about 700 temples, each containing a slab of white marble on which the whole of this Buddhist Bible, the whole of these eight millions of syllables, has been carefully engraved. The alphabet is Burmese, the language is Pali, the language supposed to have been spoken by Buddha. Well may the Buddhists say that such a Bible on white marble cannot be matched in the whole world. I am glad it cannot. Think of the fearful expenditure of labour and money. And what is the result? A small copy of the New Testa- ment, which our University Press turns out for a penny a C0Py, is more useful, has more power for good in it, quite apart from its intrinsic value, than the whole of this gigantic structure which no one reads, nay, which but few people understand. The Kutho-daw is not an ancient monument. It was erected in 1857 by Mindon-min, the predecessor of King Thebaw, the last king of Burma. No one seems ever to have described this marvellous pile, and I confess that unless my correspondent, Mr. Ferrars, had sent me photographs of it, I should have found it difficult to believe in
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this extraordinary monument of Buddhist piety and Buddhist folty.
To judge from these photographs, there are about seven hundred temples, forming together a large square, with a higher temple in the centre, visible from far and wide. Each temple contains a slab of white marble covered with inscriptions, possibly more than one, if the inscriptions contain, as is maintained, the complete text of the three Pkakas. Over each slab there is an ornamental canopy in pagoda form, which renders photography difficult, but by no means impossible. Mr. Ferrars, a member of the Burma Forest Department, is quite ready to undertake the photographic reproduction of the complete text of the Tripiiaka, if the Government or some learned society will bear the small expense that is required. He has been assured that the text, as engraved on the marble slabs, was critically revised and edited by a Royal Commission, consisting of ten learned men under the presidency of the famous Rahan, U-Nye-ya. It is stated that three copies of the same text were prepared at the same time on palm- leaves, and sent by the king to three European libraries. What libraries they were I have not been able to find out.
If a photographic reproduction could be made at a reasonable price, it would certainly seem desirable, though, from a specimen sent to me, I am a little afraid that some of the letters are no longer quite distinct. The signs of decay are visible all over the building; the moisture of the climate has begun to tell, and moss is growing on the walls and cupolas. What a confirmation of Buddhas teaching that all is
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perishable and that all that has been put together will come apart again !
How much more real good might have been done if this pious and learned Buddhist king had been properly advised as to the best way of doing honour to the memory of Buddha ! Buddhists in many parts of the world seem very anxious that the nations of Europe should gain a correct knowledge of the ancient religion of Buddha. In this they are quite justified. Some go so far as to send missionaries to convert the world. This seems rather too sanguine a plan; any- how, before such attempts are made, it would certainly be desirable to spread a correct knowledge of Bud- dhism, and thus to counteract the mischievous mis- representations of the great sage of Kapilavastu, scattered broadcast by those who call themselves esoteric Buddhists. The importance of Buddhist literature for a comparative study of religions is now generally recognized, and for philological pur- poses also a scholarlike knowledge of Pali is of very great importance.
It is a great pity that at Oxford there should be no chair of Pali ; and the true admirers of Buddha could hardly show their admiration in a better way than by helping to found a lectureship of the Pali language and literature. The King of Siam has shown his reverence for the memory of Buddha by helping me to bring out a series of translations of the sacred books of the Buddhists. Is there no other admirer of the great sage to follow this noble example ? Even a gigantic marble structure like the Kutho-daw crumbles to pieces, and the inscriptions remain silent in the wilderness. A learned and painstaking teacher of
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Pali, though he must not expect to gain any converts to Buddhism at Oxford, would certainly help to secure to Buddha that position among the wisest and best men of the world which belongs to him by right as the recognized guide and teacher of 423 millions of human beings — as a sage whose utterances even those who belong to another religion may read, mark, and inwardly digest, with real advantage to themselves — as one whom a former professor in this University declared to be ‘ second to One only.’
BUDDHA’S BIRTHPLACE1.
IT is strange to see how in our days the republic of letters extends its arms farther and farther, and how the same literary and archaeological questions are discussed in the journals of Japan, India, France, England, and Germany, difference of language having lono- ceased to be a barrier between the scholars of
O
the principal countries of the civilized world. Hardly has a question been asked or a problem connected with oriental literature been started, when answers pour in from East and West, from North and South.
Here is the last number of the Hansel Zasshi, a monthly magazine, published at Tokio in Japan. It is generally written in English, but from time to time it contains articles in Russian and German also. The last number contains one article in French, or rather a speech delivered in Fx-ench before a learned society at Tokio by a distinguished French savant, M. Sylvain Levy. And what is the subject on which he addi'essed his Japanese audience? It is a pilgrimage which he performed to the newly discovered birthplace of Buddha, Kapilavastu. In the sixth centux-y B. c. this Kapilavastu was the l-esidence of the Sakya princes and of Buddha’s father, as we are informed again and
1 Blackwood’s Magazine, December, 1 898.
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again in the sacred canon of the Buddhists These Sakya princes were what we should now call small Indian Rajahs, and the father of Buddha was the head of the family, and ruler of their principality. But though the name of the capital, Kapilavastu, and the name of a large park belonging to it, Lumbini, were well known to all students of Buddhism, the real situation of that once famous town had hitherto baffled all attempts at identification. General Sir Alex. Cunningham, a high authority on Indian archaeology, had indeed placed Kapilavastu near the village of Bhuila in the Basti district of the North- Western Provinces ; but this view was clearly wrong, and has by this time been given up by all competent authorities. The only scholar who long ago had fixed on the right locality was Vivien de St. Martin, who in his Memoire Ancilytique, appended to Stan. Julien’s translation of Hiouen-thsang, placed it rightly between Gorakhpur and the mountains of Nepal.
Little attention, however, was paid to this geo- graphical conjecture, which dates from 1858, and it would perhaps have been impossible to place it altogether beyond the reach of doubt without a renewed examination of the Voyages des Pelevins Bouddhistes — that is, the descriptions of the pil- grimages performed by Chinese Buddhists, such as Fa-hian in the fifth, and Hiouen-thsang in the seventh century. These two Chinese Buddhists, and many others like them, travelled from China to India, which was their Holy Land, and to Kapilavastu, which was their Jerusalem. But even with the help of the minute details which these Buddhist pilgrims have left us of all they did and saw on their journeys, the
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site of Kapilavastu, the chief goal of their perilous travels, would probably have long remained uncertain but for the ingenuity of Surgeon-Major Waddell.
I may seem wrong in speaking so positively on this point, for there has been, and there still is, a heated controversy going on, and there are some very com- petent authorities who claim the merit of having settled the real site of Kapilavastu, not for Major Waddell, or even for Vivien de St. Martin, but exclu- sively for Dr. Fiihrer. To me it seems a case very like the discovery of Uranus. Professor Adams pointed out where that planet must be, and would be sure to be found. Leverrier took the telescope and found it. In much the same way Major Waddell, in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal, 1896, p. 275, expressed his conviction that Kapilavastu would be found not very far from a pillar discovered in 1893 in the Nepal Terai by a Nepalese officer, name unknown. The Major recognized it at once as one of the many pillars erected by King Asoka (third century B.c.) when that famous Buddhist sovereign visited the sacred places through which Buddha himself had passed. These places were commemorated by numerous pillars, monasteries, and other monuments of King Asoka’s time. One of them was found buried partially in the earth near the village of Nigliva, about thirty- seven miles north-west of the Uska station on the North Bengal Railway, in the northern portion of the Gorakhpur district of the North-Western Provinces, and it was found in the very locality fixed on by Vivien de St. Martin. But this was not all. When the pillar was cleared of the soil and dust which encumbered it, it was found to contain an inscription
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in the same alphabet and the same language which are well known from many other monuments erected by King Asoka in all parts of his kingdom. A paper impression of this inscription was taken by Dr. Fiihrer and sent to Dr. Buhler, who published the four lines in the Academy of April 27, 1895. Imperfect as the inscription was, it declared distinctly that King Piyadasi, i. e. Asoka, in the fourteenth year after his consecration enlarged the stupa of Buddha Konakamana (Konagamana) for the second time, and came himself to worship it. Nothing, however, was said as to the geographical position of Kapilavastu being fixed by that inscribed pillar, and though it may be said that the topographical deductions were inevitable, yet simple fairness compels us to say that Major Waddell was the first to point out that this pillar in commemoration of Konakamana was the same which Fa-hian1 mentions in the fifth century, and Hiouen-thsang 2 in the seventh, and that, therefore, the site of Kapilavastu must be in close neighbourhood of it, distant no more than one yo^ana, or about seven miles to the west, according to the statement of the Chinese pilgrims. This discovery was no doubt of great value, both geographically and historically, and it was more or less confirmed by a Tibetan book in the possession of Major Waddell, in which the shrines of Kraku/e/cAanda and Konakamana are mentioned as situated near Kapilavastu. All this is by no means
1 Fa-liian, ed. Legge, p. 64, calls the Buddha Kanaka-muni.
* Hiouen-thsang (Julien, i. p. 316) calls him Kia-no-kia-meou- ni-fo. ‘ Dans ce stoupa,’ he says, ‘on a eleve une colonne, haute d’une vingtaine do pieds. Sur le sommet on a sculpts l’image d’un lion, et, sur le cot6, on a grave 1’histoire du Nirvana de Kana- kamoouni.’
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intended to diminish in any way the credit due to Dr. Fuhrer in his subsequent labours on the spot. It is only meant to remind us that the topographical importance of the Konakamana pillar as an ancient finger-post was pointed out for the first time by Major Waddell, and that it was he who suggested to the Government to send out a deputy (Dr. Fuhrer) when his own services were required elsewhere.
After the site of Kapilavastu had once been securely fixed, it became easy to see that the ground all around was covered by ruins of ancient stupas, monasteries, villages, and towns. Very soon another of Asoka’s pillars was found by Dr. Fuhrer, and identified as that of Lumbini. This Lumbini was a well-known park close to Kapilavastu, famous in Buddhist tradition as the garden to which the queen retired, when going to give birth to her first son, who was to become here- after the founder of the Buddhist religion. That pillar also had been described by Hiouen-thsang, who mentions that in his time already it was broken in two pieces, a statement confirmed by Dr. Fuhrer, who tells us that the top part seems to have been shattered by lightning. Hiouen-thsang does not mention that it contained an inscription, probably because the lower part of the pillar was no longer visible in his time. But that inscription, as now laid bare, leaves no doubt that the pillar was the identical pillar which was erected by Asoka, for it declares that ‘ King Piyadasi [Asoka], beloved of the gods, having been anointed twenty years, himself came and worshipped, saying, Here Buddha $akyamuni was horn, and he caused a stone pillar to be erected, which declares, “Here the Venerable was born.”’ The very name
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of the park, Lumini or Lumbini, occurs in the injured part of the inscription, so that no doubt can remain that this was indeed the spot where Buddha first saw the light of the world, or, at all events, where King Asoka in the third century before Christ, and about three centuries after the birth of Buddha, was told that it was so. According to the Divyavadana, the guide who undertook to show the king the spots where Buddha had sojourned was Upagupta1. He began by conducting the king to the garden of Lumbini, and extending his right hand he said, ‘ Here, 0 great King, was the Venerable [Bhagavat] born, and here should be the first monument in honour of the Buddha.’
After all this, scepticism would indeed seem un- reasonable. That Asoka erected these commemorative pillars is known from Buddhist books and from the inscriptions on the pillars themselves. That they existed in the fifth and seventh centuries after our era is known from the itineraries of the Chinese pilgrims, Fa-hian, Hiouen-thsang, and others. Their existence even at a later time is attested by inscrip- tions left on the upper part of the column by late]1 visitors, and therefore to doubt that they mark the real spots of Buddha’s birth and early life would be over-conscientious even for the most critical of historians. It is true that the neighbourhood, as it is at present, is very different from what it is de- scribed to have been in Buddha’s time. The Terai of Nepal is the most inhospitable part of India, and if the towns with their Buddhist monuments were not
1 Waddell; ‘Upagupta,' J. A. Soc. Bengal , 1897, p. 81; quoting Eurnouf, Introduction, p. 340.
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destroyed by warfare, they may well have been sub- merged and ruined by floods occasioned by the rivers which rise on the northern mountains and debouch on the plains, carrying everything before them and covering the ground with layers of mud, difficult to pierce by the explorer’s spade.
That spade has become of late a kind of fetish for archaeologists. It is quite right that it should be worshipped, but its worship must not be carried too far. After the stupas and pillars have been laid bare by the spade, what do they teach us, unless they can be made to speak again by their inscriptions ? Nay, we may go a step further, for even when we know from their interpretation that this was the garden into which Maya, the mother of Buddha, retired, and laying hold of the branch of a lofty Asvattha-ti’ee, gave birth to the future Buddha, how does this help us to a proper- understanding of Buddha’s teaching, its antecedents in the past, and its true objects for the future ? It is curious, no doubt, to know as a fact that Aryan life extended, even at that early time, so far east and north as Nepal, and that there was possibly a non- Aryan element among the first converts to Buddhism. But what is all that mere entourage compared with the Prince himself, who was to work such a complete revolution in the religious life of India — nay, of the whole East ? It is that Prince and his thoughts that we want to know and to understand, and this can be done by a study of MSS. only, and by psychological analysis, not by digging, however indefatigably, with pickaxe and spade.
It would be narrow-minded to say that the ruins of the Terai teach us nothing. On the contrary, it
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may be hoped that they will in time teach us a great deal, and reveal to us much of the outward circum- stances of Buddhism, at all events at the time of Asoka in the third century. But, after all, the real ruins of that ancient religion must be dug up with the pen from MSS., whether in Sanskrit or in Pali, and what has been dug up there will have to be sifted and arranged by such piocheurs as Burnouf, Oldenberg, Sdnart, Khys Davids, and others. Grateful as we are to such laborious searchers and diggers as General Cunningham, Major Waddell, Dr. Fiihrer, and others, we should never forget that after all a spade is a spade, and that other hands and heads are wanted before stones can become monuments, true monimenta to remind us of the life that was lived in the ruins of Kapilavastu and in the garden of Lumbini.
There has been no lack of such labourers, coming to help from all parts of the world, each contributing his share towards the recovery of the birthplace of Buddha. Greek scholars have helped us to prove that Asoka was the grandson of Chandragupta, and that Chan- dragupta was Sandrokyptos, the contemporary of Alexander the Great. Here is our strong anchor for Indian chronology.
China has given us the heroic pilgrims who found their way across the dangerous mountain-passes and snowdrifts to their Holy Land, who stayed there for years studying the languages and customs of the country, and leaving us careful descriptions of all they saw from the Himalayan Mountains down to Ceylon.
It is to France that we owe Stanislas Julien, the great Chinese scholar, who translated for the first time the Travels of the Chinese explorers, which had
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defied the scholarship of all former sinologues. To the same country we owe the light that M. Sdnart has shed on the inscriptions of Asoka and on Pali literature in general.
German^7 also has contributed most valuable aid in the labours of the late Dr. Biihler, whose recent loss is keenly felt by all Sanskrit scholars, and more particularly by Indian archaeologists.
But the spark that at last lighted the train that had been so carefully laid by all these scholars came from Surgeon-Major Waddell, who with rare pluck searched the pestilential Terai of Nepal, and was the first to recognize the geographical importance of the pillar of Konakamana, and to read on it what no one had read before him, ‘ This is the way to Kapilavastu,’ while Buddhists all over the world — in Ceylon, Burma, Siam, and China — have hailed this dis- covery with rapture. Several Buddhist scholars from France and England have set out on their scientific pilgrimages to the dangerous Nepalese Terai, and it was one of them, M. Sylvain Ldvy, who on his return from Kapilavastu delivered his eloquent discourse before an audience of faithful Buddhists at Tokio in Japan.
Let us hope that the Indian and Nepalese Govern- ments will unite their forces in friendly rivalry, not, as it has been supposed, to dig up hidden treasures, but to lay bare by an army of spades whatever there may still be left of the soil once trodden by the feet of Buddha, and ornamented in the third century b.c. by the monuments erected by the Constantine of Buddhism, by Asoka, the grandson of Sandrokyptos. the ally of Alexander the Great.
MOHAMMEDANISM AND CHRISTIANITY1.
IT is at first a strange, but a decidedly pleasant, sensation when we live in the midst of a Turkish population to find how, on all ordinary subjects, their feelings are our feelings, and their thoughts our thoughts, and their motives our motives. They are doing what is right and what is wrong “veiy much as we do. They are satisfied with themselves and ashamed of themselves just as we are.
When they speak about religion, which they do rarely, they will speak of God just as we do, as the Lord and Governor of the universe ; as just and right- eous, yet always merciful ; and they will act as if they were strongly convinced that virtue will be rewarded and vice punished either in this life or in the life to come. They have a very strict regard for truth, and will respond to our confidence by equal confidence. Are these, then, the Turks, infidels, and heretics, we ask ourselves, for whom we used to pray ? Is their religion false while ours is true ; is theii morality corrupt while ours is pure?
Their customs and social habits are no doubt different from ours, but they hardly ever become obtrusive or offensive to others. 11 their life under its good and its evil aspects may be taken as the
1 Nineteenth Century, February, 1894.
MOHAMMEDANISM AND CHRISTIANITY. 241
result of their religion, we shall have to confess that these Turks and infidels and heretics really excel us on several very important points. The most impor- tant is that of sobriety. There is no force used to prevent drinking ; and I am sorry to say that the upper classes, which everywhere abound in black sheep, are certainly no longer total abstainers. But the middle and lower classes are ‘ free, and yet sober.’ If it is true, as a well-known English judge declared, that nearly all our crimes can be traced back to drunkenness, how can we help regretting that our religion and our clergy should not have been able to exercise the same salutary influence on the people as the Koran and the Ulemahs! How can we help wishing that they would teach us how to produce the same results in Christendom which they have pro- duced during the 1,273 years that their religion has existed and has quickened the most torpid and lifeless parts of the world !
There is another point on which it is more difficult for strangers to form a decided opinion, but, if I may trust my Turkish friends, no Turkish Mohammedan woman leads an openly immoral life. Certainly such sights as may be seen in many European capitals are not to be seen at Constantinople. If the Moham- medan religion can produce two such results — and it seems hardly honest to ascribe all that is good in Mohammedan countries to other causes, such as climate or blood, and not to their religion — if it can cure these two cancers that are eating into the flesh of our modern society, drunkenness and immorality, it would seem to deserve a higher regard and a more careful examination than it has generally received