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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
[JANUARY 5, 1872.
ancient historical and religious records, Mr. Davids deserves the encouragement and approbation of all who take an interest in these studies; and the Council have no doubt but that the Ceylon Government, which has recently shown its liberality by granting a sum of money for the searching for, and procuring of MSS., will lend its full support and countenance to so promising and well-timed an undertaking.
As regards our sister societies on the Continent, the Asiatic Society of Paris and the German Oriental Society, their scientific researches have lost nothing of their wanted vigour and efficiency, and their
publications embody, as usual, a goodly amount of useful information in the various branches of Oriental knowledge.
The number of the American Oriental Society's Journal, issued during the last year, contains the greater part of an important publication, viz., of Professor W. D. Whitney's Taittirîya Prátishâkhya, the Sanskrit Text and Commentary, with a translation of the former, and copious annotations. A new number of the same Journal, which will contain the concluding part of this work, will be issued in the course oi the summer.
ᎡEVIEWS. A CATENA OY BUDDHIST SCRIPTURES. FROM THE CHI- ries copies of these invaluable works, Buddhist
NESE. By Samuel Beal, Chaplain R.N., Author of Budd- books, we learn, began to be translated into Chinese hist Pilgrims," &c., (pp. 436, 8vo.) London, Trubner
so early as the middle of our first century A.D. & Co., 1871.
" It is one of the singular coincidences which ocOr this extensive store-house of Buddhist lore, cur in such abundance, between the history of Buddit is our duty at present merely to give a brief hism and the Christian religion, that whilst the outline. Some of the translations here published influence of the latter was leavening the Western have already appeared in the Journal of the Royal world, the knowledge of the former was being carAsiatic Society. Having revised these, and added ried by missionariesas zealous, though not so well others to complete what be considers to be the instructed, as the followers of St. Paul-into the cycle of the Buddhist development, the author now vast empire beyond the Eastern deserts; where it publishes the entire series as a contribution towards took root, long before Germany or England had be& more general acquaintance with Buddhist litera- como Christian, and has flourished ever since." The tare in China. It seems that the Buddhist Canon first complete edition of the Chinese Buddhist Canon in that country, as was arranged between the years. dates merely from the seventh century. It was 67 and 1285, A.D., includes 1440 distinct works prepared under the direction of Tae Tsung, the secomprising 5586 books. These however form only cond emperor of the Tang dynasty, who reigned an insignificant portion of the whole Buddhist liter- from 627 to 650 A.D. and it was published by his ature which is spread throughout the empire, of successor Kaon-Tsung. Yung-loh, the third emperor which, hitherto the majority, or nearly all of English of the Ming dynasty, in the year 1410, prepared a people, have been content to remain ignorant. In second and much enlarged edition of the Canon, these circumstances, the author may well think that writing a royal preface to it. This is called the it is difficult to understand how we can claim to have Southern Edition-nan-t'sang. Wan-leih the thirany precise idea of the religious condition of the teenth emperor of the same dynasty, caused the Chinese, people, or even to appreciate the phraseo- publication of a third edition about 1590 A.D., logy met with in their ordinary books. The book, which goes by the name of the Northern Collection, we are told, and we can well believe it, represents or peh-t'sang, and which was renewed and enlarged the results of some years of patient labour; and in 1723, during the reign of Keen-lung, under the that whatever be its fate, the author, or rather edi- auspices of a former governor of Cheh-kiang, who tor, has found his reward in the delight which the wrote a preface to the catalogue of works containstudy has afforded him, and in the insight which he ed in it, and added & reprint of the royal preface has thereby gained into the character of one of to the first complete edition written by Tae-Tsung. "the most wonderful movements of the human " It is calculated that the whole work of the Indian mind in the direction of Spiritual Truth, which is translators in China, together with that of Hiuentraced in the history of Buddhism." Much has Thsang, amounts to about seven hundred times the been done within the last thirty years to elucidate
size of the New Testament. The section known as Buddhist history and philosophy, and it is certainly
the Mahaprajnå Paramita alone, is eighty times as extraordinary, that little or no use has been made large as the New Testament, and was prepared of the Buddhist Canon as it is accepted in China. by Hiuen-Thsang, without abbreviation, from the In many of the large monasteries, there are to be Sanskrit, embracing two hundred thousand shlokas." found not only complete editions of the Buddhist It is certainly singular, that with a knowledge of Scriptures in the vernacular, but also the Sanskrit this large and complete collection of the Buddhist originals from which the Chinese version was made. Scriptures, so little use has been made of it by misYet no effort has hitherto been made, either in this sionaries and scholars, with the exception of M. country or elsewhere, to secure for onr great libra- I Wassiliev. "It would be wrong to state," says Mr.
