within the reach of European scholars. Brian Houghton Hodgson was the British Resident in Nepaul in the early part of the present century, and he there succeeded in obtaining a large number of volumes in Sanskrit which he presented to the Asiatic Societies of London and Paris. To the latter he presented first twenty-four works, and subsequently sixty-four MSS,, being copies of works he had sent to the Asiatic Society in London. These books happily fell into the hands of one of the greatest of Sanskrit scholars, Eugené Burnouf, who, in his "History of Indian Buddhism," translated a sufficient number of them to serve as specimens. About the same time a zealous Hungarian, Csoma Körösirósi, undertook an adventurous journey into the heart of Asia, with a view of discovering the original stock of the Hungarian race. Failing in this object, he achieved another of greater value, that of unearthing the whole of the sacred books known in Thibet under the name of the Kahgyur. or Kan-gyur (properly bkah-hgyur), which is the Thibetan translation, in one hundred volumes, of the very works of which Hodgson in Nepaul had discovered the Sanskrit originals. Such is the nature of our guarantees for the authenticity of the text. Subdivision 1.—The Vinaya-Pitaka.
Let us proceed to consider in detail the division which stands first in the Buddhist classification, the Vinaya-Pitaka, or basketful of works on Discipline. These, according to Burnouf, are of very different ages, some being, from the details they furnish with reference to Sâkyamuni, his institutions and his surroundings, of very ancient date, and others, which relate events that did not occur till two hundred years or more after his death, belonging to a more recent period. One of the most instructive of tho legends which form the staple of the works on Discipline, is that of Pûrna. Only a brief extract of it can be attempted here.
Bhagavat (that is, the Lord, or Buddha) was at Srâvasti, in the garden of Anâthapindika. (Anâthapindika was a householder who had embraced the religion of the Buddha, and in whose garden he was accustomed to preach.) There resided at this time in the town of Surparaka a very wealthy house-
