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60 LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION. read the whole of the canonical books of the Buddhist Church, to say nothing of their commentaries or later treatises?
According to a tradition preserved by the Buddhist schools of the South and of the North, the sacred canon comprised originally 80,000 or 84,000 tracts, but most of them were lost, so that there remained only 6,000? According to a statement in the Saddharmâlankâra, the text and commentary of the Buddhist canon contain together 29,368,000 letters, while the English translation of the Bible is said to contain 3,567,180 letters, vowels being here counted as separate from the consonants.
At present there exist two sacred canons of Buddhist writings, that of the South, in Pali, and that of the North, in Sanskrit. The Buddhist canon in Pâli has been estimated as twice as large as the Bible, though in an English translation it would probably be four times as large?. Spence Hardy gave the number of stanzas as 275,250 for the Pâli canon, and as 361,550 for its commentary, and by stanza he meant a line of 32 syllables.
The Buddhist canon in Sanskrit consists of what is called the 'Nine Dharmas 3.' In its Tibetan translation that canon, divided into two collections, the Kanjur and Tanjur, numbers 325 volumes folio, each weighing in the Pekin edition from four to five pounds.
Besides these two canons, there is another collateral branch, the canon of the Gainas. The Gainas trace
1 See Burnouf, Introduction à l'histoire du Buddhisine indien,' p. 37. Selected Essays,' ii. p. 170.
2.Selected Essays,' ii. p. 179. 3 Ibid. p. 183.
