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BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM.
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therefore, no purpose of proposing to you in the views I am about to take, that you should consider them as final; my only intention is to bring the subject before you as it stands at present, with some of that additional elucidation which is derivable from the many valuable publications that have recently appeared, and particularly from the learned and authentic investigations of the late Eugène Burnouf, the only scholar as yet who has combined a knowledge of Sanskrit with that of Páli and Tibetan, and has been equally familiar with the Buddhist authorities of the north and south of India: unfortunately he has been lost to us before he had gone through the wide circuit of research which he had contemplated, and which he only was competent to have traversed; and although he has accomplished more than any other scholar, more than it would seem possible for any human ability and industry to have achieved, it is to be deeply and for ever regretted that his life was not spared to have effected all he had intended, and for which he was collecting, and had collected, many valuable and abundant materials. Still he has left us, in his "Introduction à l'Histoire du Bouddhisme", and in his posthumous work "Le Lotus de la Bonne Loi”, an immense mass of authentic information which was not formerly within our reach, and which must contribute effectually to rationalize the speculations that may be hazarded in future on Buddha and his faith. Some of those which have been started by the erudition and ingenuity of the learned in past ages will
