Book Title: Essays Lectures on Religion of Hindu Vol 02
Author(s): H H Wilson
Publisher: Trubner and Company London

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Page 334
________________ 324 tions; the Tibetan, Mongolian, Chinese, Cingalese, Burman, and Siamese books, are all declaredly translations of works written in the language of India— that which is commonly called Fan, or more correctly Fan-lan-mo, or "the language of the Brahmans"; and then comes the question, to what language does that term apply? does it mean Sanskrit or does it mean Páli? involving also the question of the priority and originality of the works written in those languages respectively; the Sanskrit works as they have come into our hands being found almost exclusively in Nepal, those in Páli being obtained chiefly from Ceylon and Ava. BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM. Until very lately, the language designated by the Chinese Fan was enveloped in some uncertainty. Fa Hian in the fourth century takes with him Fan books not only from India but from Ceylon, and the latter it has been concluded were Páli. No Sanskrit Buddhist works, as far as we yet know, have been met with in the south any more than Páli works in the north, although Sanskrit works are not unfrequent in Ceylon in the present day. The mystery, however, is now cleared up. In the life and travels of Hiuan Tsang, written by two of his scholars and translated from the Chinese by M. Julien, the matter is placed beyond all dispute by the description and by the examples which the Chinese traveller gives of the construction of the Fan language, in which he was himself a proficient, having been engaged many years in the study whilst in India, and in translating from

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