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BUDDHA AND BUDDHISM.
relative chronology, from the imperfect means which are within our reach. Both sets of authorities imdoubtedly, Sanskrit and Páli, were in existence in the fifth and sixth centuries of our era. The Sanskrit works, according to the testimony of Chinese trayellers, were carried from India to China in very considerable numbers from a much earlier date; in one instance it is said two years before Christ, but it was not till after A.D. 76, the date of the introduction of Buddhism into China, that they were imported in any number, and not till the third and fourth centuries that they had become very numerous. In a Chinese history of celebrated Buddhist teachers, published between 502 and 556, and from which M. Julien has given us extracts, a Buddhist priest named Dharma, is said to have brought to China one hundred and sixty-five works, amongst which were several that may be readily identified with the Sanskrit works procured by Mr. Hodgson: we cannot hesitate, for example, to recognise in the Ching-fa-hua, meaning “The Flower of the right Law", the Sad Dharma Pundaríka, “Le Lotus de la bonne Loi”, which, as has been mentioned, was the last labour of M. Burnouf. Of this work repeated translations have been made into Chinese *, the first of which dates A. D. 280, whilst of the Lalita Vistara, or life of Šákya Muni, the earliest Chinese version was made between A.D. 70 - 76. We may be satisfied, therefore, that the
* [W. Wassiljew, der Buddhismus. 1860, I, 163. Burnouf, ntroduction, I, 8 f.]
