0 days in a lunar year, the eight years would
give him 2880 days. Deduct from this 384 holidays, and you get 2496
working days during the eight years. If you divide the number of
lines, 30,000, by the number of working days, you get about twelve
lines to be learned each day, though much time is taken up, in
addition, for practising and rehearsing what has been learned before.

Now this is the state of things at present, though I doubt whether it
will last much longer, and I always impress on my friends in India,
and therefore impress on those also who will soon be settled as civil
servants in India, the duty of trying to learn all that can still be
learned from those living libraries. Much ancient Sanskrit lore will
be lost forever when that race of _S_rotriyas becomes extinct.

But now let us look back. About a thousand years ago a Chinese of the
name of I-tsing, a Buddhist, went to India to learn Sanskrit, in order
to be able to translate some of the sacred books of his own religion,
which were originally written in Sanskrit, into Chinese. He left China
in 671, arrived at Tamralipti in India in 673, and went to the great
College and Monastery of Nalanda, where he studied Sanskrit. He
returned to China in 695, and died in 703.[271]

In one of his works which we still possess in Chinese, he gives an
account of what he saw in India, not only among his own
co-religionists, the Buddhists, but likewise among the Brahmans.[272]

Of the Buddhist priests he says that after they have learned to recite
the five and the ten precepts, they are taught the 400 hymns of
Mat_rik_eta, and afterward the 150 hymns of the same poet. When they
are able to recite these, they begin the study of the Sutras of their
Sacred Canon. They also learn by heart the _G_atakamala,[273] which
gives an account of Buddha in former states of existence. Speaking of
what he calls the islands of the Southern Sea, which he visited after
leaving India, I-tsing says: "There are more than ten islands in the
South Sea. There both priests and laymen recite the _G_atakamala, as
they recite the hymns mentioned before; but it has not yet been
translated into Chinese."

One of these stories, he proceeds to say, was versified by a king
(_K_ie-zhih) and set to music, and was performed before the public
with a band and dancing--evidently a Buddhist mystery play.

I-tsing then gives a short account of the system of education.
Children, he says, learn the forty-nine l