he faith of others.'

[Footnote 76: 'Mahavanso,' ed. G. Turnour, Ceylon, 1837, p. 71.]

Those who have no time to read the voluminous works of the late E.
Burnouf on Buddhism, his 'Introduction a l'Histoire du Buddhisme,' and
his translation of 'Le Lotus de la bonne Loi,' will find a very
interesting and lucid account of these councils, and edicts, and
missions, and the history of Buddhism in general, in a work lately
published by Mrs. Speir, 'Life in Ancient India.' Buddhism spread in
the south to Ceylon, in the north to Kashmir, the Himalayan countries,
Tibet, and China. One Buddhist missionary is mentioned in the Chinese
annals as early as 217 B.C.;[77] and about the year 120 B.C. a Chinese
General, after defeating the barbarous tribes north of the Desert of
Gobi, brought back as a trophy a golden statue, the statue of
Buddha.[78] It was not, however, till the year 65 A.D. that Buddhism
was officially recognised by the Emperor Ming-ti[79] as a third state
religion in China. Ever since, it has shared equal honours with the
doctrines of Confucius and Lao-tse, in the Celestial Empire, and it is
but lately that these three established religions have had to fear the
encroachments of a new rival in the creed of the Chief of the rebels.

[Footnote 77: See 'Foe Koue Ki,' p. 41, and xxxviii. preface.]

[Footnote 78: See 'Foe Koue Ki,' p. 41.]

[Footnote 79: 'Lalita-Vistara,' ed. Foucaux, p. xvii. n.]

After Buddhism had been introduced into China, the first care of its
teachers was to translate the sacred works from Sanskrit, in which
they were originally written, into Chinese. We read of the Emperor
Ming-ti,[80] of the dynasty of Han, sending Tsai-in and other high
officials to India, in order to study there the doctrine of Buddha.
They engaged the services of two learned Buddhists, Matanga and
Tchou-fa-lan, and some of the most important Buddhist works were
translated by them into Chinese. 'The Life of Buddha,' the
'Lalita-Vistara,'[81] a Sanskrit work which, on account of its style
and language, had been referred by Oriental scholars to a much more
modern period of Indian literature, can now safely be ascribed to an
ante-Christian era, if, as we are told by Chinese scholars, it was
translated from Sanskrit into Chinese, as one of the canonical books
of Buddhism, as early as the year 76 A.D. The same work was translated
also into Tibetan; and an edition of it--the first Tibetan work
printed in Europe--published in Par