The first traveller of whom we have any record was a certain Chinese Buddhist monk named Fā-hien, who set out on a pilgrimage to India about the year 399 of our era, with the definite object of searching for and carrying back to China complete copies of the Vinaya or Rules of discipline for the Order. He wrote a very simple and straightforward account of his travels[67]—which lasted for fourteen years—and of his visits to all the spots in India held most sacred by Buddhists. He was followed by a Chinese traveller of less mark, named Sang Yun, who started about 518 A.D., and seems to have ended his journey at Peshawar, or at least not to have penetrated much further South. Peshawar, we know, was a great Buddhist centre, and there was a fine Stūpa there, containing the alms-bowl of Buddha. Then after another interval a much more celebrated Chinese pilgrim named Hiouen Thsang[68] started for India (A.D. 629-644). The narrative of his travels for about fifteen years is perhaps the best known and most commonly quoted of the three. In Chang Yueh’s preface[69] to these travels Hiouen Thsang is described as ‘a Doctor of the three Piṭakas, and is said to have translated 657 works from the original Sanskṛit. In all the districts through which he journeyed he learnt the dialects and investigated the deep secrets of religion.’ All three travellers give information in regard to the prevalence of Buddhism in India up to the seventh century of our era, and the narratives of two—Fā-hien and Hiouen Thsang—are invaluable for the light they throw on the changes which Buddhism underwent in the interval of their travels. Here and there the pilgrims exaggerate, especially when they venture on numerical statistics or write from hearsay; but on the whole their accounts may be accepted, and we learn that Hiouen Thsang found some monasteries in ruins which were flourishing in Fā-hien’s time, and that the Mahā-yāna had supplanted the earlier form of Buddhism, or rather co-existed with it in many parts of the South as well as of the North, and was to be found even in Ceylon[70]. And this brings us face to face with the greatest change of all—the total dying out of Buddhism in the place of its origin. How is it to be accounted for that no adherents of either the greater or lesser Buddhist systems—of either the Mahā-yāna or Hīna-yāna—are to be found in India at the present moment? The problem is difficult of solution, and I can only offer a few suggestions for its elucidation. In the first place, I think it may be confidently asserted that the disappearance of Buddhism from India was a very gradual process, and unattended by any serious or violent religious revolution. We have already alluded to the tolerant, liberal, and eclectic spirit which has characterized Buddhism ever since the period of its first promulgation at Benares.