I said a few more words expressive of my hope that the ‘Life of Dr. Duff’[1] would be read and pondered by every student destined for work of any kind in our Indian empire, and to that biography I refer all who are unacquainted with the particulars of the labours of a man to whom Scotland has assigned a place in the foremost rank of her most eminent Evangelists. I now proceed to explain the process by which these Lectures have gradually outgrown the limits required by the Duff Trustees. When I addressed myself to the carrying out of their wishes—communicated to me by Mr. W. Pirie Duff—I had no intention of undertaking more than a concise account of a subject which I had been studying for many years. I conceived it possible to compress into six Lectures a scholarly sketch of what may be called true Buddhism,—that is, the Buddhism of the Piṭakas or Pāli texts which are now being edited by the Pāli Text Society, and some of which have been translated in the ‘Sacred Books of the East.’ It soon, however, became apparent to me that to write an account of Buddhism which would be worthy of the great Indian missionary, I ought to exhibit it in its connexion with Brāhmanism and Hindūism and even with Jainism, and in its contrast with Christianity. Then, as I proceeded, I began to feel that to do justice to my subject I should be compelled to enlarge the range of my researches, so as to embrace some of the later phases and modern developments of Buddhism. This led me to undertake a more careful study of Koeppen’s Lamaismus than I had before thought necessary. Furthermore, I felt it my duty to study attentively numerous treatises on Northern Buddhism, which I had before read in a cursory manner. I even thought it incumbent on me to look a little into the Tibetan language, of which I was before wholly ignorant. I need scarcely explain further the process of expansion through which the present work has passed. A conviction took possession of my mind, that any endeavour to give even an outline of the whole subject of Buddhism in six Lectures, would be rather like the effort of a foolish man trying to paint a panorama of London on a sheet of note-paper. Hence the expansion of six Lectures into eighteen, and it will be seen at once that many of these eighteen are far too long to have been delivered _in extenso_. In point of fact, by an arrangement with the Trustees, only a certain portion of any Lecture was delivered orally. The present work is rather a treatise on Buddhism printed and published in memory of Dr. Duff. I need not encumber the Preface with a re-statement of the reasons which have made the elucidation of an intricate subject almost hopelessly difficult. They have been stated in the Introductory Lecture (pp. 13, 14). Moreover the plan of the present volume has been there set forth (see p. 17).