The sacred canon of the Buddhists is called the Tripi_t_aka, i. e. the three baskets. The first basket contains all that has reference to morality, or Vinaya; the second contains the Sûtras, i. e. the discourses of Buddha; the third includes all works treating of dogmatic philosophy or metaphysics. The second and third baskets are sometimes comprehended under the general name of Dharma, or law, and it has become usual to apply to the third basket the name of Abhidharma, or by-law. The first and second pi_t_akas contain each five separate works; the third contains seven. M. Grimblot has secured MSS. of nearly every one of these works, and he has likewise brought home copies of the famous commentaries of Buddhaghosha. These commentaries are of great importance; for although Buddhaghosha lived as late as 430 A.D., he is supposed to have been the translator of more ancient commentaries, brought in 316 B.C. to Ceylon from Magadha by Mahinda, the son of A_s_oka, translated by him from Pâli into Singhalese, and retranslated by Buddhaghosha into Pâli, the original language both of the canonical books and of their commentaries. Whether historical criticism will allow to the commentaries of Buddhaghosha the authority due to documents of the fourth century before Christ, is a question that has yet to be settled. But even as a collector of earlier traditions and as a writer of the fifth century after Christ, his authority would be considerable with regard to the solution of some of the most important problems of Indian history and chronology. Some scholars who have written on the history of Buddhism have clearly shown too strong an inclination to treat the statements contained in the commentaries of Buddhaghosha as purely historical, forgetting the great interval of time by which he is separated from the events which he relates. No doubt if it could be proved that Buddhaghosha's works were literal translations of the so-called Attakathâs or commentaries brought by Mahinda to Ceylon, this would considerably enhance their historical value. But the whole account of these translations rests on tradition, and if we consider the extraordinary precautions taken, according to tradition, by the LXX translators of the Old Testament, and then observe the discrepancies between the chronology of the Septuagint and that of the Hebrew text, we shall be better able to appreciate the risk of trusting to Oriental translations, even to those that pretend to be literal. The idea of a faithful literal translation seems altogether foreign to Oriental minds. Granted that Mahinda translated the original Pâli commentaries into Singhalese, there was nothing to restrain him from inserting anything that he thought likely to be useful to his new converts. Granted that Buddhaghosha translated these translations back into Pâli, why should he not have incorporated any facts that were then believed in and had been handed down by tradition from generation to