Chips from a German Workshop, Volume 1: Essays on the Science of ReligionMüller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Religion
Chips from a German Workshop, Volume 1: Essays on the Science of Religion
Müller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Comparative linguistics; Folklore; Literature -- History and criticism; Mythology; Religions
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 Tsaï-in and other high
officials to India, in order to study there the doctrine of Buddha.
They engaged the services of two learned Buddhists, Matânga 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 Paris by M.E. Foucaux, reflects high
credit on that distinguished scholar, and on the Government which
supports these studies in the most liberal and enlightened spirit. The
intellectual intercourse between the Indian peninsula and the northern
continent of Asia remained uninterrupted for many centuries. Missions
were sent from China to India, to report on the political and
geographical state of the country, but the chief object of interest
which attracted public embassies and private pilgrims across the
Himalayan mountains was the religion of Buddha. About three hundred
years after the public recognition of Buddhism by the Emperor Ming-ti,
the great stream of Buddhist pilgrims began to flow from China to
India. The first account which we possess of these pilgrimages refers
to the travels of Fahian, who visited India towards the end of the
fourth century. His travels have been translated by Rémusat, but M.
Julien promises a new and more correct translation. After Fahian, we
have the travels of Hoei-seng and Song-yun, who were sent to India, in
518, by command of the Empress, with a view of collecting sacred books
and relics. Of Hiouen-thsang, who follows next in time, we possess, at
present, eight out of twelve books; and there is reason to hope that
the last four books of his Journal will soon follow in M. Julien's
translation.[82] After Hiouen-thsang, the chief works of Chinese
pilgrims are the 'Itineraries' of the fifty-six monks, published in
730, and the travels of Khi-nie, who visited India in 964, at the head
of three hundred pilgrims. India was for a time the Holy Land of
China. There lay the scene of the life and death of the great teacher;
there were the monuments commemorating the chief events of his life;
there the shrines where his relics might be worshipped; there the
monasteries where tradition had preserved his sayings and his doings;
there the books where his doctrine might be studied in its original
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