That the Veda is not quite a modern forgery can be proved, however, by more tangible evidence. Hiouen-thsang, a Buddhist pilgrim, who travelled from China to India in the years 629-645, and who, in his diary translated from Chinese into French by M. Stanislas Julien, gives the names of the four Vedas, mentions some grammatical forms peculiar to the Vedic Sanskrit, and states that at his time young Brahmans spent all their time, from the seventh to the thirtieth year of their age, in learning these sacred texts. At the time when Hiouen-thsang was travelling in India, Buddhism was clearly on the decline. But Buddhism was originally a reaction against Brahmanism, and chiefly against the exclusive privileges which the Brahmans claimed, and which from the beginning were represented by them as based on their revealed writings, the Vedas, and hence beyond the reach of human attacks. Buddhism, whatever the date of its founder, became the state religion of India under A_s_oka, the Constantine of India, in the middle of the third century B.C. This A_s_oka was the third king of a new dynasty founded by _K_andragupta, the well-known contemporary of Alexander and Seleucus, about 315 B.C. The preceding dynasty was that of the Nandas, and it is under this dynasty that the traditions of the Brahmans place a number of distinguished scholars whose treatises on the Veda we still possess, such as _S_aunaka, Kâtyâyana, Â_s_valâyana, and others. Their works, and others written with a similar object and in the same style, carry us back to about 600 B.C. This period of literature, which is called the Sûtra period, was preceded, as we saw, by another class of writings, the Brâhma_n_as, composed in a very prolix and tedious style, and containing lengthy lucubrations on the sacrifices and on the duties of the different classes of priests. Each of the three or four Vedas, or each of the three or four classes of priests, has its own Brâhma_n_as and its own Sûtras; and as the Brâhma_n_as are presupposed by the Sûtras, while no Sûtra is ever quoted by the Brâhma_n_as, it is clear that the period of the Brâhma_n_a literature must have preceded the period of the Sûtra literature. There are, however, old and new Brâhma_n_as, and there are in the Brâhma_n_as themselves long lists of teachers who handed down old Brâhma_n_as or composed new ones, so that it seems impossible to accommodate the whole of that literature in less than two centuries, from about 800 to 600 B.C. Before, however, a single Brâhma_n_a could have been composed, it was not only necessary that there should have been one collection of ancient hymns, like that contained in the ten books of the Rig-veda, but the three or four classes of priests must have been established, the officiating priests and the choristers must have had their special prayer-books, nay, these prayer-books must have undergone certain changes, because the Brâhma_n_as presuppose different texts, called sâkhâs,