Being myself convinced of the existence of old Indian MSS. in China, I lost no opportunity, during the last five-and-twenty years, of asking any friends of mine who went to China to look out for these treasures, but—with no result! Some years ago, however, Dr. Edkins, who had taken an active part in the search instituted by Professor Wilson and Sir J. Bowring, showed me a book which he had brought from Japan, and which contained a Chinese vocabulary with Sanskrit equivalents and a transliteration in Japanese. The Sanskrit is written in that peculiar alphabet which we find in the old MSS. of Nepâl, and which in China has been further modified, so as to give it an almost Chinese appearance. That MS. revived my hopes. If such a book was published in Japan, I concluded that there must have been a time when such a book was useful there—that is to say, when the Buddhists in Japan studied Sanskrit. Dr. Edkins kindly left the book with me, and though the Sanskrit portion was full of blunders, yet it enabled me to become accustomed to that peculiar alphabet in which the Sanskrit words are written. While I was looking forward to more information from Japan, good luck would have it that a young Buddhist priest, Mr. Bunyiu Nanjio, came to me from Japan, in order to learn Sanskrit and Pâli, and thus to be able in time to read the sacred writings of the Buddhists in their original language, and to compare them with the Chinese and Japanese translations now current in his country. After a time, another Buddhist priest, Mr. Kasawara, came to me for the same purpose, and both are now working very hard at learning Sanskrit. Japan is supposed to contain 34,388,504 inhabitants, all of whom, with the exception of about 1 or 200,000 followers of the Shintô religion,(121) are Buddhists, divided into ten principal sects, the sect to which Mr. Bunyiu Nanjio belongs being that of the Shinshiu. One of the first questions which I asked Mr. Bunyiu Nanjio, when he came to read Sanskrit with me, was about Sanskrit MSS. in Japan. I showed him the Chinese-Sanskrit-Japanese Vocabulary which Dr. Edkins had left with me, and he soon admitted that Sanskrit texts in the same alphabet might be found in Japan, or at all events in China. He wrote home to his friends, and after waiting for some time, he brought me in December last a book which a Japanese scholar, Shuntai Ishikawa, had sent to me, and which he wished me to correct, and then to send back to him to Japan. I did not see at once the importance of the book. But when I came to read the introductory formula, Evam mayâ srutam, “Thus by me it has been heard,” the typical beginning of the Buddhist Sûtras, my eyes were opened. Here, then, was what I had so long been looking forward to—a Sanskrit text, carried from India to China, from China to Japan, written in the peculiar Nepalese alphabet, with a Chinese translation, and a transliteration in Japanese. Of course, it is a copy only, not an original