At the time of Plato and Aristotle a vague notion was current in Greece that India, as well as Egypt, was the birthplace of matchless learning, only it was not known in what this learning consisted, and even the name of the Vedas (the most ancient collection of sacred writings of the Hindoos) was unknown to the philosophers. The first Christian writers who mentioned the religions of India, and who knew up to a certain point how to distinguish Brahminism from Buddhism, never quoted the Vedas; this name is first used by some Chinese converts to Buddhism, at the beginning of the Christian era, who had undertaken a pilgrimage to India, considered by them as a holy land. In the sixteenth century Francis Xavier went there as a missionary, but without knowing Sanscrit; in the seventeenth century Roberto de Nobili, another missionary, acquired the language, and caused a compilation to be made of Hindoo and Christian doctrines. It was not well done; the French translation was sent to Voltaire, who praised it and spoke of it as the most precious gift for which the West had ever been indebted to the East. The Père Calmette, who had heard of the importance of the Vedas, was the first European to obtain authentic fragments, but these attracted little attention in Europe. In the early part of the nineteenth century some members of the Asiatic Society residing in Calcutta discovered a collection of Sanscrit MSS., amongst them some portions of the laws of Manu, two epic poems, the Râmayana and the Mahâbhârata, some philosophical treatises, works on astronomy and medicine, plays and fables. These works possessed great interest for those scholars who were occupied with the study of humanity, such as Herder, Schlegel, Goethe, and Humboldt. For the most part the preconceived ideas with which these literary men received them tended to diminish the benefit to be derived from them to a great extent, as they endeavoured--consistently with the spirit of the time--to establish the identity of thought running through the sacred literature of the Hindoos and the Bible. They also sought to point out the supposed connection between the historical recitals of the Old Testament, the Indian legends, and the Greek and Latin mythologies. Certain MSS. containing passages from the sacred code of the Hindoos having been translated by Anquetil Duperron, Schopenhauer drew from it the foundations of his own philosophical belief; nothing less than the genius of this German scholar would have sufficed for the presentation of the sublime truths which the original contained, by means of this very defective translation. One of the first historiographers of Buddhism was the Abbé Barthelemy Saint-Hilaire, but yet his labours have not served to raise the veil hiding the true meaning of the Brahman writings, for without the knowledge of the early Sanscrit, it was not possible to seize the inner meaning of a literature which the sages of India had required fifteen centuries to complete.