eptible, especially in the labours of Hsuan
Chuang and I-Ching. They attempt to give the religious public not only
complete works in place of extracts and compendiums, but also to
select the most authoritative texts among the many current in India.
Thus, though many translations had appeared under the name of
Prajnaparamita, Hsuan Chuang filled 600 fasciculi with a new rendering
of the gigantic treatise. I-Ching supplemented the already bulky
library of Vinaya works with versions of the Mulasarvastivadin
recension and many auxiliary texts.

Amogha (Pu-K'ung) whose literary labours extended from 746 to 774 A.D.
is a convenient figure to mark the beginning of the next and last
period, although some of its characteristics appear a little earlier.
They are that no more translations are made from the great Buddhist
classics--partly no doubt because they had all been translated
already, well or ill--but that renderings of works described as
Dharani or Tantra pullulate and multiply. Though this literature
deserves such epithets as decadent and superstitious, yet it would
appear that Indian Tantras of the worst class were not palatable to
the Chinese.

4

The Chinese Tripitaka is of great importance for the literary history
of Buddhism, but the material which it offers for investigation is
superabundant and the work yet done is small. We are confronted by
such questions as, can we accept the dates assigned to the
translators, can we assume that, if the Chinese translations or
transliterations correspond with Indian titles, the works are the
same, and if the works are professedly the same, can we assume that
the Chinese text is a correct presentment of the Indian original?

The dates assigned to the translators offer little ground for
scepticism. The exactitude of the Chinese in such matters is well
attested, and there is a general agreement between several authorities
such as the Catalogues of the Tripitaka, the memoirs known as
Kao-Seng Chuan with their continuations, and the chapter on Buddhist
books in the Sui annals. There are no signs of a desire to claim
improbable accuracy or improbable antiquity. Many works are said to be
by unknown translators, doubtful authorship is frankly discussed, and
the movement of literature and thought indicated is what we should
expect. We have first fragmentary and incomplete translations
belonging to both the Maha and Hinayana: then a series of more
complete translations beginning a