' He might have added tonsure, relics, and the
confessional.]

Mr. Hodgson himself gave to the world a number of valuable essays written
on the spot, and afterwards collected under the title of 'Illustrations of
the Literature and Religion of the Buddhists,' Serampore, 1841. He
established the important fact, in accordance with the traditions of the
priests of Nepal, that some of the Sanskrit documents which he recovered
had existed in the monasteries of Nepal ever since the second century of
our era, and that the whole of that collection had, five or six hundred
years later, when Buddhism became definitely established in Tibet, been
translated into the language of that country. As the art of printing had
been introduced from China into Tibet, there was less difficulty in
procuring complete copies of the Tibetan translation of the Buddhist canon.
The real difficulty was to find a person acquainted with the language. By a
fortunate concurrence of circumstances, however, it so happened that about
the same time when Mr. Hodgson's discoveries began to attract the attention
of Oriental scholars at Calcutta, a Hungarian, of the name of Alexander
Csoma de Koeroes, arrived there. He had made his way from Hungary to Tibet on
foot, without any means of his own, and with the sole object of discovering
somewhere in Central Asia the native home of the Hungarians. Arrived in
Tibet, his enthusiasm found a new vent in acquiring a language which no
European before his time had mastered, and in exploring the vast collection
of the canonical books of the Buddhists, preserved in that language. Though
he arrived at Calcutta almost without a penny, he met with a hearty welcome
from the members of the Asiatic Society, and was enabled with their
assistance to publish the results of his extraordinary researches. People
have complained of the length of the sacred books of other nations, but
there are none that approach in bulk to the sacred canon of the Tibetans.
It consists of two collections, commonly called the Kanjur and Tanjur. The
proper spelling of their names is Bkah-hgyur, pronounced Kah-gyur, and
Bstan-hgyur, pronounced Tan-gyur. The Kanjur consists, in its different
editions, of 100, 102, or 108 volumes folio. It comprises 1083 distinct
works. The Tanjur consists of 225 volumes folio, each weighing from four to
five pounds in the edition of Peking. Editions of this colossal code were
printed at Peking, Lhassa, and other places. The edit