is by M.E. Foucaux, reflects high
credit on that distinguished scholar, and on the Government which
supports these studies in the most liberal and enlightened spirit. The
intellectual intercourse between the Indian peninsula and the northern
continent of Asia remained uninterrupted for many centuries. Missions
were sent from China to India, to report on the political and
geographical state of the country, but the chief object of interest
which attracted public embassies and private pilgrims across the
Himalayan mountains was the religion of Buddha. About three hundred
years after the public recognition of Buddhism by the Emperor Ming-ti,
the great stream of Buddhist pilgrims began to flow from China to
India. The first account which we possess of these pilgrimages refers
to the travels of Fahian, who visited India towards the end of the
fourth century. His travels have been translated by Remusat, but M.
Julien promises a new and more correct translation. After Fahian, we
have the travels of Hoei-seng and Song-yun, who were sent to India, in
518, by command of the Empress, with a view of collecting sacred books
and relics. Of Hiouen-thsang, who follows next in time, we possess, at
present, eight out of twelve books; and there is reason to hope that
the last four books of his Journal will soon follow in M. Julien's
translation.[82] After Hiouen-thsang, the chief works of Chinese
pilgrims are the 'Itineraries' of the fifty-six monks, published in
730, and the travels of Khi-nie, who visited India in 964, at the head
of three hundred pilgrims. India was for a time the Holy Land of
China. There lay the scene of the life and death of the great teacher;
there were the monuments commemorating the chief events of his life;
there the shrines where his relics might be worshipped; there the
monasteries where tradition had preserved his sayings and his doings;
there the books where his doctrine might be studied in its original
purity; there the schools where the tenets of different sects which
had sprung up in the course of time might best be acquired.

[Footnote 80: 'Lalita-Vistara,' p. 17.]

[Footnote 81: Two parts of the Sanskrit text have been published in
the 'Bibliotheca Indica.']

[Footnote 82: They have since been published.]

Some of the pilgrims and envoys have left us accounts of their
travels, and, in the absence of anything like an historical literature
in India itself, these Chinese works are of the utmost importan