uage; he
had to study the Buddhist literature written in Sanskrit, Pali,
Tibetan, Mongolian, and Chinese. He had to make vast indices of every
proper name connected with Buddhism. Thus only could he shape his own
tools, and accomplish what at last he did accomplish. Most persons
will remember the interest with which the travels of M.M. Huc and
Gabet were read a few years ago, though these two adventurous
missionaries were obliged to renounce their original intention of
entering India by way of China and Tibet, and were not allowed to
proceed beyond the famous capital of Lhassa. If, then, it be
considered that there was a traveller who had made a similar journey
twelve hundred years earlier--who had succeeded in crossing the
deserts and mountain passes which separate China from India--who had
visited the principal cities of the Indian Peninsula, at a time of
which we have no information, from native or foreign sources, as to
the state of that country--who had learned Sanskrit, and made a large
collection of Buddhist works--who had carried on public disputations
with the most eminent philosophers and theologians of the day--who had
translated the most important works on Buddhism from Sanskrit into
Chinese, and left an account of his travels, which still existed in
the libraries of China--nay, which had been actually printed and
published--we may well imagine the impatience with which all scholars
interested in the ancient history of India, and in the subject of
Buddhism, looked forward to the publication of so important a work.
Hiouen-thsang's name had first been mentioned in Europe by Abel
Remusat and Klaproth. They had discovered some fragments of his
travels in a Chinese work on foreign countries and foreign nations.
Remusat wrote to China to procure, if possible, a complete copy of
Hiouen-thsang's works. He was informed by Morrison that they were out
of print. Still, the few specimens which he had given at the end of
his translation of the 'Foe Koue Ki' had whetted the appetite of
Oriental scholars. M. Stanislas Julien succeeded in procuring a copy
of Hiouen-thsang in 1838; and after nearly twenty years spent in
preparing a translation of the Chinese traveller, his version is now
before us. If there are but few who know the difficulty of a work like
that of M. Stanislas Julien, it becomes their duty to speak out,
though, after all, perhaps the most intelligible eulogium would be,
that in a branch of study where there