On Sanskrit Texts Discovered In Japan.
Read At The Meeting Of The Royal Asiatic Society, February 16, 1880.
It is probably in the recollection of some of the senior members of this Society how wide and deep an interest was excited in the year 1853 by the publication of Stanislas Julien's translation of the “Life and Travels of Hiouen-thsang.” The account given by an eye-witness of the religious, social, political, and literary state of India at the beginning of the seventh century of our era was like a rocket, carrying a rope to a whole crew of struggling scholars, on the point of being drowned in the sea of Indian chronology; and the rope was eagerly grasped by all, whether their special object was the history of Indian religion, or the history of Indian literature, architecture, or politics. While many books on Indian literature, published five-and-twenty years ago, are now put aside and forgotten, Julien's three volumes of Hiouen-thsang still maintain a fresh interest, and supply new subjects for discussion, as may be seen even in the last number of the Journal of your Society.
I had the honor and pleasure of working with Stanislas Julien, when he was compiling those large lists of Sanskrit and Chinese words which formed [pg 188] the foundation of his translation of Hiouen-thsang, and enabled him in his classical work, the “Méthode pour déchiffrer et transcrire les noms Sanskrits” (1861), to solve a riddle which had puzzled Oriental scholars for a long time—viz., how it happened that the original Sanskrit names had been so completely disguised and rendered almost unrecognizable in the Chinese translations of Sanskrit texts, and how they could be restored to their original form.
I had likewise the honor and pleasure of working with your late President, Professor H. H. Wilson, when, after reading Julien's works, he conceived the idea that some of the original Sanskrit texts of which the Chinese translations had been recovered might still be found in the monasteries of China. His influential position as President of your Society, and his personal relations with Sir John Bowring, then English Resident in China, enabled him to set in motion a powerful machinery for attaining his object; and if you look back some five-and-twenty years, you will find in your Journal a full account of the correspondence that passed between Professor Wilson, Sir J. Bowring, and Dr. Edkins, on the search after Sanskrit MSS. in the temples or monasteries of China.
On February 15, 1854, Professor Wilson writes from Oxford to Sir John Bowring:—
“I send you herewith a list of the Sanskrit works carried to China by Hwen Tsang in the middle of the seventh century, and in great part translated by him, or under his supervision, into Chinese. If any of them, especially the originals, should be still in existence, you would do good service to Sanskrit literature and to the history of Buddhism by procuring copies.”
Chinese Translators of Sanskrit Texts.
It is a well-known fact that, even long before the time of Hiouen-thsang—that is, long before the seventh century of our era—large numbers of Sanskrit MSS. had been exported to China. These literary exportations began as early as the first century A. D. When we read for the first time of commissioners being sent to India by Ming-ti, the Emperor of China, the second sovereign of the Eastern Han dynasty, about 62 or 65 A. D., we are told that they returned to China with a white horse, carrying books and images.[72] And the account proceeds to state that “these books still remain, and are reverenced and worshipped.”
From that time, when Buddhism was first officially recognized in China,[73] there is an almost unbroken succession of importers and translators of Buddhist, in some cases of Brahmanic texts also, till we come to the two famous expeditions, the one undertaken by Fa-hian in 400-415, the other by Hiouen-thsang, 629-645 A. D. Fa-hian's Travels were translated into French by Abel Rémusat (1836), into English by Mr. Beal (1869). Hiouen-thsang's Travels are well known through Stanislas Julien's admirable translation. Of Hiouen-thsang we are told that he brought back from India no less than 520 fasciculi, or 657 separate works, which had to be carried by twenty-two horses.[74] He translated, or had translated, 740 works, forming 1,335 fasciculi.