above, the stars cannot spare the moon." He then bowed to the assembly, and ascended the rostrum. He began: "Thus have I heard--At a certain time, when Buddha was a certain place, he delivered such instructions." In each instance Kashiapa asked the Bikshus if such were really the words of Buddha, and they all replied, "They were just these words."

A similar account is retained by the Singhalese of the origin of the Sutras. The Vinaya division of the books was, according to their traditions, prepared by Upali, and the Shastras or Abhidharma by Kashiapa.

So far as this threefold arrangement of the books, the Northern and Southern Buddhists are at one. But for the literature of the North a further division must now be noticed. The distinction of Mahayana (Ta-ch'eng), or "Great Development," and Hinayana (Siau-ch'eng), or "Lesser Development," runs through the works of all the three classes above described. The works of the "Lesser Development" (or vehicle) there can be little doubt are the original books of Buddha, for their dogmas and legends agree with the religion as it is still professed in Ceylon and by all the Southern Buddhists. The Mahayana is, on the other hand, unknown there. Burnouf attributes the books of the Lesser Development to the first Buddhist council already described, and those of the Greater Development to another held a little more than four hundred years after Shakyamuni's death. It is his opinion that the Mahayana books were composed in Cashmere, in the reign of Kanishka, a king of Northern India (Cabul). A council--the third or fourth--was then called to decide what books should be canonical, and it was then that these extensive additions to the Tripitaka or "Three collections" were agreed upon. The same learned writer

interposes another council a hundred and ten years after the first, in the reign of Ashoka also called Piyadasi. This prince, from his extensive empire and his patronage of Buddhism, is called a wheel-king, i.e., a Buddhist king to whom the world is subject, and who causes the wheel of the holy doctrine to be kept turning.

There need be no hesitation in adopting Burnouf's view, for we know the names and many of the writings of influential Buddhists who lived at the time and place indicated, and whose opinions and qualifications were such as to render them fitted for the authorship of the Ta-ch'eng or "Mahayana" books, and much presumptive evidence of the fact will be found to exist.