Many productions of less importance, probably amounting to several hundreds in number, by native authors, are commonly read. In an estimate of the extent of Chinese Buddhist literature these should be included. They consist of popular treatises, with anecdotes of the power of the Buddhas and Bodhisattwas, and the benefits of chanting the sacred books. Woodcuts are much used in these books, illustrative of the Buddhist future state, of Shakyamuni instructing his disciples, and of the Hindoo cosmogony and geography. Descriptions of remarkable monasteries and sacred places, and many works on the various schools of this religion in China, should be added to the list.

I place here some remarks on the councils held by the early Buddhists.

Professor Max Muller says: "The Northern Buddhists know but one Ashoka, the grandson of Chandragupta, and but one council held in his reign, viz., the Council of Pataliputra, under Dharmashoka, and this they place a hundred and ten years after Buddha's death."

The Singhalese Buddhists speak of two Ashokas, viz.,

[paragraph continues] Kalashoka and Dharmashoka. Twelve kings intervened between them. A council was held under each Ashoka.

If we admit the last, it must have taken place either B.C. 242 or B.C. 246 at Pataliputra.

The fourth council, under Kanishka, presided over by Vasumitra, was probably a little before the Christian era. Nagarjuna's works and system were recognised, and from this time the "Great Development" spread among all the Northern Buddhists.

The attention of the student of Buddhism may be directed especially to those works in the San-tsang, or "Three pitaka," of which translations have been made.

Of these the most elaborate is that of the Fa-hwa-king, "Lotus of the Good Law," by Eugene Burnouf. It is rendered from the Sanscrit, and illustrated by a vast body of notes.

On comparing it with the Chinese version of Kumarajiva, I found considerable lacunae in the Chinese copy. Kumarajiva came under the influence of the Chinese literati, to whom the ponderous verbosity and extensive repetitions of the original were intolerable. He wisely cut it down, and made a much shorter book of it. Burnouf would have been wise to do so too.

The small books with a prominent moral element are extremely interesting. Some of these are translated by Mr. Beal in his Catena.

The "Book of Forty-two Sections" was translated from Sanscrit by the first Hindoo missionaries. An edition in five volumes, with very full notes, by Su Fa, and published a century and a half ago, is a signal example of the industry and fulness of illustration and comment of a Chinese scholar when editing an ancient book.

In this and other small but interesting works may be seen the principles of primitive Buddhism as taught by Shakyamuni.