The rock crystal of China comes from Turkestan, and would bring its own name with it from that country. Buddhist makers of glossaries would prefer to derive the word from Sanscrit, as the mother of all knowledge. They have passed over without remark the possibility that the Chinese word may come from the Turkish.

The word po-li for "glass," formerly pronounced pa-li, has been in common use in China since the T'ang dynasty. It came in with Buddhism and the international trade with Turkestan.

I believe that the initial s in spatika might be an accretion and not original, just as most probably smelt is later than melt, and sneeze than nose, and stannum than tin.

Curiously we find in the Mongol vocabulary bolor, "crystal," "glass;" bolor daboso, "rock salt;" bolo ch'ilagon, "a polishing stone," a rolling stone used in smoothing the clods of a ploughed field. Compare Turkish bileghi, "whetstone." Let it be noticed that glass-dust is used by polishers and grinders.

Whether the boli or bali is of Turanian origin and has originated the Sanscrit spatika, it would be interesting to know. Ballur is Arabic for "crystal;" spashta is Sanscrit for "clear;" berrak is Turkish for "clear," "limpid." Probably here is the root; but who shall decide?

In Buddhist magic there has been extensive use of the Sanscrit characters. The doctrine of magic has been developed by the Buddhists very systematically, and to an almost unexampled extent. It arose from the same tendency in the Hindoo mind, which produced those vast fictions in the description of the universe, and in the narrative of the past, that distinguish the native literature of that country. The love of the wonderful led the Hindoo authors to forsake, at the same time, the fair bounds of history and the sober reality of nature. Here it is easy to perceive a similarity to the Arabians. There is, in their fictions, the same fondness for splendid scenes and striking supernatural effects. This would be poetry were it not very much overdone. The same circumstances of gaudy magnificence are again and again repeated, and the reader is wearied with the unending recital of marvellous events, invented after one model, and whose one object is to excite an undistinguishing admiration of the power displayed.

By magic is here meant the supernatural power attributed to the Buddhas and Bodhisattwas, or claimed by the ordinary priests, and which is exercised by charms, mystic formulae, incantations, finger-postures, and such-like means.

It is not the power of God acting through nature that is here intended, but the power of the priest, through his charms, virtues, and superior knowledge. The magical result is effected by the never-erring retributive fate which