succeed their father, and themselves become monks. They travel then to other countries and never return. These extracts from the "Sung History" are continued, because they are not only valuable in themselves, but because also there is some uncertainty as to the time when Buddhism was expelled from India, and they may be of assistance in determining that question. In 982 a priest of Western China returned from India with a letter from a king of that country to the emperor. It was translated by an Indian at the imperial command, and contained congratulations on the favour shown in China to Buddhism, together with geographical details on India and adjacent countries. The next year another Chinese monk returned by sea with Buddhist books from India. On his way he met at San-fo-t'si, a country bordering on Cambodia to the south-west, an Indian who wished to come to China to translate Buddhist books. He was invited by the emperor to engage in so doing. Other traces occur, not seldom in Chinese history, of the presence of Buddhist Indians in the Birmese peninsula, some of them of the Brahman caste. The rising influence of Brahmanism, and the more modern forms of religious belief in India, drove the followers of Shakya, not only into the northern regions, where they spread their system through Thibet and Tartary, and by which many of them found their way to China, but also into the islands and kingdoms that lay on the other side of the Bay of Bengal. A few years later than the last-mentioned date a Chinese, and with him a foreign Buddhist monk, came from the king of Northern India with a letter to the emperor. A Buddhist priest of the Brahman caste, with Aliyin, a Persian of another religion, are also mentioned as coming to the capital. The former, in the account he gives of his native country, mentions Buddhism as the religion favoured by the king. Some came by sea at this time who could not make themselves understood, but the images and books they brought showed that they were Buddhists. Several

other arrivals of Hindoos are recorded, and if the books they are said to have presented to the Chinese emperor are still preserved in the state archives, there can be no lack there of Sanscrit manuscripts of Buddhist works.

Though the great mass of Buddhist literature was already translated, additions not a few were made in the Sung and Yuen dynasties, and the whole number of "chapters" (kiuen) raised from 4271 to 4661.