classics. The Sui History in the digest it gives of all the books of the time, states those of the Buddhist sect to be 1950 distinct works. Many of the titles are given, and among them are not a few treating of the mode of writing by alphabetic symbols used in the kingdoms from whence Buddhism came. The first alphabet that was thus introduced appears to have been one of fourteen symbols. It is called Si-yo hu-shu or "Foreign Writing of the Western countries," and also Ba-la-men-shu, "Brahmanical writing." The tables of initials and finals found in the Chinese native dictionaries were first formed in the third century, but more fully early in the sixth century, in the Liang dynasty. It was then that the Hindoos, who had come to China, assisted in forming, according to the model of the Sanscrit alphabet, a system of thirty-six initial letters, and described the vocal organs by which they are formed. They also constructed tables, in which, by means of two sets of representative characters, one for the initials and another for the finals, a mode of spelling words was exhibited. The Chinese were now taught for the first time that monosyllabic sounds are divisible into parts, but alphabetic symbols were not adopted to write the separated elements. It was thought better to use characters already known to the people. A serious defect attended this method. The analysis was not carried far enough. Intelligent Chinese understand that a sound, such as man, can be divided into two parts, m and an; for they have been long accustomed to the system of phonetic bisection here alluded to, but they usually refuse to believe that a trisection of the sound is practicable. At the same time the system was much easier to learn than if foreign symbols had been employed, and it was very soon universally adopted. Shen-kung, a priest, is said to have been the author of the system, and the dictionary Yu-p'ien was one of the first extensive works in which it was employed. That the Hindoo Buddhists should have taught the Chinese

how to write the sounds of this language by an artifice which required nothing but their own hieroglyphics, and rendered unnecessary the introduction of new symbols, is sufficient evidence of their ingenuity, and is not the least of the services they have done to the sons of Han. It answered well for several centuries, and was made use of in all dictionaries and educational works. But the language changed, the old sounds were broken up, and now the words thus spelt are read correctly only by those natives who happen to speak the dialects that most nearly resemble in sound the old pronunciation.