which the Sanskrit word Brahman could be rendered in Chinese.1 We read of the Emperor Ming-ti, of the dynasty of Han, sending Tsaï-in and other high officials to India, in order to study there the doctrine of Buddha. They engaged the services of two learned Buddhists, Matânga and Ku-fa-lan, and some of the most important Buddhist works were translated by them into Chinese.2 The intellectual intercourse between the Indian peninsula and the northern continent of Asia continued uninterrupted for several centuries. Missions were sent from China to India to report on the religious, political, social, and geographical state of the country; and the chief object of interest which attracted public embassies and private pilgrims across the Himalayan mountains, was the religion of Buddha. About three hundred years after the public recognition of Buddhism by the Emperor Ming-ti, the great stream of Buddhist pilgrims began to flow from China to India. The first account which we possess of these pilgrimages belongs to the travels of Fa-hian, who visited India towards the end of the fourth century (A. D. 399-414). These travels were first translated into French by A. Rémusat.3 After Fa-hian, we have the travels of Hoei-seng and Song-yun, who were sent to India, in 518, by command

1 Fan-chou (brahmâkshara), les caractères de l'écriture indienne, inventée par Fan, c'est-à-dire Fan-lan-mo (brahmâ).'—Stanislas Julien, Voyages des Pèlerins bouddhistes, vol. ii. p. 505.

2 See for a fuller account, M. M. On Sanskrit Texts discovered in Japan, Selected Essays, vol. ii. p. 319. Ku-fa-lan is called Bhârana Pandita in Tibetan; cf. J. R. A. S., 1882, p. 89.

3

They have been translated into English by the Rev. Samuel Beal, London, 1869; revised 1884; by Mr. Herbert A. Giles, 1877, and by Professor Legge, Oxford, 1886.

of the empress, with the view of collecting sacred books and relics. Then followed Hiouen-thsang, whose life and travels, from 629-645, have been rendered so popular by the excellent translation of M. Stanislas Julien.1 After Hiouen-thsang, the principal works of Chinese pilgrims are the travels of Itsing 2 (left China in 671, arrived in India in 673, returned to China in 695, died in 713), the Itineraries of the Fiftysix Monks, published in 730, and the travels of Khinie, who visited India in 964, at the head of three hundred pilgrims.

That the language employed for literary purposes in India during all this time was Sanskrit, we learn, not only from the numerous names and religious and philosophical terms mentioned in the travels of the Chinese pilgrims, but from a short paradigm of declension and conjugation in Sanskrit which one of them (Hiouen-thsang) has inserted in his diary. Nay, there is every reason to believe that Hiouen-thsang composed himself a book in Sanskrit.3

Persian Accounts of India.

The next evidence of the existence of an ancient literature in India comes to us from Persia. The King of Persia, Khosru Nushirvan, in the middle of the sixth century, had a collection of fables translated from Sanskrit into Pehlevi, a translation which was afterwards turned into Arabic by Abdallah ibn Almokaffa in the middle of the eight century, under the title of Kalilah and Dimnah. Though the complete

1 New translation by Rev. S. Beal, 1884.

2 On Itsing, see M. M., India, what can it teach us? p. 210 seq.; Journal Asiat. 1888, p. 411. 3 M. M., India, pp. 305, 310.

collection of these fables does no longer exist in Sanskrit, yet the portions of it which have been preserved in the Pañkatantra show clearly that they must have existed in Sanskrit in the sixth century A. D., and that the account given by the Pehlevi translator Barzôi is trustworthy in the main.1

Arab Accounts of India.

As soon as the Mohammedans entered India, we hear of translations of Sanskrit works into Persian and Arabic.2 As early as the reign of the second Abasside Khalif Almansur,3 in the year 773 A. D., an Indian astronomer, well versed in the science which he professed, visited the court of the Khalif, bringing with him tables of the equations of planets according to the mean motions, with observations relative to both solar and lunar eclipses and the ascension of the signs; taken, as he affirmed, from tables computed by an Indian prince, whose name, as the Arabian author writes it, was Phighar. The Khalif, embracing the opportunity thus happily presented to him, commanded the book to be translated into Arabic, to be published for a guide to the Arabians in matters pertaining to the stars. The task devolved on Mohammed ben Ibrahim Alfazari, whose version is

1 See M. M., Selected Essays, vol. i. p. 516. It is curious that Alberuni was so dissatisfied with the Arabic translation of what he calls the Pañkatantra that he wished to translate it anew. See Alberuni's India, ed. Sachau, p. xx; also Fihrist, ed. Rödiger, vol. i.

2 Sir Henry Elliot's Historians of India, vol. v., appendix, p. 570. 3 Colebrooke, Miscellaneous Essays, ii. p. 504, quotes from the preface to the astronomical tables of Ben al Adami, published by his continuator, Al Casem, in 920 a.d. On Sanskrit figures, see Strachey, As. Res. xii. 184; Colebrooke, Algebra. p. lii.

known to astronomers by the name of the greater Sind-hind or Hind-sind,1 for the term

written both ways.

About the same time Yacub, the son of Tharek, composed an astronomical work, founded on the Sind-hind.2 Harun-al-Rashid (786-809) had two Indians, Manka and Saleh, as physicians at his court.3 Manka translated the classical work on medicine, Susruta, and a treatise on poisons, ascribed to Kânakya, from Sanskrit into Persian.5 During

1 Sind-hind signifies the revolving ages, according to Ben al Adami ; Kasiri translates it perpetuum æternumque. Colebrooke conjectures Siddhânta, and supposes the original to have been Brahmagupta's work, the Brahma-siddhânta. M. Reinaud, in his Mémoire sur l'Inde, p. 312, quotes the following passage from the Taryk-al-Hokama : · En l'année 156 de l'hégire (773 de J. C.) il arriva de l'Inde à Bagdad un homme fort instruit dans les doctrines de son pays. Cet homme possédait la méthode du Sindhind, relative aux mouvements des astres et aux équations calculées au moyen de sinus de quart en quart de degré. Il connaissait aussi diverses manières de déterminer les éclipses, ainsi que le lever des signes du zodiaque. Il avait composé un abrégé d'un ouvrage relatif à ces matières qu'on attribuait à un prince nommé Fygar. Dans cet écrit les kardagia (i.e. kramagyâ; see Surya-siddhânta, ed. Burgess and Whitney, p. 57 and p. 59) étaient calculés par minutes. Le Khalife ordonna qu'on traduisît le traité indien en arabe, afin d'aider les musulmans à acquérir une connaissance exacte des étoiles. Le soin de la traduction fut confié à Mohammed, fils d'Ibrahim-al-Fazary, le premier entre les musulmans qui s'était livré à une étude approfondie de l'astronomie: on désigne plus tard cette traduction sous le titre de Grand Sindhind.' Alberuni places the translation in the year 771.

2 Reinaud, l. c. p. 314.

3 Elliot, Historians of India, vol. v. p. 572.

* Cf. Steinschneider, Wissenschaftliche Blätter, vol. i.

p. 79.

5 See Professor Flügel, in Zeitschrift der D. M. G., xi. 148 and 325; Elliot, Historians of India, vol. v. p. 572. A Hebrew treatise on poisons, ascribed to the Indian Zanik (Kânakya), is mentioned by Steinschneider, Wissenschaftliche Blätter, vol. i. p. 65. Alberuni mentions an Indian Kankah as astrologer of Harun-al-Rashid (Reinaud,

the Khalifate of Al Mamun, a famous treatise on algebra was translated by Mohammed ben Musa from Sanskrit into Arabic (edited by F. Rosen, 1831) and the medical treatises of Mikah and Ibn Dahan, both represented to be Indians, show that Sanskrit was well known then.1

Alberuni.

Alberuni (born 973, died 1048) was invited by Mahmud of Ghazni (died 1030) from Khwarizm (the modern Khiva), which the Sultan had conquered in 1017, to accompany him on his Indian campaigns. Avicenna, i. e. Abu' Ali Ibn Sina, declined to accompany him. Alberuni, an astronomer, a large-hearted philosopher, and an acute observer, utilised his stay in India for studying the astronomy, the philosophy and literature of that interesting country. According to his own statement the number of his works exceeded a hundred. The most important among those which have not perished are the Chronology of Ancient Nations,' of which a German and an English translation have lately (1878 and 1879) been published by Professor Sachau; a treatise on Astronomy, Al-Kanun AlMasudi, and his extremely interesting work on India, sometimes called Tarikh-i-Hind (written a. D. 1030), but the full title of which has been translated by its learned editor, Professor Sachau, as 'An accurate de

6

Mémoire sur l'Inde, p. 315). He is likewise mentioned as a physician. Another Indian physician of Harun-al-Rashid is called Mankba (Reinaud, l. c.).

1 Elliot, Historians of India, vol. v. p. 572.