1890-91.] SIBERIAN INSCRIPTIONS. 27.> 



many data furnished by Indian Budhist documents as compared among^ 

 themselves and with western history, to have been 477 B.C.; so that the 

 discipleship of Sagota in the year 970 from the death of Budha, fell in 

 the year 493 A.D., when Thedoric the Ostrogoth became master of Italy. 

 There is, so far, no evidence that Siberian civilization was older than the 

 fifth century, and the last dated inscription was written in 784, so that 

 two and a half centuries, or perhaps less, may be allotted to Khitan 

 empire on the Yenisei. Thenceforward it was transferred to China^ 

 Corea, and Japan. But feeble remnants of the old Khitan stock still 

 roam as semi-savages over the Siberian plains, the Yeniseian Khits in 

 the neighbourhood of their ancestral glories, the Yukahirians, Koriaks, 

 Tchuktchis, and Kamtschadales, farther to the east. The Mantchu,. 

 the Mongol, and the Yakut Turk occupied the country which the civilized 

 Khitan deserted, and to them, the mounds that remain almost the sole 

 records of a busy life twelve centuries in the past, are Li Katei, the tombs 

 of the Khitan 2 2, 



Sagota assembled all classes of his people, the poor and the rich, to 

 aid in rebuilding the ruined Round House. This is far from the only 

 instance which the Siberian inscriptions afford of the ascendency gained 

 by the Budhist priesthood over the Khitan monarchs of northern Asia,, 

 and the consequent recognition of their creed as the religion of the State. 

 At the same time, in order that the time and labour given by the people 

 to the service of Budhism might not appear to be accepted without 

 remuneration, the priests granted, by order of Budha, whose oracles they 

 thus claim to have been, an indulgence extending over the space of three 

 hundred years. This would carr>^ through several generations of 

 ordinary sinners, but the lives of Budhist offenders, whose trans-migra- 

 tions extend over thousands of years, would not be so largely affected by 

 it. It would be curious to trace the connection between the indulgences 

 of the Budhists and those of the Roman Catholic Church. The latter 

 came into notice in the twelfth century in connection with the Crusades,, 

 and with the publication of Peter Lombard's text book of Theology. 

 Prior to that time, there was no intercourse between northern Asia and 

 Europe of an ecclesiastical nature, beyond the mission of Prester John ; 

 but, in the thirteenth century, Christian missionaries from Rome found 

 their way into the countries ruled by the Mongols. No inscription so 

 far read shews that the Indian Budhists granted such indulgences, but it 

 is very improbable that the system originated in Siberia, a region in which 

 there can have been little original development, on account of adverse 

 changing conditions that must have made it difficult even to retain and 

 perpetuate the existing rites of the Budhist religion. The position of 

 Budha in Siberia is very plain and definite. He was no longer the 



