Vol. 1X, No. 3.) A Note on Buddhism. 125 
[N.S8.] 
_we owe to the munificence of the late King of Siam, and by 
the Burmese writers. ‘The former, unavoidably rather imper- 
fect and indefinite, idea of the Pali texts was thus replaced by 
being filled by the fine edition of the entire Tripitaka which 
a) db 
the series of those great explorations which were initiated by 
Stein—now Sir Aurel Stein—and continued, with results 
advance in the reconstruction of the history of ancient Bud- 
dhistic literature. In fact, the basis on which such @ recon- 
struction has to rest, had now become an infinitely wider and 
securer one, Burnouf had been unavoidably compelled to 
advance through the texts on which he bas 
‘Introduction,’ with very rapid steps i 
wonder at the multitude of things which that greater investi- 
or broken—we in fact av 
philological methods which ma enable us to penetrate into 
the history of the origination of the texts, to discern the layers 
