No. II. Translation of a Tibetan Fragment. 
With remarks by H. H. Witson, Secy. 
[J.A.8.B., Vol. I, p. 269 (1832). 
(Read, July 4th.) 
In the 9th volume of the Gyut class of the Kahgyur occurs 
a original of a Tibetan fragment, which created in the beginning 
the last century a lively sensation amongst the learned men 
of Europe, and the history of which furnishes an amusing in- 
stance of the vanity of literary pretensions, and of the patience 
and pain with which men of et and erudition have imposed 
upon themselves and upon the wo 
In the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th century, 
the Russians in their incursions into Siberia came upon various 
collections of books were deposited. These were in gener. 
destroyed or mutilated by the ignorant rapacity of the soldiery, 
but fragments of = were preserved, and found their way as 
curiosities to Eur 
Amongst chee some loose leaves, supposed to have been 
obtained at the ruins of Ablaikit, a monastery near the source 
of the Irtish, were presented to the emperor Peter the Great. 
Literature being then at a low ebb in Russia, no attempt was 
made to decypher these fragments, and they were sent by the 
Czar to the French Academy, whose sittings he had attended 
when at Paris, and who deservedly enjoyed the Beer of 
being the most learned body in Europe. In 1723, the Abbé de 
Bignon, on the part of the Academy, ooanesiaated S the Czar 
the result of their labour, apprising him, that the fragments 
sent were portions of a workin the Tibetan language, and sending 
a translation of one page made by the Abbé Fourmont with the 
help of a Latin and Tibetan Dictionary in the Royal Library. 
The letter was published in the Transactions of the Academy 
of St. Petersburgh, and the text and translation reprinted by 
Bayer in his Museum Sinicum. Miiller in his Commentatio 
de Scriptis Tanguticis in Siberia repertis—Petropoli, 1747, 
criticised Fourmont’s translation, and gave a new one of the 
first lines, prepared with the double aid of a Tangutan priest, 
or Gelong, who rendered it into Mongol, and a Mongol student 
of the Imperial College, who interpreted that version to Miiller. 
