February, 1911.] Vice-President’s Address, xliii 
teenth century. His grandson, Kublai Khan, extended his 
sway over the whole of Central Asia inclusive of Tibet, and 
some glimpses of the extent of his Empire may be gathered 
from the writings of the celebrated Venetian traveller Marco 
Polo. This Kublai Khan was apparently a man of culture, and 
invited a Tibetan Lama to his Court to assist him in the forma- 
tion of an alphabet for the Mongolian language. In return for 
his services, Kublai Khan made the Lama the tributary sover- 
eign of Tibet and spiritual head of the Tibetan Church. Th 
Lama thus placed in a position of authority, employed the sage 
Buton to enrich the Tibetan language by translations from 
Chinese and Sanskrit sources. The work was rendered possible 
y the presence in Tibet of a number of Buddhist Sanskritists 
who had crossed the Himalayas from India and taken refuge 
in Tibet on the sack of the University of Vikramsila by Bakh- 
tear Khiliji. The compilation of the work was thus facilitated 
by what was then rightly treated in India as a calamity to the 
cause of Sanskrit and Buddhist learning ; and the permanent 
preservation of the fruits of the joint labours of the Indian 
' Pundits and the Tibetan Lamas was secured by the art of 
printing which had been introduced into Tibet from China in 
the seventh century of the Christian era, and had obviously 
attained considerable development. The two encyclopedias I 
have mentioned, whose contents have not up to the present 
time been exhaustively scrutinized, are known to embody works 
in various departments of Sanskrit learning, the originals of 
which can no longer be traced in this country. It is, therefore, 
obviously a matter for congratulation that such an unexplor 
field of research should be placed within the reach of our mem- 
bers. Copies of the Tangyur are very rare on this side of the 
Himalayas; so far as I know, there are only two sets, both of 
them in inaccessible monasteries at Sikim, and some years ago, 
one of our members considered himself extremely fortunate 
when after considerable hardship and expense he obtained an 
access to these monasteries, and was allowed as a special favour 
to take notes from the encyclopedia. European scholars, 
more than eighty years ago, which has ) 
France. Dr. Satis Chandra Vidyabhusana has published in our 
