Remarks on Rcmusat's Review of Buddhism. 503 " 



Even the Swabhavikas have their Dhyani Buddhas, and their triad, 

 including, of course, an Adi Buddha. Names therefore, are of little 

 weight ; and unmeasured epithets are so profusely scattered on every 

 hand that the practised alone can avoid their snare. I did not admit a 

 Theistic school, because I found a Buddha designated as Adi, or the first ; 

 nor yet because I found him yclept, infinite, omniscient, eternal, and so 

 forth , but because I found him explicitly contradistinguished from 

 nature, and systematically expounded as the efficient cause of all. Nor 

 should it be forgotten that when I announced the fact of a Theistic sect 

 of Buddhists, I observed that this sect was, as compared with the 

 Swabhavika, both recent and confined. 



If, in the course of this, and the three preceding letters, I have 

 spoken harshly of Remusat's researches, let it be remembered, that I 

 conceive my labours to have been adopted without acknowledgment, as 

 well as my opinions to have been miserably distorted. I have been most 

 courteously told, that " the learned of Europe are indebted to me for the 

 name of Adi Buddha !" The inference is palpable that that is the extent of 

 the obligation. Such insidious injustice compels me to avowin the face of 

 the world my conviction that, whatever the Chinese and Mongolian 

 works on Buddhism possessed by the French Savans may contain, no 

 intelligible views were thence derived of the general subject before my 

 essays appeared, or could have been afterwards, but for the lights those 

 essays afforded*. I had access to the original Sanscrit scriptures of the 

 Buddhists, and they were interpreted to me by learned natives, whose 

 hopes hereafter depended upon a just understanding of their contents. 

 No wonder therefore, and little merit, if I discovered very many things 

 inscrutably hidden from those who were reduced to consult barbarian 

 translations from the most refined and copious of languages upon the 

 most subtle and interminable of topics, and who had no living oracle 

 ever at hand to expound to them the dark signification of the written 

 word — to guide their first steps through the most labyrinthine of human 

 mazesf. 



For the rest, and personally, there is bienseance for bienseance, and 

 a sincere tear dropped over the untimely grave of the learned Remusat. 



* The case is altered materially now ; because my original authorities, which 

 stand far less in need of living interpreters, are generally accessible. I have 

 placed them in the hands of my countrymen and of others, and shall be happy to 

 procure copies for any individual, or body of persons, in France, who may desire to 

 possess them. 



t I beg to propose, as an experimentum crucis, the celebrated text — Ye DTiar- 

 manitya of the Sata Sanasrika. If the several theistic, atheistic, and sceptical 

 meanings wrapped up in these few words, can be reached through Chinese or Mon- 

 golian translations uninterpreted by living authorities, I am content to consider 

 my argument worthless. 



