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writers — Buddhist priests whose object was to exalt their own 

 order, — that neither in Buddha's lifetime, nor for a period of four 

 hundred and fifty years subsequent to his death, his precepts and 

 discourses were preserved otherwise then orally, by men gifted 

 with infallible memories, is one that requires a stretch of belief 

 which only minds of a peculiar character can attain to.* Religions 

 as well as Governments, to be durable, must have their laws and 

 doctrines recorded. The necessity for so doing is imperative. It 

 is the only safe foundation on which political and religious commu- 

 nities can be based. So obvious a truism needs but to be stated to be 

 assented to. And sage and savage have alike felt its force all over 

 the globe. Passing from the old world to the new, the sculptures 

 and hieroglyphics discovered in the palaces and temples of cities of 

 an unknown race that within the memory of living men have been 

 disentombed from beneath the roots of forests, the growth of ages, 

 in the wilds of Central America, prove this ; and proof as strong 

 is shewn in the wampum belts of the Indians of North America — 

 those records of treaties between tribe and tribe, and the red men 

 of the west and the pale faces from beyond the sea, to which chiefs 

 and sachems make solemn reference when assembled on affairs of 

 state in the Council lodges of their tribes. Writing of any kind is 

 but the art of recording in visible symbols language that has been 

 spoken, as well as of rendering communicable from mind to mind 

 thoughts unuttered by the tongue ; and the art in its essence is 

 the same, whether the medium be the crude wampum belt of the 

 nomadic American Indian, or the elaborate combination of thick 

 and thin strokes in lines and curves and angles and circles of the 

 ablest writer of the most polished age of antient or modern times, 



* In considering this subject, it must be borne in mind that the Tripitaka con- 

 tains aiatter equal in bulk to eleven or more times the amount of that contained 

 in the books of the Old and New Testaments. 



