92 



the doctrines of Zoroaster as exhibited in they Zend-Avesta, with 

 which Buddha may also have been acquainted, the morality of 

 the. Pentateuch is clearly discernible ; and whatever he may have 

 learnt from the five books of Moses, — and his precepts and dis- 

 courses lead to the conclusion that he learnt a great deal, — he could 

 hardly fail to obtain a knowledge of the means by which the law 

 was preserved in its pristine purity ; of the command given by 

 the great Lawgiver for the deposit of the original written copy 

 'in the side of the Ark of Covenant;" — of the ordinance (Deut. 

 xvii. 18 —20), which required each king, when the appointed time 

 for choosing a king arrived, to transcribe for himself "a copy of 

 the law in a book out of that which is before the priests the 

 Levites :— to read therein all the days of his life as well as that 

 other (Deut. xxvii. 2 — 4) which commanded, for the benefit of 

 the people, that when they had passed into the land which should 

 be given them, great stones, plaistered over with plaister, should 

 be set up, on which stones should be written "very plainly" "all 

 the words of this law."* 



Assuming thus much, and recollecting that as the Founder of a 

 new Religion, Buddha would naturally take every possible means 

 to preserve to his followers his laws and his doctrines, exactly as 



elephants' tusks, fragrant woods, and such things as savages barter, — to factories 

 at the mouth of the Indus, whither arrived, at measured intervals, the adventurous 

 Phoenician squadron, bringing the Hindus the first news they had heard of foreign 

 lands and gods and races, and of the alphabet, that wondrous instrument for 

 expressing thought, which the Semitic mind had brought to maturity before its 

 want was felt by other nations."— The Literature and Origins of Buddhism, Cal- 

 cutta Review, No. xcviri. 1869, pp. 107-8. 



* Possibly king Asdka may have been led, from the same source of information, 

 to erect the pillars and make tablets of the rocks in various parts of his dominions, 

 on which are found his edicts concerning religion, — the oldest inscriptions known 

 in India. 



