266
China and Parthis, say about the modern Balkb, just north of Afghanistan.
Now let us turn to Oriental sources of
information.
1. A. Chinese traveller (Fa Hian) says that Buddhists of Lodia erected a colossal status of Buddyja on the frontiers of their country and then went forth to preach. This cannot refer to the outburst of zeal after the death of Shaka, nor to that after the Council of As'uka. But the colossal status of Buddua is still to be seen in the mountains of Bamian in Afghanistan, It is an image of Mairay, and we know that in the middle of the second century there was
a great outburst of Ma'rayauist missionary
fervour.
2. The real errugelization of China com- menced in AD. 118 when the second ba'ch of translators arrived in China. The earlier men
did not effect much, but after the arrival of
Anshikao and Lokaraksha the stream was quite continuous.
3. Anshikao was a Princa of Iarthis. Ile was apparently the nephew of King (hosroes who was the enemy of Trajan and afterwa ́ds the ally of Hadriau, the next Emperor of Rome. Chosroes was obliged to Aushikao's aunt, as a hostage to Rome, where send his sister,
she resided for several years.
Buddhism.
We have, therefore, in Rome, a Parthin Book, a Parthian Princes, and a heresy, affect. ing the very Pope, which is wonderfully like At the same period, we have in China, the commencement of a Buddhism which is very like the heresy des ribed by Origen and Hippolytus preached by a Parthian Prince, who is nephew of the Parthiau Princes at Rome, and who comes from the very district where stands the colossal image of the Buddha Miroku and from which com 8 to Rome the
book said to laro breu inspired by a colossal angel.
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND publication, we are surprised. At least, we would be, did we not suspect that this sympathy with Chinese lack of humour is largely inspired by antipathy to nil things Japanese. The Jupes Minister Was sorry 10 think the at Peking Tokyo cartoonists had caused offence, but explaired that it was difficult to inter- fere in such a matter. He, however, passed on the complaint to his superiors in Tokyo, and the Japaneso Government, with their remarkable disposition to oblize, at once issued a serious warning to the offen ling journal. In one way, this was perhaps wise, as Japan has sufficient gratuitous enemies without provoking more; but in principle the thing is absurd. Chinese press laws, now bring enforced, are all wrong, and would not be tolerated in Auglo-Saxon countries. Japtuese pro-s laws, though stringeut enough, arc modelled on wiser examples, As for making mischief, wedreal the serious papers far more. Cartoons that show small coming with a very bid grace from a country ro-pect for sacrosanct royalties-though
where the Divine Right is still believed in —are quite inoffensive when compared with many of the mean things oracularly uttered by newspapers which do not care what horrors they provoke so long as they can score a point and tickle the groundlings who share their pe ty prejudices and envious carpings. There is something seriously the mater with the intellect of people who find it in their hearts to suppress Gilbertian humour in their craven fear of hurting the feelings of people who are perhaps less touchy than they themselves would be. fn the case of The Geisha, it had to be admitted that no Japanese worth considering ever took offence at that funny production. The sensitive oues are usually those idiots who cling to the explode: superstition that kings and princes are something more than mortal, and would regard a laugh at the a throne-filer as on a par expeuse of with blasphemy. SHYLOCK's spirited ar- gumeut that Jews are very much like human beings ought to be repeated for the benefit of those who idolise mon- archis. The lattor share all the func. tiual sordidities of a plebeian-a royal
The coincidence is too minute to be the result of mere chance. Nanjo's Catalogue of the Tripitaka, ascribes fifty-five treatises to An shikao, twelve to Lokaraksha, and two to another Parthian named alumes. 1 propose to get these treatises analyzed and translated, feeling confident that they will throw some verv Important historical light on a dark period of the world's history. There are immense possi- bilities in this discovery, so great that I dare not allow myself to speculate on them. But the prosecution of these studies is beyond the limits of my slender purse. I can but state my case and hope that help will come.
The ASOKA iuentione is, we suppose, that Hindu emperor who sent an embassy to PTOLEMY PHILADELPHOS, who reigned at Alexandria in the early part of the third century B.C. That embassy recommended study of the Tripitaka, then existing orally. They are supposed to have been first in scribed in the first century D.C. Japanese commentaries on them ought to possess no inconsiderable value, and we trust that Professor LLorn may be enabled to do what he hopes to do.
RIDE SI SAPIS.
DOzC
|
[April 27, 1908. ungently with the Japanese, but many of the involuutarily camic journals are con- stantly doing 80. That would, of course, be no defence if the Tokyo Puck had been going to unreasonable lengths, for a paper of its class; but it is a proper argument to address to those smug hypocrites who have been professing indignation at some of its sallies.
OBLIQUE HISTORY.
(Daily Press, April 24th.) The ensuing notes are not taken from the Times Book Club's "Historians" History of the World," in twenty-five volumes weigh. ing over four pounds each, with solid oak booke use thrown in for fourpence a day for eighteen months; but possibly som where in that compendious work their equivalents might be found by the industrious and Two thousand years iutelligent student.
As
When
ago there was no Book Club for the nation;
he felt that he might as well be doing some each citizen carried his own club. While bis wif: harvested the garden pitch, and if thing, the citizen laboured at the fashioning of a spare club, to stand in a corner of the but till wanted. This was the beginning of the excessive burdea of armaments. now, peace was then assured by constant The alien inmigra- preparation for war. tion question was no less acute then than now, for the people in the next valley would persist in coming over to help the harvester, whom they sometimes harvested. this incident occurred, it was awkward for the citizen, who, deprived of the assistance of his suffragette, had to work as well as This led to maintain adequate defences. agitations of the Unemployables, who, how. ever, aroused less and simpler argument then than now. In those days there were small holdings, and no wide reserves 'for game preserves or deer forests, exclusively held by dog-in-the-manger aristocrats. Agricultural depression was not aggravated by exorbitant traffic charges, for the crops were consumed at home. An early citizen of industrious habits had a lot of spare time after his agricultural work was done, or while the weaker sex did it for him, and he developed a special aptitude for making mattocks. He made several of these, and thus became the first capitalist. His neigh bours, who had been too busy otherwise to provide themselves, hired one of these necessary agricultural tools from him, and The produce paid for the use of it in kind,
will bleed if punched, and royalty may have a colic lik any other glutton of lower degree. Even in America, where the people are supposed to have long ago fund out this simple truth, some of them hive been going on in a perfectly disgraceful way about the reported engagement of a
so hauded over to him was the first dividend millionaire's daughter to the Duke of the Abruzzi. Would it have to be what is in the world, the first instance of interest on hypocritically called a morganatic mar-capital, which the communists of t»-day riage? The Duke of the Abruzzi appears declare to be an iniquitous tax ou industry. to be a very estimable fellow, and we do He made so many mattocks that he left to (Daily Press, April (3rd).
not wantonly speak disrespectfully of him. his son quite a respectable income, more The Chinese Government has been com- Looking at his photograph, however, we than he could eat, but the son of such a sire naturally did not enjoy being idle. plaining about cartons in the Tokyo Puck. see nothing more than a human face, with a It is a humorous journal, less artistic than prognathous jaw, and ears that stick out His hobby was hut-building, which he did Punch, less clever than Life, and only a like the handles of a vase. Why should a quite well. When his neighbours siw what a handy builder and repairer he was, they little more vulgar than its namesake. It morganatic marriage with a cousin of the deals mostly with politics, and alter due King of Italy be less dishonourable than invite him to exercise his profession on allowance bas been made for national a similar arrangement between Jack and their lots, while they went over into the next differences in questions of taste, any fair- Jill? Why should it be wicke ler to laugh valley to inculcate their superior notions of minded foreigner will admit that it is a at the Empress-Dowager-supposing we find ethics with the help of their clubs. They journal not wholly to be condemned. That it possible to laugh at all at that author of silenced the obdurate males, and converted Chinese officials should have protested much evil-than at Miss Pankhurst the the females, whose labours in the sphere to which they were removed helped to pay the against the lèse majesté of some of its Suffragette The Nebelspalter of Zurich, a cartoons on matters Chinese is not to be paper of the Tokyo Puck soit, had last reward to the home-staying builder of huts, wondered at. They have, though they may
mouth a cartoon showing all the rulers of who thus drew the first rents in history, not always demonstrate it in their own the world, very rudely caricatured, thanking These rents in some cases were not always conduct, a prodigious reverence for the the Lord that they were "not as those forthcoming, owing to the careless handling members of the Imperial House of Peking,
by the tenant of his club, which had perhaps and their sense of humour is of a pattern
casually lessgued the earning power of the not easily appreciated by foreigners. When
new breadwinner. The landlord was not foreign newspapers enthusiastically cham.
quite satisfied, but might not have known pion the Chinese protest, however, aud
what to do if it had not been for a citizeu
• denounce the Tokyo Puck as a scurrilous
who neither made mattocks nor built huts.
1
>>
other men '—an allusion to the victims of a recent regicidal outrage. Yet the Swiss ministers at St. Petersburg, Berlin, or Lon- don were not asked to forward complaints to Switzerland, Not only all the avowedly comic papers in Europe and America deal
T