“The Story of Chin, P'ing, and Mei.” A Novel. A Description of Chinese manners and customs, especially with reference to Courtship and Marriage, the design of which, according to the Preface, is to promote Virtue and to discourage Vice. 2 cases, 20 vols. Ref. B.M. p. 11.

The striking fact that the Buddha has been officially enrolled in the list of the saints of the Christian Church has very naturally attracted much attention to the book to which this strange result is due. This book, a romance in Greek, founded on some unknown Buddhist life of the Buddha, was ascribed in some of the later MSS. to St. John of Damascus, and this was the view held by scholars until the publication in 1886 of the masterly monograph by M. H. Zotenberg (Notices sur la livre de Barlaam et Joasaph). He there shows conclusively that the John who was the author of the romance was not John of Damascus, but a monk of the convent of St. Saba near Jerusalem, who wrote it in the commencement of the seventh century A.D. This romance, whose hero, though really the Buddha, appealed so strongly to the sympathies of the Christians, that they raised him to the rank of a saint, contains, besides the description of the life and character of the hero, a number of fables, some of which have been traced back to the Buddhist Jataka book, while the source of others is still unknown. This being so, it becomes of great importance to ascertain the earliest form of the story. Now it is admitted that the numerous versions of it in various European languages (of which a list is given in my ‘ Buddhist Birth Stories,’ vol. i. pp. xcv and foll.)

The following narrative is abridged from a Japanese book called “Nankai Kibun” (Notes of the Southern Ocean), which records the examination by the officials of Ohikuzen in Kiushiu, of a native of that province, named Magotarō, who had been cast away on an island near Mindanao, and, after a captivity of seven years, was ultimately brought back to Japan in a Dutch ship.

After devoting two successive seasons to investigating some of the Buddhist mounds in the Krishna and Godavari districts of the Madras Presidency, and having on occasions conducted excavations at various other places, the experience thus gained may be of service, if placed at the disposal of those whose duty or pleasure it is to conduct such interesting work.