Note 8 — Ruins of Buddhistic temples in Prågå-valley.

Professor Kern wrote to me that the alphabetical writing of the inscriptions we see on some demi-relievoes on the outer-walls should date from the year 800, or thereabouts, of the Shaka era, thus our ninth century. And this rather corresponds to the age of the Buddha temples in the plain of Parambanan. Does not a stone of one of these tyanḍis testify to this temple’s having been built in the year 701 of the shaka era, and dedicated to the service of Târâ in honour of the prince’s guru or teacher, who may have been buried there? And in the year 415 the Chinese Buddhist, Fa Hien, when in Java, came across many a brahmin Hindu. He didn’t speak about Buddhists, but this circumstance alone does not prove his not having met co-religionists, nor does it produce any evidence of their non-existence in the interior of Java he didn’t visit probably. I Tsing see note says that the inhabitants of Java and of the other islands of the Archipelago principally embraced Hînayânism. “Buddhism was ... chiefly the Hînayâna” (page XLVII), and “the ten or more islands of the Southern Sea (Sumatra, Java etc.) generally belong to the Hînayâna.” (page XXX). Such happened in our seventh century.