Note 6 — INTRODUCTION.

In the fourteenth century arose the reformer Tsonkhapa, who “imposed upon himself the difficult task of uniting and reconciling the dialectical and mystical schools which Tibetan Buddhism had brought forth, and also of eradicating the abuses gradually introduced by the priests.” Tradition asserts that he “had some intercourse with a stranger from the West, who was remarkable for a long nose. Huc believes this stranger to have been a European missionary, and connects the resemblance of the religious service in Tibet to the Roman Catholic ritual with the information which Tsonkhapa might have received from this Roman Catholic priest. We are not yet able to decide the question as to how far Buddhism may have borrowed from Christianity; but the rites of the Buddhists enumerated by the French missionary can for the most part either be traced back to institutions peculiar to Buddhism, or they have sprung up in periods posterior to Tsonkhapa.”6