Excerpt from The Sanskrit Buddhist Literature: Nepal About sixty years ago a young Englishman, placed by the exigencies of public service amidst strangers in an inhospitable and till then little-known clime, occupied himself in collecting materials, which have since afforded the key to the religion of one-fifth of the human race. That Englishman was Brian Houghton Hodgson, and a brief notice of his career in India may not be out of place here. Born at the close of the last century, he entered the Bengal Civil Service as a writer on April 30, 1818. According to the rules of the Service at the time, he had, on his arrival at Calcutta, on August following, to attend for a year the College of Fort William, and pass through the usual course of training there. His career at the College was a highly satisfactory one, and he distinguished himself greatly by his zeal, assiduity and successful study of the Persian language. On August 20, 1819, he was appointed Assistant to the Commissioner of Kumaon, which office he exchanged, on the following year, for that of Assistant to the Resident of Kathmandu. His services in these two offices were well-spoken of, and in two years (November 23, 1822) he was promoted to the Foreign Office, as Officiating Deputy Secretary in the Persian Department. At the beginning of 1824 he returned to Kathmandu to assume charge of the Post Office there; but he did not hold it long. In March 1825, he reverted to his former office of Assistant to the Resident, which he held till he was himself appointed Resident in January 1833. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.