Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/83

71 voltaire's accusation of the missionaries. 71 resemblances, which Mr. Milne has not been able to discover, although they were evident enough to his compatriot and co-religionist, Sir J. Davis. Voltaire, who did not like to trouble himself with scientific ar- guments, and who was much stronger in sarcasm than in erudition, roundly accuses the missionaries of having fabricated the inscription on the monument of Si-ngan- Fou, from motives of " pious fraud." " As if," observes Abel Remusat*, " such a fabrication could have been practicable in the midst of a distrustful and suspicious nation, in a country in which magistrates and private people are equally ill-disposed towards foreigners, and especially missionaries ; where all eyes are open to their most trivial proceedings, and where the authorities watch, with the most jealous care, over everything relating to the historical traditions and monuments of antiquity. It would be very difficult to explain how the missionaries could have been bold enough to have printed and published in China, and in Chinese, an inscription that had never existed ; how they could have imitated the Chinese style, counterfeited the man- ner of the writers of the dynasty of Thang, alluded to customs little known, to local circumstances, to dates calculated from the mysterious figures of Chinese astrology, and the whole without betraying themselves for a moment ; and with such perfection as to impose on the most skilful men of letters, induced, of course, by the singularity of the discovery to dispute its authen- ticity. It could only have been done by one of the most erudite of Chinese scholars, joining with the mis- sionaries to impose on his own countrymen. f 4
 * Melanges " Asiatiques," vol. ii. p. 35.