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, and how they could have imitated the Chinese style, counterfeited the manner 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 authenticity.

It could only have been done by one of the most erudite of Chinese scholars, joining with the missionaries to impose on his own countrymen." "Even that would not be all, for the borders of the inscription are covered with Syrian names in fine _estranghelo_ characters.

The forgers must, then, have been not only acquainted with these characters, but have been able to get engraved with perfect exactness ninety lines of them, and in the ancient writing, known at present to very few." "This argument of Remusat's," says another learned Orientalist, M.
Felix Neve, "is of irresistible force, and we have formerly heard a similar one maintained with the greatest confidence by M.Quatremere, of the Academy of Inscriptions and Belles-Lettres, and we allow ourselves to quote the opinion of so highly qualified a judge upon this point.

Before the last century it would have been absolutely impossible to forge in Europe a series of names and titles belonging to a Christian nation of Western Asia; it is only since the fruits of Assemam's labors have been made public by his family at Rome, that there existed a sufficient knowledge of the Syriac for such a purpose; and it is only by the publication of the manuscripts of the Vatican, that the extent to which Nestorianism spread in the centre of Asia, and the influence of its hierarchy in the Persian provinces could have been estimated.

There is no reason to suppose that missionaries who left Europe in the very beginning of the seventeenth century could have acquired a knowledge which could only be obtained from reading the originals and not vague accounts of them." The sagacity of M.Saint Martin, who was for a long time the colleague of M.Quatremere, has pointed out in a note worthy of his erudition, another special proof, which is by no means to be neglected.
"Amongst the various arguments," he says, "that might be urged in favor of the legitimacy of the monument, but of which, as yet, no use has been made, must not be forgotten the name of the priest by whom it is said to have been erected.