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Le Hao,(15) the prefect of T'un-hwang, had supplied them with the means of crossing the desert (before them), in which there are many evil demons and hot winds. (Travellers) who encounter them perish all to a man. There is not a bird to be seen in the air above, nor an animal on the ground below. Though you look all round most earnestly to find where you can cross, you know not where to make your choice, the only mark and indication being the dry bones of the dead (left upon the sand).(16)
NOTES
(1) Ch'ang-gan is still the name of the principal district (and its
city) in the department of Se-gan, Shen-se. It had been the capital
of the first empire of Han (B.C. 202-A.D. 24), as it subsequently was
that of Suy (A.D. 589-618). The empire of the eastern Tsin, towards
the close of which Fa-Hsien lived, had its capital at or near Nan-king,
and Ch'ang-gan was the capital of the principal of the three
Ts'in kingdoms, which, with many other minor ones, maintained a
semi-independence of Tsin, their rulers sometimes even assuming the
title of emperor.
(2) The period Hwang-che embraced from A.D. 399 to 414, being the
greater portion of the reign of Yao Hing of the After Ts'in, a
powerful prince. He adopted Hwang-che for the style of his reign
in 399, and the cyclical name of that year was Kang-tsze. It is
not possible at this distance of time to explain, if it could be
explained, how Fa-Hsien came to say that Ke-hae was the second year of
the period. It seems most reasonable to suppose that he set out on his
pilgrimage in A.D. 399, the cycle name of which was Ke-hae, as {.},
the second year, instead of {.}, the first, might easily creep into
the text. In the "Memoirs of Eminent Monks" it is said that our author
started in the third year of the period Lung-gan of the eastern Tsin,
which was A.D. 399.
(3) These, like Fa-Hsien itself, are all what we might call "clerical"
names, appellations given to the parties as monks or sramanas.
(4) The Buddhist tripitaka or canon consists of three collections,
containing, according to Eitel (p. 150), "doctrinal aphorisms
(or statements, purporting to be from Buddha himself); works on
discipline; and works on metaphysics:"—called sutra, vinaya, and
abhidharma; in Chinese, king {.}, leuh {.}, and lun {.}, or texts,
laws or rules, and discussions. Dr. Rhys Davids objects to the
designation of "metaphysics" as used of the abhidharma works, saying
that "they bear much more the relation to 'dharma' which 'by-law'
bears to 'law' than that which 'metaphysics' bears to 'physics'"
(Hibbert Lectures, p. 49). However this be, it was about the vinaya
works that Fa-Hsien was chiefly concerned. He wanted a good code of
the rules for the government of "the Order" in all its internal and
external relations.
(5) Lung embraced the western part of Shen-se and the eastern part
of Kan-suh. The name remains in Lung Chow, in the extreme west of
Shen-se.
(6) K'een-kwei was the second king of "the Western Ts'in." His family
was of northern or barbarous origin, from the tribe of the Seen-pe,
with the surname of K'eih-fuh. The first king was Kwo-kin, and
received his appointment from the sovereign of the chief Ts'in kingdom
in 385. He was succeeded in 388 by his brother, the K'een-kwei of the
text, who was very prosperous in 398, and took the title of king of
Ts'in. Fa-Hsien would find him at his capital, somewhere in the present
department of Lan-chow, Kan-suh.
(7) Under varshas or vashavasana (Pali, vassa; Spence Hardy, vass),
Eitel (p. 163) says:—"One of the most ancient institutions of
Buddhist discipline, requiring all ecclesiastics to spend the rainy
season in a monastery in devotional exercises. Chinese Buddhists
naturally substituted the hot season for the rainy (from the 16th day
of the 5th to the 15th of the 9th Chinese month)."
(8) During the troubled period of the Tsin dynasty, there were five
(usurping) Leang sovereignties in the western part of the empire ({.}
{.}). The name Leang remains in the department of Leang-chow in the
northern part of Kan-suh. The "southern Leang" arose in 397 under a
Tuh-fah Wu-ku, who was succeeded in 399 by a brother, Le-luh-koo; and
he again by his brother, the Now-t'an of the text, in 402, who was not
yet king therefore when Fa-Hsien and his friends reached his capital.
How he is represented as being so may be accounted for in various
ways, of which it is not necessary to write.
(9) Chang-yih is still the name of a district in Kan-chow department,
Kan-suh. It is a long way north and west from Lan-chow, and not far
from the Great Wall. Its king at this time was, probably, Twan-yeh of
"the northern Leang."
(10) Dana is the name for religious charity, the first of the six
paramitas, or means of attaining to nirvana; and a danapati is "one
who practises dana and thereby crosses {.} the sea of misery." It is
given as "a title of honour to all who support the cause of
Buddhism by acts of charity, especially to founders and patrons of
monasteries;"—see Eitel, p. 29.
(11) Of these pilgrims with their clerical names, the most
distinguished was Pao-yun, who translated various Sanskrit works on
his return from India, of which only one seems to be now existing. He
died in 449. See Nanjio's Catalogue of the Tripitaka, col. 417.
(12) This was the second summer since the pilgrims left Ch'ang-gan. We
are now therefore, probably, in A.D. 400.
(13) T'un-hwang (lat. 39d 40s N.; lon. 94d 50s E.) is still the name
of one of the two districts constituting the department of Gan-se, the
most western of the prefectures of Kan-suh; beyond the termination of
the Great Wall.
(14) Who this envoy was, and where he was going, we do not know. The
text will not admit of any other translation.
(15) Le Hao was a native of Lung-se, a man of learning, able and
kindly in his government. He was appointed governor or prefect of
T'un-hwang by the king of "the northern Leang," in 400; and there he
sustained himself, becoming by and by "duke of western Leang," till he
died in 417.
(16) "The river of sand;" the great desert of Kobi or Gobi; having
various other names. It was a great task which the pilgrims had now
before them,—to cross this desert. The name of "river" in the Chinese
misleads the reader, and he thinks of crossing it as of crossing
a stream; but they had to traverse it from east to west. In his
"Vocabulary of Proper Names," p. 23, Dr. Porter Smith says:—"It
extends from the eastern frontier of Mongolia, south-westward to the
further frontier of Turkestan, to within six miles of Ilchi, the
chief town of Khoten. It thus comprises some twenty-three degrees
of longitude in length, and from three to ten degrees of latitude
in breadth, being about 2,100 miles in its greatest length. In some
places it is arable. Some idea may be formed of the terror with
which this 'Sea of Sand,' with its vast billows of shifting sands, is
regarded, from the legend that in one of the storms 360 cities were
all buried within the space of twenty-four hours." So also Gilmour's
"Among the Mongols," chap. 5.
After travelling for seventeen days, a distance we may calculate of about 1500 le, (the pilgrims) reached the kingdom of Shen-shen,(1) a country rugged and hilly, with a thin and barren soil. The clothes of the common people are coarse, and like those worn in our land of Han,(2) some wearing felt and others coarse serge or cloth of hair;—this was the only difference seen among them. The king professed (our) Law, and there might be in the country more than four thousand monks,(3) who were all students of the hinayana.(4) The common people of this and other kingdoms (in that region), as well as the sramans,(5) all practise the rules of India,(6) only that the latter do so more exactly, and the former more loosely. So (the travellers) found it in all the kingdoms through which they went on their way from this to the west, only that each had its own peculiar barbarous speech.(7) (The monks), however, who had (given up the worldly life) and quitted their families, were all students of Indian books and the Indian language. Here they stayed for about a month, and then proceeded on their journey, fifteen days walking to the north-west bringing them to the country of Woo-e.(8) In this also there were more than four thousand monks, all students of the hinayana. They were very strict in their rules, so that sramans from the territory of Ts'in(9) were all unprepared for their regulations. Fa-Hsien, through the management of Foo Kung-sun, maitre d'hotellerie,(10) was able to remain (with his company in the monastery where they were received) for more than two months, and here they were rejoined by Pao-yun and his friends.(11) (At the end of that time) the people of Woo-e neglected the duties of propriety and righteousness, and treated the strangers in so niggardly a manner that Che-yen, Hwuy-keen, and Hwuy-wei went back towards Kao-ch'ang,(12) hoping to obtain there the means of continuing their journey. Fa-Hsien and the rest, however, through the liberality of Foo Kung-sun, managed to go straight forward in a south-west direction. They found the country uninhabited as they went along. The difficulties which they encountered in crossing the streams and on their route, and the sufferings which they endured, were unparalleled in human experience, but in the course of a month and five days they succeeded in reaching Yu-teen.(13)
