ON TO SHEN-SHEN AND THENCE TO KHOTEN
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. Fâ-Hien, 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. Fâ-Hien 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)
NOTES
(1) An account is given of the kingdom of Shen-shen in the 96th of the
Books of the first Han dynasty, down to its becoming a dependency of
China, about B.C. 80. The greater portion of that is now accessible to
the English reader in a translation by Mr. Wylie in the “Journal of the
Anthropological Institute,” August, 1880. Mr. Wylie says:—“Although we
may not be able to identify Shen-shen with certainty, yet we have
sufficient indications to give an appropriate idea of its position, as
being south of and not far from lake Lob.” He then goes into an
exhibition of those indications, which I need not transcribe. It is
sufficient for us to know that the capital city was not far from Lob or
Lop Nor, into which in lon. 38° E. the Tarim flows. Fâ-Hien estimated
its distance to be 1500 le from T’un-hwang. He and his companions must
have gone more than twenty-five miles a day to accomplish the journey
in seventeen days.
(2) This is the name which Fâ-Hien always uses when he would speak of
China, his native country, as a whole, calling it from the great
dynasty which had ruled it, first and last, for between four and five
centuries. Occasionally, as we shall immediately see, he speaks of “the
territory of Ts’in or Ch’in,” but intending thereby only the kingdom or
Ts’in, having its capital, as described in the first note on the last
chapter, in Ch’ang-gan.
(3) So I prefer to translate the character {.} (sang) rather than by
“priests.” Even in Christianity, beyond the priestly privilege which
belongs to all believers, I object to the ministers of any denomination
or church calling themselves or being called “priests;” and much more
is the name inapplicable to the sramanas or bhikshus of Buddhism which
acknowledges no God in the universe, no soul in man, and has no
services of sacrifice or prayer in its worship. The only difficulty in
the use of “monks” is caused by the members of the sect in Japan which,
since the middle of the fifteenth century, has abolished the
prohibition against marrying on the part of its ministers, and other
prohibitions in diet and dress. Sang and sang-kea represent the
Sanskrit sangha, constituted by at least four members, and empowered to
hear confession, to grant absolution, to admit persons to holy orders,
&c.; secondly, the third constituent of the Buddhistic Trinity, a
deification of the _communio sanctorum_, or the Buddhist order. The
name is used by our author of the monks collectively or individually as
belonging to the class, and may be considered as synonymous with the
name sramana, which will immediately claim our attention.
(4) Meaning the “small vehicle, or conveyance.” There are in Buddhism
the triyana, or “three different means of salvation, i.e. of conveyance
across the samsara, or sea of transmigration, to the shores of nirvâna.
Afterwards the term was used to designate the different phases of
development through which the Buddhist dogma passed, known as the
mahayana, hinayana, and madhyamayana.” “The hinayana is the simplest
vehicle of salvation, corresponding to the first of the three degrees
of saintship. Characteristics of it are the preponderance of active
moral asceticism, and the absence of speculative mysticism and
quietism.” E. H., pp. 151-2, 45, and 117.
(5) The name for India is here the same as in the former chapter and
throughout the book,—T’een-chuh ({.} {.}), the chuh being pronounced,
probably, in Fâ-Hien’s time as tuk. How the earliest name for India,
Shin-tuk or duk=Scinde, came to be changed into Thien-tuk, it would
take too much space to explain. I believe it was done by the Buddhists,
wishing to give a good auspicious name to the fatherland of their Law,
and calling it “the Heavenly Tuk,” just as the Mohammedans call Arabia
“the Heavenly region” ({.} {.}), and the court of China itself is
called “the Celestial” ({.} {.}).
(6) Sraman may in English take the place of Sramana (Pâli, Samana; in
Chinese, Sha-man), the name for Buddhist monks, as those who have
separated themselves from (left) their families, and quieted their
hearts from all intrusion of desire and lust. “It is employed, first,
as a general name for ascetics of all denominations, and, secondly, as
a general designation of Buddhistic monks.” E. H., pp. 130, 131.
(7) Tartar or Mongolian.
(8) Woo-e has not been identified. Watters (“China Review,” viii. 115)
says:—“We cannot be far wrong if we place it in Kharaschar, or between
that and Kutscha.” It must have been a country of considerable size to
have so many monks in it.
(9) This means in one sense China, but Fâ-Hien, in his use of the name,
was only thinking of the three Ts’in states of which I have spoken in a
previous note; perhaps only of that from the capital of which he had
himself set out.
(10) This sentence altogether is difficult to construe, and Mr.
Watters, in the “China Review,” was the first to disentangle more than
one knot in it. I am obliged to adopt the reading of {.} {.} in the
Chinese editions, instead of the {.} {.} in the Corean text. It seems
clear that only one person is spoken of as assisting the travellers,
and his name, as appears a few sentences farther on, was Foo Kung-sun.
The {.} {.} which immediately follows the surname Foo {.}, must be
taken as the name of his office, corresponding, as the {.} shows, to
that of _le maitre d’hotellerie_ in a Roman Catholic abbey. I was once
indebted myself to the kind help of such an officer at a monastery in
Canton province. The Buddhistic name for him is uddesika=overseer. The
Kung-sun that follows his surname indicates that he was descended from
some feudal lord in the old times of the Chow dynasty. We know indeed
of no ruling house which had the surname of Foo, but its adoption by
the grandson of a ruler can be satisfactorily accounted for; and his
posterity continued to call themselves Kung-sun, duke or lord’s
grandson, and so retain the memory of the rank of their ancestor.
(11) Whom they had left behind them at T’un-hwang.
(12) The country of the Ouighurs, the district around the modern Turfan
or Tangut.
(13) Yu-teen is better known as Khoten. Dr. P. Smith gives (p. 11) the
following description of it:—“A large district on the south-west of the
desert of Gobi, embracing all the country south of Oksu and Yarkand,
along the northern base of the Kwun-lun mountains, for more than 300
miles from east to west. The town of the same name, now called Ilchi,
is in an extensive plain on the Khoten river, in lat. 37° N., and lon.
80° 35′ E. After the Tungani insurrection against Chinese rule in 1862,
the Mufti Haji Habeeboolla was made governor of Khoten, and held the
office till he was murdered by Yakoob Beg, who became for a time the
conqueror of all Chinese Turkestan. Khoten produces fine linen and
cotton stuffs, jade ornaments, copper, grain, and fruits.” The name in
Sanskrit is Kustana. (E. H., p. 60).