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 hînayâna.[4] The
common people of this and other kingdoms (in that region), as well
as the śramans,[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
hînayâna. They were very strict in their rules, so that śramans from
the territory of Tsʽin[9] were all unprepared for their regulations.
Fâ-hien, through the management of Foo Kung-sun, maître
d’hôtellerie,[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 Pâo-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 Kâo-chʽang,[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 Tʽun-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 Tsʽin or Chʽin,’ but intending thereby only the
kingdom or Tsʽin, having its capital, as described in the first note
on the last chapter, in Chʽang-gan.
[3] So I prefer to translate the character 僧 (săng) 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 Śramaṇas 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. Săng and
săng-keâ represent the Sanskrit saṅgha, which denotes (E. H., p 117),
first, an assembly of monks, or bhikshu saṅgha, 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 śramaṇa, which will
immediately claim our attention.
[4] Meaning the ‘small vehicle, or conveyance.’ There are in
Buddhism the triyâna, or ‘three different means of salvation, i.e. of
conveyance across the saṃsâra, or sea of transmigration, to the
shores of nirvâṇa. Afterwards the term was used to designate the
different phases of development through which the Buddhist dogma
passed, known as the mahâyâna, hînayâna, and madhyamayâna.’ ‘The
hînayâna 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] ‘Śraman’ may in English take the place of Śramaṇa (Pâli, Samana;
in Chinese, Shâ-măn), 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.
[6] The name for India is here the same as in the former chapter and
throughout the book,—Tʽeen-chuh (天竺), 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’ (天方), and the court
of China itself is called ‘the Celestial’ (天꜀朝).
[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 Tsʽin 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 行堂 in the
Chinese editions, instead of the 行當 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 行堂 which immediately follows the surname Foo 符, must
be taken as the name of his office, corresponding, as the 行 shows, to
that of le maître d’hôtellerie 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 Tʽun-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 Ilchî, is in an extensive plain on the Khoten river, in lat.
37° N., and lon. 80° 35′ E. After the Tungâni insurrection against
Chinese rule in 1862, the Mufti Hâji 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).