I Have Taken The Trouble To Give All The Various Readings (Amounting To More Than 300), Partly As A Curiosity And To Make My Text Complete, And Partly To Show How, In The Transcription Of Writings In Whatever Language, Such Variations Are Sure To Occur,

"Maculae, quas aut incuria fudit, Aut humana parum cavit nature,"

While on the whole they very slightly affect the meaning of the document.

The editors of the Catalogue Raisonne intimate their doubts of the good taste and reliability of all Fa-hien's statements. It offends them that he should call central India the "Middle Kingdom," and China, which to them was the true and only Middle Kingdom, but "a Border land;" - it offends them as the vaunting language of a Buddhist writer, whereas the reader will see in the expressions only an instance of what Fa-hien calls his "simple straightforwardness."

As an instance of his unreliability they refer to his account of the Buddhism of Khoten, whereas it is well known, they say, that the Khoteners from ancient times till now have been Mohammedans; - as if they could have been so 170 years before Mohammed was born, and 222 years before the year of the Hegira! And this is criticism in China. The Catalogue was ordered by the K'ien-lung emperor in 1722. Between three and four hundred of the "Great Scholars" of the empire were engaged on it in various departments, and thus egregiously ignorant did they show themselves of all beyond the limits of their own country, and even of the literature of that country itself.

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