A Record Of Buddhistic Kingdoms - Being An Account By The Chinese Monk Fa-hien Of His Travels In India And Ceylon (a.d. 399-414) By James Legge
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[14] Probably not Ch'ang-gan, but Nan-king, which was the capital of
the Eastern Tsin dynasty under another name.
[15] The whole of this paragraph is probably Fa-hien's own conclusion
of his narrative. The second half of the second sentence, both in
sentiment and style in the Chinese text, seems to necessitate our
ascribing it to him, writing on the impulse of his own thoughts, in
the same indirect form which he adopted for his whole narrative. There
are, however, two peculiar phraseologies in it which might suggest the
work of another hand. For the name India, where the first [15] is
placed, a character is employed which is similarly applied nowhere
else; and again, "the three Honoured Ones," at which the second [15]
is placed, must be the same as "the three Precious Ones," which we
have met with so often; unless we suppose that {.} {.} is printed in
all the revisions for {.} {.}, "the World-honoured one," which has
often occurred. On the whole, while I accept this paragraph as
Fa-hien's own, I do it with some hesitation. That the following and
concluding paragraph is from another hand, there can be no doubt. And
it is as different as possible in style from the simple and
straightforward narrative of Fa-hien.
[16] There is an error of date here, for which it is difficult to
account. The year Keah-yin was A.D. 414; but that was the tenth year
of the period E-he, and not the twelfth, the cyclical designation of
which was Ping-shin.
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