According To The Preceding Paragraph, Fa-Hien's Travels Had Occupied Him Fifteen Years, So That Counting From A.D. 399,

The year Ke-hae, as that in which he set out, the year of his getting to Ts'ing-chow would

Have been Kwei-chow, the ninth year of the period E-he; and we might join on "This year Keah-yin" to that paragraph, as the date at which the narrative was written out for the bamboo-tablets and the silk, and then begins the Envoy, "In the twelfth year of E-he." This would remove the error as it stands at present, but unfortunately there is a particle at the end of the second date ({.}), which seems to tie the twelfth year of E-he to Keah-yin, as another designation of it. The "year-star" is the planet Jupiter, the revolution of which, in twelve years, constitutes "a great year." Whether it would be possible to fix exactly by mathematical calculation in what year Jupiter was in the Chinese zodiacal sign embracing part of both Virgo and Scorpio, and thereby help to solve the difficulty of the passage, I do not know, and in the meantime must leave that difficulty as I have found it.

[17] We do not know who the writer of the Envoy was. "The winter study or library" would be the name of the apartment in his monastery or house, where he sat and talked with Fa-hien.

End of Buddhistic Kingdoms, by Fa-Hien

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