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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It Had Been The Capital Of
The First Empire Of Han (B.C. 202-A.D. 24), As It Subsequently Was
That Of Suy (A.D. 589-618).
The empire of the eastern Tsin, towards
the close of which Fa-hien lived, had its capital at or near
Nan-king,
and Ch'ang-gan was the capital of the principal of the three Ts'in
kingdoms, which, with many other minor ones, maintained a semi-
independence of Tsin, their rulers sometimes even assuming the title
of emperor.
[2] The period Hwang-che embraced from A.D. 399 to 414, being the
greater portion of the reign of Yao Hing of the After Ts'in, a
powerful prince. He adopted Hwang-che for the style of his reign in
399, and the cyclical name of that year was Kang-tsze. It is not
possible at this distance of time to explain, if it could be
explained, how Fa-hien came to say that Ke-hae was the second year of
the period. It seems most reasonable to suppose that he set out on his
pilgrimage in A.D. 399, the cycle name of which was Ke-hae, as {.},
the second year, instead of {.}, the first, might easily creep into
the text. In the "Memoirs of Eminent Monks" it is said that our author
started in the third year of the period Lung-gan of the eastern Tsin,
which was A.D. 399.
[3] These, like Fa-hien itself, are all what we might call "clerical"
names, appellations given to the parties as monks or sramanas.
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