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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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. 38d E. the Tarim flows. Fa-hien
estimated its distance to be 1500 le from T'un-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 Fa-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 Ts'in or Ch'in," but intending thereby only the
kingdom or Ts'in, having its capital, as described in the first note
on the last chapter, in Ch'ang-gan.
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