Journal, July, 1871, p. 45), which makes things perfectly
clear. The expression transcribed by Pauthier, Yao san wen, and
rendered "Hosanna," appears in a Chinese work, without reference to
this inscription, as Yao san wah, and is in reality only a Chinese
transcript of the Persian word for Sunday, "Yak shambah." Mr. Wylie
verified this from the mouth of a Peking Mahomedan. The 4th of
February, 781 was Sunday, why Great Sunday? Mr. Wylie suggests,
possibly because the first Sunday of the (Chinese) year.
The monument exhibits, in addition to the Chinese text, a series of
short inscriptions in the Syriac language, and Estranghelo character,
containing the date of erection, viz. 1092 of the Greeks (= A.D. 781),
the name of the reigning Patriarch of the Nestorian church MAR HANAN
ISHUA (dead in 778, but the fact apparently had not reached China),
that of ADAM, Bishop and Pope of Tzinisthan (i.e. China), and those of
the clerical staff of the capital which here bears the name, given it
by the early Arab Travellers, of Kumdan. There follow sixty-seven
names of persons in Syriac characters, most of whom are characterised
as priests (Kashisha), and sixty-one names of persons in Chinese, all
priests save one.
[It appears that Adam (King tsing), who erected the monument under
Te Tsung was, under the same Emperor, with a Buddhist the translator
of a Buddhist sutra, the Satparamita from a Hu text.
