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0088 Cathay and the Way Thither : vol.1
Cathay and the Way Thither : vol.1 / Page 88 (Grayscale High Resolution Image)

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doi: 10.20676/00000042
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1 t xii   PRELIMINARY ESSAY.

Buddhism was becoming oppressed in India. In 986, however, a monk of Icheu (Kamul) returning from India brought a letter from a king who is called Illosinanq, written in terms of humblest reverence, which are preserved by the Chinese authority, and

transmitting relics of Sakya.'

49. Indeed, for many centuries subsequent to the introduction of Buddhism in China, the intercourse between its devotees in the two countries was frequent, and the narratives of Chinese pilgrims who spent years in studying the Buddhist doctrines in their original country and in visiting the sacred sites and monastic establishments of India, form a curious and valuable part of Chinese literature. Of these works several have been translated into European languages, as the Travels of Fathian (399-414) ; of Hiwen Thsang (travelled 623-645) ; and of Hoei Sing, who set out in 518. One of the latest of these travellers was Khinie, who journeyed (964-976) at the head of a body of 300 monks whom the Emperor despatched to India to seek relics of Buddha and collect books of palm-leaves. Fragments of descriptions of the western countries are cited from a work of one of

1 Julien, 115-116. This letter was translated by one Shihu, an Indian ecclesiastic, who also communicated some information about the kingdoms of India. Besides Central India (here Magadha) there were in the north the kingdoms of Utiennang (Udyana, according to Julien), west of that Khientolo (Gandhara), Nanggolokialo (Nagarahara), Lanpo (Lamghan, now generally called Laghman), then Gojenang (probably Ghazni), and then Persia. Three days' journey west of Magadha was Alawei (Rewa ?), then Karana Kiuje (i.e. Kanya Kubja or Kanauj), Malwa, Ujjayani, Lolo (Lara according to Julien), Surashtra, and the Western Sea. Southern India was four months' journey from Magadha, and ninety days west of it was Konkana.

Gandhara mentioned above, according to the indications of Hiwen Thsang, lay north of Peshawur and stretched across the Indus. It is the Kandandr of Albiruni and other early Arab writers, the capital of which was Waihand, which stood on the west of the Indus north of the Kabul River's confluence. This is supposed to be the Utakhanda of Hiwen Thsang, and has been identified with Ohind or Hund, about fifteen miles above Attok. Udhyana lay west of Gandhara, the country on the Upper Swat and eastern part of the modern Kafiristan. Nanggolokialo or Nagarahara appears to have been near the present Jalalabad. See Reinaud in Mein. de l'Acad. xvii, 108, 157, etc. ; Lassen iii, 137 seq. ; V. St. Martin in N. Ann.

des Voyages for 1853, ii, 166.