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-Hsien 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-Hsien 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.

(3) So I prefer to translate the character {.} (sang) rather than by
"priests." Even in Christianity, beyond the priestly privilege
which belongs to all believers, I object to the ministers of any
denomination or church calling themselves or being called "priests;"
and much more is the name inapplicable to the sramanas or bhikshus of
Buddhism which acknowledges no God in the universe, no soul in man,
and has no services of sacrifice or prayer in its worship. The only
difficulty in the use of "monks" is caused by the members of the
sect in Japan which, since the middle of the fifteenth century,
has abolished the prohibition against marrying on the part of its
ministers, and other prohibitions in diet and dress. Sang and sang-kea
represent the Sanskrit sangha, constituted by at least four members,
and empowered to hear confession, to grant absolution, to admit
persons to holy orders, &c.; secondly, the third constituent of the
Buddhistic Trinity, a deification of the _communio sanctorum_, or
the Buddhist order. The name is used by our author of the monks
collectively or individually as belonging to the class,