i26 SPOLIA ZEYLANICA. 



List of Alms bestowed at the Shrine of the Buddhist Temple 

 in the Mountain of Ceylon as offerings. 



1,000 pieces of gold : 5,000 pieces of silver : 50 rolls of embroidered 

 silk in many colours : 50 rolls of silk taffeta, in many colours : 4 pairs of 

 jewelled banners, gold embroidered, and of variegated silk : 2 pairs of 

 the same picked in red : one pair of the same in yellow : one pair in 

 black : 5 antique brass incense burners : 5 pairs of antique brass flower 

 vases picked in gold on lacquer , with gold stands : 5 pairs of yellow brass 

 candlesticks picked in gold on lacquer, with gold stands : 5 yellow brass 

 lamps picked in gold on lacquer with gold stands : 5 incense vessels 

 in vermilion red, lacquered gold picked on lacquer, with gold stands : 

 6 pairs of golden lotus flowers : 2,500 catties of scented oil : 10 pairs of 

 wax candles : 10 sticks of fragrant incense. 



The date being the seventh year of Yung-Lo (1410 a.d.) marked 

 Chi ch'ou in the sixty years' cycle, on the Chia Hsu day of the sixty 

 days cycle in the second moon, being the 1st day of the month. 



A reverent oblation. 



Edmund Backhouse. 

 Pekin, March 31, 1911. 



Appendix II. 



A Note on Ching-Ho. 



The eunuch Ching-Ho was one of the greatest tigiu'es in the great 

 reign of Yung Lo. He attracted the attention of that monarch, when 

 prince of Yen, by his Icnowledge of strategy, and was his chief assistant 

 in the long campaign he successfully carried out against his nephew, the 

 second emperor of the Ming dynasty and grandson of Chu Yuan-chang, 

 its founder. It is needless to recapitulate the events of that four years' 

 war, with which the reader will be familiar : marching from Pekin 

 southwards the prince of Yen won city after city from the imperialists, 

 and entered Nanking in 1403. The yovmg Emperor Hui Ti fled into 

 Yunnan and thence to Burma ; and the first of the expeditions which 

 Ching-Ho undertook to a foreign country was to ascertain, if possible, 

 his whereabouts. In 1405 he went as far as Tongking, Siam,and Java, 

 from all of which comitries tribute was received and the accession of 

 Yung Lo duly acknowledged. 



Encouraged by his success, his master sent him with a larger fleet in 

 the year 1407 to visit more remote lands : he collected tribute in Borneo, 

 Siunatra, Straits Settlements, visited Assam and Chittagong, and 

 cruised down the Bay of Bengal to Ceylon, where the King of Kandy 

 is recorded as having recognized the Emperor Yvmg Lo as his suzerain. 

 A Cingalese envoy returned with him to China and was received at 

 court. This is the visit referred to in the inscription now translated. 

 Apparently he followed it up by a second journey to Sumatra in 1411. 

 The year after his return to Pekin {i.e.- 1415) he went on a fourth 

 mission and opened up trade with all the comitries and islands in the 

 southern archipelago. After a second stay at Kandy, where he so- 

 journed in the well-known Buddhist temple near the lake, he went on 

 to Calicut, Socotra, Aden, entered the straits of Babel-Mandeb and 

 appears to have gone vip the Red Sea as far as Suakim. The Sultan 

 (?) of Yemen sent representatives to forward tribute to Yung Lo, and 

 the ruler of Aden hospitably received his mission, which lingered there 

 several weeks. 



