310 _Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal. [June, 1911. 
The passage which I have marked with brackets is a 
rendering of the original :— 
Bae ie PY 
has fae it seems, the source of puzzle to eg Fs Mr. 
Fujishima, who translated some parts o the work into 
French,' took it to Sey “the court’’ and the whole 
sentence he would render b 
‘*which (the rank) gives se {access to the court ’’ 
[‘ gui leur donne acces a la co 
To make mén mean ‘ royal court’ ie neither be warranted 
by its use in general literature nor the resent context. 
King’s Court to lay down before it tt e sharp weapon (of their 
the court.’’ Further, there is no character in the text which 
would mean ‘ access, *? nor mén has been anywhere found to 
signify ‘‘ Court 
Dr. Takakusu takes mén in its literal sense; iS 
‘lofty gates.’ But, then, he has to detach the first character 
a shang from the sentence and translate it by the adverbial 
phrase ‘* as reward,’’ while area? it is a verb meaning 
‘to give,’ ‘to fre ’ *to bestow.’ To make sense, he sup- 
plies a complete sentence, viz. ‘‘ their famous names are writ- 
ien.’’ The second character Ea su, in its common meaning, 
‘ simple,’ ‘ white,’ adds to the confusion ; and an unintelligible 
ing, ae their famous names written in white on their lofty 
gates’’ is the result. To write in white, and that on what 
gates? On the gates of the house of the scholastic, or of the 
king, or on the gates of some temple, or of the city-walls ? 
If by FA mén really some gates were meant, they would have 
been specified. Again, as far as we know, there was no such 
practice as to inscribe names of scholars on any gates. Dr. 
Takakusu, however, avows that the text is not clear to him and 
that his rendering i is only tentative. 
If we take FA mén in the classical sense to mean ‘school,’ 
‘system,’ we would not be, perhaps, far from what I-tsing 
1 The Journal Asiatique, 1888. 2 J-tsing, p. 177. 
