70 Chinese Account of India. [Jan. 



He subjected 580 cities and towns, and his power grew so formidable, that 

 the king of the kingdom of eastern India, named She-keaou-mo*, sent 

 him 30,000 oxen and horses to feed and mount his army, as well as bows, 

 sabres, precious collars, and cords of silk. The kingdom of Kea-mo-loot 

 furnished different articles, with a chart of the country^, amongst which 

 was a portrait of Laou-tsze. 



Heuen-tse took with him O-lo-na-shun, to present him to the emperor 

 (as a vanquished enemy). There had been an imperial order, which pre- 

 scribed that the ancestors should be informed hereof, in the temple dedi- 

 cated to them; and Heuen-tse was elevated, at the court, above the ma- 

 gistrates (ta-foo) of all ranks. 



In his travels, the Chinese ambassador bad encountered a doctor named 

 Na-lo-urh-po-so-mei§, who told him that he was 200 years old, and pos- 

 sessed the recipe of immortality. The emperor|| (having learned this 

 intelligence) immediately quitted the hall of audience, in order to de- 

 spatch an envoy in search of the philosophical stone (tan). He directed 

 the president of the ministry of war to furnish the envoy with all the ne- 

 cessary instructions and provisions to enable him to prosecute his journey. 

 This envoy traversed " the world" on horseback, to collect supernatural 

 drugs, as well as the most rare and extraordinary stones. He travelled 

 over all the kingdoms of the Po-lo-mun (Brahmans), in the country called 

 the Waters of Pan-cha-fa^F, which (waters) come from the midst of cal- 

 careous rocks (shih-kew, ' stone-mortar,' or 'rock'), where are elephants 

 and men of stone to guard them. The waters are of seven different spe- 

 cies; one is hot, another very cold (or frozen, ting). Plants and wood 

 may be consumed in it ; gold and steel may be fused in it ; and a person 

 who dips his hand into it will have it entirely burnt off. This water is 

 poured into vases by means of skulls of camels, which turn round. There 

 is also a tvee there, called tsoo-lae-lo, the leaves of which are like varnish 

 or blacking. It grows upon the top of scarped and desert mountains. 

 Enormous serpents guard it ; and those who wander in the neighborhood 

 cannot approach it. A person who wishes to gather the leaves employs 

 different arrows to strike the branches of the tree ; the leaves then fall. 

 A multitude of birds also take the leaves into their beaks, and carry them 

 a great way : it is necessary, in like manner, to direct arrows against them, 

 to obtain these leaves. There are other curiosities in this country of the 

 6ame kind. 



* Sri-kumara ? 



f This kingdom must be that of Kama-rupa, mentioned in the Sanscrit inscrip- 

 tion on the column of Allahabad, and which formed the western part of the kingdom 

 of Assam, on the frontiers of Tibet. The syllable ka is well represented by kea, as 

 ma is by mo, and ru by loo ; the last syllable pa is not transcribed. It is worthy of 

 remark, that it is a general law of transcription from Sanscrit into Chinese, that 

 the short a should be represented in the latter by o. 



X This curious circumstance is a ground for thinking (for it is not a mere conjec- 

 ture), that there existed, and perhaps still exist, in India, native geographical charts 

 and works on geography ; but all these articles must have undergone the fate of 

 the royal archives, where they were carefully preserved and concealed from the eager 

 eyes of European conquerors. 



§ The first two words of this transcription represent faithfully the Sanscrit word 

 jrr nara, ' man,' which enters into the composition of many proper names ; but 

 the Sanscrit value of the other four syllables is more difficult to determine. 



|| Tae-tsung, who reigned from A. D. 626 to 649. 



^f This is a very exact transcription of the Persian word ^[^XJ Panjdb, the 



' five waters,' or 'five rivers' (in Sanscrit Panchananda) , which is the designation 

 given to a large and fertile province of India. The last syllable/a, in the Chinese 

 transcription, represents the more faithfully the syllable ah, inasmuch as the conso- 

 nants composing it are two labials very often taken one for the other. 



