OF CHINA. 21 



Once in her new country, the Princess- queen began to raise silk-worms at 

 Ma-dya, situate south ef the capital. But the Chinese delegates seeing 

 this, led the king to believe tbat these worms would become venomous 

 snakes which would ravage the land. Vijayajaya gave orders to have the 

 snake-raising house burnt down. The queen, however, managed to save 

 some and reared them secretly; after a time she had procured silk and 

 could wear silk garments which she showed to the king, who regretted 

 what he had done, and henceforth favoured the silk culture. 



Unhappily for the proposed identification, we are not in a position to 

 carry it positively further, as we do not know the exact name of the 

 princess. The Bstan-hgyur gives it as Pu-nye-shar, which may mean 

 the house-wife of the east, and therefore is no name. On the other 

 hand, Hiuen-Tsang, the Buddhist pilgrim speaks of Lu-shi, litt. stag- 

 pierced, as the convent founded by the above Princess-queen, and this 

 name has been gratuitously supposed to be hers, or as the meaning does 

 not fit, a transliteration of it. There is, however, an equation of meaning 

 between Pu-nye as house -ivife and Yii-she which suggests the idea of a 

 person residing, the resident. Such is apparently the clue to the 

 identification. 



As to the other goddes-, Yuan yu kwei jin. we have no clue about her; 

 she may have been a Lady-in-waiting to the above Princess. Acting on 

 this suggeston ] uan would have been her name, and Yu kwei jin would 

 be her description as a woman of Yu, which was the name of a district in 

 the north of Shen-si under the Han dynasty. 98 The fact that they were 

 worshipped and enumerated together must be taken, into consideration, 

 and speaks in favour of this view. 



40. It is important to remark that in none of the statements here 

 collected, no reference whatever has been made to the part attributed to 

 Si-ling she, alias Lui-tsu, Sien tsan^ alias Yuen fei. 



Notes 



78) Li Id VII ; Li yun, sect. I. par. 8 and 9.— J. Legge, The Li hi, 

 p. 369. 



79) Tai ping yu Ian, Kiv. 925, fol.7. 



80) In the Er-ya, sect, of T'ien it is mentioned that Tien sze is Fang. 

 It consists of /3, <5, ir, p. 



81) Some interesting remarks on this constellation are given in G. 

 Schlegel : Uranographie Chinoise, -pp. 113-115. 



82) Sing King. — G. Schlegel, Uranographie Chinoise, p. 205, quoting 

 also the Tien huang hwey tung. 



83) Mayers, Chinese R. M., I. 16. — A Wylie, Notes on Chinese litera- 

 ture, p. 153. 



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