106 



inclined to suspect there must be some error on the part of the 

 translator of the books in which it is recorded, unless indeed it be 

 the record of some antient tradition which was afterwards grafted 

 on to Buddhism." 



Concerning this intercourse of the Chinese with India the follow- 

 ing extract from Professor Salisbury's Memoir on the History of 

 Buddhism will suffice for our present purpose : — 



" It is known that Khotan, the Western part of Lesser Bochara, was 

 a great mart of commercial intercourse in ancient times between China 

 and Persia, and of the traffic of the remote East with the countries west- 

 ward of the Persian Empire, by the way of the Oxus and the Caspian 

 Sea ; and that it had also intimate relations with Central India, across 

 Cashmere, is conclusively proved by the names of many places there, as 

 given by the Chinese authors, of which, according to Remusat, the San- 

 skrit origin may still be recognized. We further know that at the time 

 of the Mongol conquest, Khotan had been long a centre of Buddhist 

 influence ; for the Buddhists of countries further to the east were then 

 wont to make pilgrimages thither to inquire after the sacred books, and 

 the traditions of their religion.* The period of the introduction of Bud- 

 dhism into that country is entirely undetermined, unless a certain tradition, 

 which was current in Khotan in the time of the Chinese dynasty of the 

 Thing, may afford the desired clue. The tradition is, that the prince of 

 Khotan was miraculously descended from the deity Pi-chamen, which, if 

 it has any foundation in fact, can scarcely be interpreted to signify less 

 than that the civil state had been established under Buddhist influence. 

 But we have the information of a Chinese author, that from the time of 

 Wouti of the dynasty of the Han, an emperor whose reign was from b. c. 

 140 to n. c. 87, Khotan began to have political relations with China, and 

 that the succession of its princes was nob afterwards interrupted, down to 

 the age of the Thang ; consequently the tradition respecting the estab- 

 lishment of the principality must refer to a period as remote, at the 



* See Hist, de la Ville Khotan, by M. Abel Remusat, and Ritters Erdkunde von 

 Asia, i. 228, &c. 



