Transcriber’s Notes.

This is an UTF-8 update of the transcription done by John Bickers, Dagny, and David Widger available at: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/2124.
The original printed text scans can be found at: https://archive.org/details/b29352216

Text notes:

  1. In the printed book the English text occupies the left side of the book and is read to the centre. The Chinese text occupies the right side of the book and is read to the centre. Essentially this was two books under the same binding. The Chinese text was originally published by Oxford University Press in 1885. In this transcription, the Chinese text is placed after the English text. An entry has been added to the table of contents to indicate this rearrangement: (CHINESE TEXT: ⁠法顯傳). The line “Chinese Text: 法顯傳。” has been added to indicate the start of the Chinese text section. Also, hyperlink tags have been added to the beginning of each chapter to allow the reader to jump between the English and Chinese text.
  2. Footnotes have been moved to the end of each chapter. As a result the original page numbers are no longer valid and are not indicated. Page numbers in the table of contents and index are for reference only.
  3. Spelling in the English text has been standardised to the most common versions used in the text. If equal number of spelling versions were present, the version most common at the time of publication was used. Spellings contained in direct quotations are left unchanged.
  4. As much as possible, the Chinese transcription uses the same character variants as used in the original printed text. If a Unicode version of the character is not found, then a traditional variant is used in its place. For example radical 184 uses 𩙿in the printed text but most of the Unicode characters use 飠. The same case applies to radical 113. The printed text uses 示 but most Unicode characters use 礻.
  5. Footnotes 5 and 6 in chapter 2 have been switched to match the the corresponding text in the chapter.
  6. “Nâgara” in chapter 8 changed to “Nagâra” to match the rest of the text.
  7. At the beginning of chapter 19 in the English text Legge says 3 yojanas of distance while the Chinese text says 10. This was left unchanged.
  8. Chinese characters not found in Unicode are marked as [Cn] where ‘n’ is a number:
  9. [C1]
  10. 𩙿 on left, 芳 on right.
    Ideographic Description Sequence: ⿰𩙿芳
  11. [C2]
  12. 條, but with 亻 replaced by 彳.
  13. [C3]
  14. 𧾷on left, 加 on right.
    Ideographic Description Sequence: ⿰𧾷加
  15. [C4] [C4]
  16. 方 on left, 色 on right.
    Ideographic Description Sequence: ⿰方色
  17. [C5]
  18. 艹 on top, then 虍, and 隹 below.
    Ideographic Description Sequence: ⿱艹⿸虍隹
[C1]𩙿 on left, 芳 on right.
Ideographic Description Sequence: ⿰𩙿芳
[C2]條, but with 亻 replaced by 彳.
[C3]𧾷on left, 加 on right.
Ideographic Description Sequence: ⿰𧾷加
[C4] [C4] 方 on left, 色 on right.
Ideographic Description Sequence: ⿰方色
[C5]艹 on top, then 虍, and 隹 below.
Ideographic Description Sequence: ⿱艹⿸虍隹