(8) During the troubled period of the Tsin dynasty, there were five (usurping) Leang sovereignties in the western part of the empire ({.} {.}). The name Leang remains in the department of Leang-chow in the northern part of Kan-suh. The “southern Leang” arose in 397 under a Tuh-fah Wu-ku, who was succeeded in 399 by a brother, Le-luh-koo; and he again by his brother, the Now-t’an of the text, in 402, who was not yet king therefore when Fâ-Hien and his friends reached his capital. How he is represented as being so may be accounted for in various ways, of which it is not necessary to write.
(9) Chang-yih is still the name of a district in Kan-chow department, Kan-suh. It is a long way north and west from Lan-chow, and not far from the Great Wall. Its king at this time was, probably, Twan-yeh of “the northern Leang.”
(10) Dana is the name for religious charity, the first of the six paramitas, or means of attaining to nirvâna; and a danapati is “one who practises dana and thereby crosses {.} the sea of misery.” It is given as “a title of honour to all who support the cause of Buddhism by acts of charity, especially to founders and patrons of monasteries;”—see Eitel, p. 29.
(11) Of these pilgrims with their clerical names, the most distinguished was Pao-yun, who translated various Sanskrit works on his return from India, of which only one seems to be now existing. He died in 449. See Nanjio’s Catalogue of the Tripitaka, col. 417.
(12) This was the second summer since the pilgrims left Ch’ang-gan. We are now therefore, probably, in A.D. 400.
(13) T’un-hwang (lat. 39° 40′ N.; lon. 94° 50′ E.) is still the name of one of the two districts constituting the department of Gan-se, the most western of the prefectures of Kan-suh; beyond the termination of the Great Wall.
(14) Who this envoy was, and where he was going, we do not know. The text will not admit of any other translation.
(15) Le Hao was a native of Lung-se, a man of learning, able and kindly in his government. He was appointed governor or prefect of T’un-hwang by the king of “the northern Leang,” in 400; and there he sustained himself, becoming by and by “duke of western Leang,” till he died in 417.
(16) “The river of sand;” the great desert of Kobi or Gobi; having various other names. It was a great task which the pilgrims had now before them,—to cross this desert. The name of “river” in the Chinese misleads the reader, and he thinks of crossing it as of crossing a stream; but they had to traverse it from east to west. In his “Vocabulary of Proper Names,” p. 23, Dr. Porter Smith says:—“It extends from the eastern frontier of Mongolia, south-westward to the further frontier of Turkestan, to within six miles of Ilchi, the chief town of Khoten. It thus comprises some twenty-three degrees of longitude in length, and from three to ten degrees of latitude in breadth, being about 2,100 miles in its greatest length. In some places it is arable. Some idea may be formed of the terror with which this ‘Sea of Sand,’ with its vast billows of shifting sands, is regarded, from the legend that in one of the storms 360 cities were all buried within the space of twenty-four hours.” So also Gilmour’s “Among the Mongols,” chap. 5.