The stone slab, about 7½ feet high by 3 feet wide, and some 10 inches in thickness,[A] which bears this inscription, was accidentally found in 1625 by some workmen who were digging in the Chang-ngan suburb of the city of Singanfu. The cross, which is engraved at p. 30, is incised at the top of the slab, and beneath this are 9 large characters in 3 columns, constituting the heading, which runs: “Monument commemorating the introduction and propagation of the noble Law of Ta T’sin in the Middle Kingdom;” Ta T’sin being the term applied in Chinese literature to the Roman Empire, of which the ancient Chinese had much such a shadowy conception as the Romans had, conversely, of the Chinese as Sinae and Seres. Then follows the body of the inscription, of great length and beautiful execution, consisting of 1780 characters. Its chief contents are as follows:— 1st. An abstract of Christian doctrine, of a vague and figurative kind; 2nd. An account of the arrival of the missionary Olopăn (probably a Chinese form of Rabban = Monk),[B] from Ta T’sin in the year equivalent to A.D. 635, bringing sacred books and images; of the translation of the said books; of the Imperial approval of the doctrine and permission to teach it publicly. There follows a decree of the Emperor (T’ai Tsung, a very famous prince) issued in 638, in favour of the new doctrine, and ordering a church to be built in the Square of Peace and Justice (I-ning Fang), at the capital. The Emperor’s portrait was to be placed in the church. After this comes a description of Ta T’sin (here apparently implying Syria); and then some account of the fortunes of the Church in China. Kao Tsung (650–683, the devout patron also of the Buddhist traveller and Dr. Hiuen Tsang) continued to favour it. In the end of the century, Buddhism gets the upper hand, but under Hiuan-Tsung (713–755) the Church recovers its prestige, and Kiho, a new missionary, arrives. Under Te-Tsung (780–783) the monument was erected, and this part ends with the eulogy of Issé, a statesman and benefactor of the Church. 3rd. There follows a recapitulation of the purport in octosyllabic verse.
The Chinese inscription concludes with the date of erection, viz. the second year Kienchung of the Great T’ang Dynasty, the seventh day of the month Tait’su, the feast of the great Yaosan. This corresponds, according to Gaubil, to 4th February, 781; and Yaosan is supposed to stand for Hosanna (i.e. Palm Sunday; but this apparently does not fit; see infra). There are added the name chief of the law, Ningchu (presumed to be the Chinese name of the Metropolitan), the name of the writer, and the official sanction.
The Great Hosanna was, though ingenious, a misinterpretation of Gaubil’s. Mr. Wylie has sent me a paper of his own (in Chin. Recorder and Miss. Journal, July, 1871, p. 45), which makes things perfectly clear. The expression transcribed by Pauthier, Yao-săn-wen, and rendered “Hosanna,” appears in a Chinese work, without reference to this inscription, as Yao-săn-wăh, and is in reality only a Chinese transcript of the Persian word for Sunday, “Yak-shambah.” Mr. Wylie verified this from the mouth of a Peking Mahomedan. The 4th of February, 781 was Sunday; why Great Sunday? Mr. Wylie suggests, possibly because the first Sunday of the (Chinese) year.
The monument exhibits, in addition to the Chinese text, a series of short inscriptions in the Syriac language, and Estranghelo character, containing the date of erection, viz. 1092 of the Greeks (= A.D. 781), the name of the reigning Patriarch of the Nestorian church Mar Hanan Ishua (dead in 778, but the fact apparently had not reached China), that of Adam, Bishop and Pope of Tzinisthán (i.e. China), and those of the clerical staff of the capital which here bears the name, given it by the early Arab Travellers, of Kúmdán. There follow sixty-seven names of persons in Syriac characters, most of whom are characterised as priests (Kashíshá), and sixty-one names of persons in Chinese, all priests save one.
[It appears that Adam (King-tsing), who erected the monument under Te-Tsung was, under the same Emperor, with a Buddhist the translator of a Buddhist sûtra, the Saṭpâramitâ from a Hu text. (See a curious paper by Mr. J. Takakusu in the T’oung Pao, VII pp. 589–591.)
Mr. Rockhill (Rubruck, p. 157, note) makes the following remarks. “It is strange, however, that the two famous Uigur Nestorians, Mar Jabalaha and Rabban Cauma, when on their journey from Koshang in Southern Shan-hsi to Western Asia in about 1276, while they mention ‘the city of Tangut,’ or Ning-hsia on the Yellow River as an important Nestorian centre, do not once refer to Hsi-anfu or Chang-an. Had Chang-an been at the time the Nestorian Episcopal see, one would think that these pilgrims would have visited it, or at least referred to it. (Chabot, Mar Jabalaha, 21)”—H. C.]
Kircher gives a good many more Syriac names than appear on the rubbing, probably because some of these are on the edge of the slab now built in. We have no room to speak of the controversies raised by this stone. The most able defence of its genuine character, as well as a transcript with translation and commentary, a work of great interest, was published by the late M. Pauthier. The monument exists intact, and has been visited by the Rev. Mr. Williamson, Baron Richthofen, and other recent travellers. [The Rev. Moir Duncan wrote from Shen-si regarding the present state of the stone. (London and China Telegraph, 5th June, 1893): “Of the covering rebuilt so recently, not a trace remains save the pedestals for the pillars and atoms of the tiling. In answer to a question as to when and how the covering was destroyed, the old priest replied, with a twinkle in his eye as if his conscience pinched, ‘There came a rushing wind and blew it down.’ He could not say when, for he paid no attention to such mundane affairs. More than one outsider however, said it had been deliberately destroyed, because the priests are jealous of the interest manifested in it.... The stone has evidently been recently tampered with, several characters are effaced and there are other signs of malicious hands.”—H. C.] Pauthier’s works on the subject are—De l’Authenticité de l’Inscription Nestorienne, etc., B. Duprat, 1857; and l’Inscription Syro-Chinoise de Si-ngan-fou, etc., Firmin Didot, 1858. (See also Kircher, China Illustrata; and article by Mr. Wylie in J. Am. Or. Soc., V. 278.) [Father Havret, S.J., of Zi-ka-wei, near Shang-hai, has undertaken to write a large work on this inscription with the title of La Stèle Chrétienne de Si-ngan-fou; the first part giving the inscription in full size, and the second containing the history of the monument, have been published at Shang-hai in 1895 and 1897; the author died last year (29th September, 1901), and the translation which was to form a third part has not yet appeared. The Rev. Dr. J. Legge has given a translation and the Chinese text of the monument, in 1888.—H. C.]
Stone monuments of character strictly analogous are frequent in the precincts of Buddhist sanctuaries, and probably the idea of this one was taken from the Buddhists. It is reasonably supposed by Pauthier that the monument may have been buried in 845, when the Emperor Wu-Tsung issued an edict, still extant, against the vast multiplication of Buddhist convents, and ordering their destruction. A clause in the edict also orders the foreign bonzes of Ta-T’sin and Mubupa (Christian and Mobed or Magian?) to return to secular life.
[A] [M. Grenard, who reproduces (III. p. 152) a good facsimile of the inscription, gives to the slab the following dimensions: high 2m. 36, wide 0m. 86, thick 0m. 25.—H. C.]
[B] [Dr. F. Hirth (China and the Roman Orient, p. 323) writes: “O-lo-pên = Ruben, Rupen?” He adds (Jour. China Br. R. As. Soc. XXI. 1886, pp. 214–215): “Initial r is also quite commonly represented by initial l. I am in doubt whether the two characters o-lo in the Chinese name for Russia (O-lo-ssŭ) stand for foreign ru or ro alone. This word would bear comparison with a Chinese transcription of the Sanskrit word for silver, rūpya, which in the Pen-ts’ao-kang-mu (ch. 8, p. 9) is given as o-lu-pa. If we can find further analogies, this may help us to read that mysterious word in the Nestorian stone inscription, being the name of the first Christian missionary who carried the cross to China, O-lo-pên, as ‘Ruben’. This was indeed a common name among the Nestorians, for which reason I would give it the preference over Pauthier’s Syriac ‘Alopeno’. But Father Havret (Stèle Chrétienne, Leide, 1897, p. 26) objects to Dr. Hirth that the Chinese character lo, to which he gives the sound ru, is not to be found as a Sanskrit phonetic element in Chinese characters, but that this phonetic element ru is represented by the Chinese characters pronounced lu, and therefore, he, Father Havret, adopts Colonel Yule’s opinion as the only one being fully satisfactory.”—H. C.]