In 1907, a Danish gentleman, Mr. Frits V. Holm, took a photograph of the tablet as it stood outside the west gate of Si-ngan, south of the road to Kan Su; it was one of five slabs on the same spot; it was removed without the stone pedestal (a tortoise) into the city on the 2nd October 1907, and it is now kept in the museum known as the Pei lin (Forest of Tablets). Holm says it is ten feet high, the weight being two tons; he tried to purchase the original, and failing this he had an exact replica made by Chinese workmen; this replica was deposited in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the City of New York, as a loan, on the 16th of June, 1908. Since, this replica was purchased by Mrs. George Leary, of 1053, Fifth Avenue, New York, and presented by this lady, through Frits Holm, to the Vatican. See the November number (1916) of the Boll. della R. Soc. Geog. Italiana. “The Original Nestorian Tablet of A.D. 781, as well as my replica, made in 1907,” Holm writes, “are both carved from the stone quarries of Fu Ping Hien; the material is a black, sub-granular limestone with small oolithes scattered through it” (Frits V. Holm, The Nestorian Monument, Chicago, 1900). In this pamphlet there is a photograph of the tablet as it stands in the Pei lin.
Prof. Ed. Chavannes, who also visited Si-ngan in 1907, saw the Nestorian Monument; in the album of his Mission archéologique dans la Chine Septentrionale, Paris, 1909, he has given (Plate 445) photographs of the five tablets, the tablet itself, the western gate of the western suburb of Si-ngan, and the entrance of the temple Kin Sheng Sze.
Cf. Notes, pp. 105–113 of Vol. I. of the second edition of Cathay and the Way thither.
XLI., [p. 27.]
KHUMDAN.
Cf. Kumudana, given by the Sanskrit-Chinese vocabulary found in Japan (Max Müller, Buddhist Texts from Japan, in Anecdota Oxoniensia, Aryan Series, t. I., part I., p. 9), and the Khumdan and Khumadan of Theophylactus. (See Tomaschek, in Wiener Z. M., t. III., p. 105; Marquart, Erānšahr, pp. 316–7; Osteuropäïsche und Ostasiatische Streifzüge, pp. 89–90.) (Pelliot.)
XLI., [p. 29 n.] The vocabulary Hwei Hwei (Mahomedan) of the College of Interpreters at Peking transcribes King chao from the Persian Kin-chang, a name it gives to the Shen-si province. King chao was called Ngan-si fu in 1277. (Devéria, Epigraphie, p. 9.) Ken jan comes from Kin-chang = King-chao = Si-ngan fu.
Prof. Pelliot writes, Bul. Ecole franç. Ext. Orient, IV., July–Sept., 1904, p. 29: “Cette note de M. Cordier n’est pas exacte. Sous les Song, puis sous les Mongols jusqu’en 1277, Si-ngan fou fut appelé King-tchao fou. Le vocabulaire houei-houei ne transcrit pas ‘King-tchao du persan kin-tchang,’ mais, comme les Persans appelaient alors Si-ngan fou Kindjanfou (le Kenjanfu de Marco Polo), cette forme persane est à son tour transcrite phonétiquement en chinois Kin-tchang fou, sans que les caractères choisis jouent là aucun rôle sémantique; Kin-tchang fou n’existe pas dans la géographie chinoise. Quant à l’origine de la forme persane, il est possible, mais non pas sûr, que ce soit King-tchao fou. La forme ‘Quen-zan-fou,’ qu’un écolier chinois du Chen Si fournit à M. von Richthofen comme le nom de Si-ngan fou au temps des Yuan, doit avoir été fautivement recueillie. Il me paraît impossible qu’un Chinois d’une province quelconque prononce zan le caractère 兆 tchao.”
XLI., [p. 29 n.] 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.
Mubupa has no doubt been derived by the etymology mobed, but it is faulty; it should be Muhupa. (Pelliot, Bul. Ecole franç. Ext. Orient, IV., July–Sept., 1904, p. 771.) Pelliot writes to me that there is now no doubt that it is derived from mu-lu hien and that it must be understood as the “[religion of] the Celestial God of the Magi.”