As Baber's discovery of the chüan tien or spiral-shaped brick hall and the bronze elephant which it contains aroused very natural enthusiasm among persons interested in Far Eastern antiquities, and is still repeatedly referred to in connection with Chinese archæology, it is with hesitation that I suggest a doubt as to whether either the building or the elephant is as old as Baber—and others after him—have supposed. (See Supplementary Papers, R.G.S., vol. i. pp. 34-36, and Archibald Little's Mount Omi and Beyond, pp. 64-5.)

In the 41st chüan of the Ssuch'uan T'ung Chih there are two passages relating to the Wan-nien Ssŭ, and one of them Baber apparently overlooked. It was written about 1665 in commemoration of a restoration of the Wan-nien and Kuang Hsiang monasteries under the auspices of a Provincial Governor. In it occur some remarks of which the following is a rough translation. "From the T'ang to the Sung dynasties the name of the monastery was Pai Shui P'u Hsien Ssŭ. In the time of Wan Li of the Ming, its name was changed to Shêng-shou Wan-nien Ssŭ. As originally built (yüan chien) it contained a tsang ching ko (i.e. a library) consisting of a revolving (circular?) spiral structure of brick, strongly built, of exceptionally delicate workmanship, very lofty and imposing, and of a beauty unsurpassed in the world." Now the existing tien is a most curious building of a foreign (probably Indian) type, but to describe it as lofty and imposing and of delicate and elaborate workmanship would be to spin a traveller's yarn of the baser sort. How, without impugning the good faith of the chronicler, can we reconcile such a glowing description with existing facts?

MOUNT OMEI

When we learn from the local records that the Wan-nien Ssŭ has been several times destroyed by fire, the obvious supposition is that the original splendid structure described in my quotation perished with the rest of the monastic pile. Baber himself points out that the tusks of the elephant inside the tien are of late date, the old ones having been "melted off," he was told, "by the intense heat." It seems natural to suppose that when the rebuilding of the monastery took place (and it was rebuilt, as we know, late in the sixteenth or early in the seventeenth century, and again about 1665) the monks had neither funds nor skill sufficient to enable them to restore the chüan tien to its pristine magnificence, and contented themselves with putting up a much smaller and meaner building, preserving as far as possible the original peculiarities of design.

This, however, is mere supposition. I now return to our Chinese authorities, and in the 9th chüan of the Omei-hsien Chih I find an allusion to the Wan-nien Ssŭ by one Li Hua Nan (李化楠), an official who apparently flourished in the seventeenth century. He states most emphatically that the monastery was restored or rebuilt in both the Sung and the Ming periods, but had undergone such complete destruction by fire that nothing was left except a chüan tien belonging to the period of Wan Li. Wan Li was the reign-title of a Ming emperor who reigned from 1573 to 1619. That the chüan tien was carefully and thoroughly restored under Wan Li is admitted by the authority quoted by Baber himself: the only question seems to be whether the restoration left enough of the original building to justify our regarding it as a veritable monument "fifteen centuries old"—as Baber conjectured—or whether, as the evidence seems to indicate, the restoration was such that we have only a small and inferior copy of "a lofty and imposing building, of a beauty unsurpassed in the world."

No one, so far as I know, has yet drawn attention to the fact that the spiral building of the Wan-nien Ssŭ is not—or was not—the only building of its kind on Mount Omei. Among the few monasteries on the lower slopes of the mountain which I did not enter is the Hua Yen Ssŭ (not to be confused with the temple of the Hua Yen Ting mentioned on page 91). It was not till after I had left the province that I came across a description of this monastery, which made me much regret that I had not visited it. I translate the following passage from the Omei-Shan Chih (quoted in the 41st chüan of the T'ung Chih): "There is a very ancient and wonderful revolving (circular?) spiral building (有旋螺殿極奇古), and a tablet of the Shao Hsing period of the Sung dynasty, on the left side of which are carved the words '15 li to Omei-hsien' and on the right the words '70 li to the summit of the mountain.'" The words used to describe the shape of the "revolving spiral" building are identical—so far as they go—with those applied to the brick edifice in the Wan-nien Ssŭ: and the whole passage certainly implies that, whatever the date of the spiral building in the Hua Yen Ssŭ might be, it was at any rate prior to the Sung dynasty. The next visitor to Mount Omei should not fail to examine the curiosities of the Hua Yen Ssŭ; a close inspection of its spiral building—if it still exists—and a comparison of it with that of the Wan-nien Ssŭ might assist us in assigning a date to the latter, and might perhaps prove that however old the latter may be it is not without a rival in mere antiquity.

So much for the brick building. What is to be said about the bronze elephant that Baber so properly admired, and which he believed to be "the most ancient bronze casting of any great size in existence"?

Li Hua Nan, the writer who ascribes the chüan tien to the Wan Li period, goes on to add a piece of information which is much to our purpose. "There is a P'u Hsien 1 chang 6 ch'ih in height, with a gilded body, riding a bronze elephant, set up in the Jên Tsung period of the Sung dynasty." The sentence is somewhat ambiguous, for the date might refer to the image of P'u Hsien only and not to the elephant. Baber believed, on artistic grounds, that the P'u Hsien was of much later date than the elephant. On the whole, however, it seems probable that Li Hua Nan referred to both images. The Jên Tsung reign lasted from 1023 to 1063, so that if we select the middle of the period we may assign the elephant approximately to the year 1043. This cuts many centuries off the age of the elephant as reckoned by Baber.

There is no reason for doubting whether so fine a bronze casting of an animal unknown to China could have been made as late as the eleventh century. There were still Buddhists in India at that time, and Chinese pilgrims had not yet given up the habit of visiting India in search of relics and pei to yeh (palm-leaf manuscripts). Indian Buddhists, too, frequently came to Mount Omei. There is, indeed, no necessity for mere guesswork, for the monastic and provincial records contain ample evidence that the casting of large bronzes for Buddhist shrines was, during the Sung period at least, a regular industry in the city of Ch'êng-tu.

BUDDHA'S TEETH