Page:Nestorian Monument - Carus.djvu/29

26 stone is a very difficult one, but the translation by the well-known sinologist Dr. Wylie, is generally considered the best.

"On the 10th of June, 1907, I first visited the resting-place of the unique monument. I went out alone on horseback through the west gate, traversed the western suburb and, having passed some military barracks outside the western suburban gate, had no difficulty in finding the old Buddha temple, on the premises of which the stone is situated. A large brick entrance in ruins and some remnants of a decayed Löss wall show the former large extent of the temple. But to-day we only find a comparatively modern center building, which is more of a farm than a temple. Everybody was busy with the wheat harvest, even the three Buddhist priests, and nobody interfered with me as I walked about snapshooting and wondering at the ruinous surroundings of such an invaluable monument.

"Behind the farm-temple is a piece of ground where a large stone arch and several memorial slabs are situated. In a row of five stones, the Chingchiaopei is the fourth, counting towards the east. Like most stones of a similar kind it stands on the back of a clumsily worked stone-tortoise, but nothing is left of a protecting shed, and nothing indicates, as some authors most likely wrongly, assert, that the stone and its neighbors, which do not even stand in a straight line, have ever been built into a brick wall. An old picture of the stone shows it encased in a kind of brick niche, and it is by no means impossible that this has given rise to the wrongful idea concerning a brick wall. But there is no trace of any niche around the tablet, nor of any later wooden shed, and the 74 years old chief priest, who has been constantly on the spot for over 50 years, only remembers the stone standing free and frank and lonely—looking apart from the ramshackle shed of 1891.

"The much-discussed cross on the stone is not very plain and must almost be searched after before found, but the characters are beautifully preserved with the exception of one or two which are said to have been wilfully injured by the Bonzes, who thought that too much attention was being paid to this ancient relic of Christian fame. Still this is hardly probable.

"The other stones on the temple ground are of no immediate value or interest, their inscriptions giving the history of the farm-temple and the names and titles of the various donors.

"The photographs show the slab to be very large; it is ten