Page:Record of the Buddhistic Kingdoms (Faxian, Giles).djvu/138

116 passed through amounted to rather less than thirty. From the west of the Sandy Desert all the way to India, the dignified position of the priesthood and the good results of religious influence were beyond all expression. As, however, the ecclesiastics had no means of hearing about these things, he gave no thought to his trifling life, coming home across the sea and encountering all kinds of difficulties. Happily, he was accorded the awful protection of the Three Honoured Ones, and was thus preserved in his hour of danger. Therefore he wrote down on bamboo slips and silk what he had done, desiring that the worthy reader should share this information.

It was in the year Chia Yin, the twelfth of the reign of I Hsi of the (Eastern) Chin dynasty, when the star of longevity was ruling, in the summer, that I, Ngan Chii, went out to meet Fa Hsien, the Buddhist, and when he arrived kept him with me in the Winter suite. Because when discoursing together, to repeated questions about his travels he answered affably and without hesitation, in every way in keeping with the truth, I therefore urged him to write out in detail that which he had previously sketched. Fa Hsien again told the whole story from