-making after
they had defeated the King of Kao ch'ang (Turfan) in 640 A.D.

XLI., p. 27 seq.

CHRISTIAN MONUMENT AT SI-NGAN FU.

The slab _King kiao pei_, bearing the inscription, was found, according to
Father Havret, 2nd Pt., p. 71, in the sub-prefecture of Chau Chi, a
dependency of Si-ngan fu, among ancient ruins. Prof. Pelliot says that the
slab was not found at Chau Chi, but in the western suburb of Si-ngan, at
the very spot where it was to be seen some years ago, before it was
transferred to the _Pei lin_, in fact at the place where it was erected in
the seventh century inside the monastery built by Olopun. (_Chretiens de
l'Asie centrale, T'oung pao_, 1914, p. 625.)

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 archeologique 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_.

II., p. 27.

KHUMDAN.

Cf. _Kumudana_, given by the Sanskrit-Chines