Note 16 — Chapter XL · AFTER TWO YEARS TAKES SHIP FOR CHINA. DISASTROUS PASSAGE TO JAVA; AND THENCE TO CHINA; ARRIVES AT SHAN-TUNG; AND GOES TO NANKING. CONCLUSION OR L’ENVOI BY ANOTHER WRITER.

There is an error of date here, for which it is difficult to account. The year Keah-yin was A.D. 414; but that was the tenth year of the period E-he, and not the twelfth, the cyclical designation of which was Ping-shin. According to the preceding paragraph, Fâ-hien’s travels had occupied him fifteen years, so that counting from A.D. 399, the year Ke-hae, as that in which he set out, the year of his getting to Tsʽing-chow would have been Kwei-chow, the ninth year of the period E-he; and we might join on ‘This year Keah-yin’ to that paragraph, as the date at which the narrative was written out for the bamboo-tablets and the silk, and then begins the Envoy, ‘In the twelfth year of E-he.’ This would remove the error as it stands at present, but unfortunately there is a particle at the end of the second date (矣), which seems to tie the twelfth year of E-he to Keah-yin, as another designation of it. The ‘year-star’ is the planet Jupiter, the revolution of which, in twelve years, constitutes ‘a great year.’ Whether it would be possible to fix exactly by mathematical calculation in what year Jupiter was in the Chinese zodiacal sign embracing part of both Virgo and Scorpio, and thereby help to solve the difficulty of the passage, I do not know, and in the meantime must leave that difficulty as I have found it.