Note 19 — YING HING SOO's PREFACE.

I translate the Chinese words Wae she, by non-official historian, in opposition to the Kwŏ she, or She kwan, the official historiographers of the empire. Both Yuen tsze, author of the following History of the Pirates, and Lan e, author of the work which is referred to in the preface, are such Public historians, who write—like most of the historians of Europe—the history of their own times, without being appointed to or paid for by government.

Lan e gives the history of the civil commotions under Këa king, which continued from the year 1814 to 1817, in six books; the work is printed in two small volumes, in the first year of Tao kwang (1820), and the following contains the greater part of the preface:

"In the spring of the year Kea su (1814), I went with other people to Peking; reaching the left side of the (Mei ling) mountains we met with fellow travellers, who joined the army, and with many military preparations. In the capital I learned that the robber Lin caused many disturbances; I took great care to ascertain what was said by the people of the court, and by the officers of government, and I wrote down what I heard. But being apprehensive that I might publish truth and falsehood mixed together, I went in the year Ting chow (1817) again to the metropolis, and read attentively the imperial account of the Pacification of the Robber-bands, planned the occurrences according to the time in which they happened, joined to it what I heard from other sources, and composed out of these various matters a work in six books, on the truth of which you may rely."

Lan e begins his work with the history of those rebels called Tėen le keaou (the Doctrine of Nature). They were divided into eight divisions, according to the eight Kwas, and placed under three captains, or chiefs, of whom the first was called Lin tsing—the same Lin who is mentioned in the preface of Soo. These followers of the doctrine of Nature believed implicitly in an absurd book written by a robber, in which it was stated, that the Buddha who should come after Shakia (in Chinese called Me lĭh, in Sanscrit Maëtreya) is in possession of three seas, the blue, the red, and the white. These seas are the three Kalpas; we now live in the white Kalpa. These robbers, therefore, carried white banners. Tsing yĭh ke, B. i., p. i.